My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie ‎"Last time I checked, private nudity was legal." Lawrence was pretty sure he had gone blind for a brief moment - at least, up until he saw the glimpse of denim in the periphery of his vision. Erik was very sheepishly pulling on his jeans, his face more gray than red as he looked upon his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend sitting on the battered couch watching Pulp Fiction. Samuel L. Jackson's voice seemed somehow more disorienting than it usually was at the moment, with the two young men staring awkwardly at each other for some time. "Right." Leslie pursed her lips and shook her head slightly. "I don't think Larry and I have any tiffs with...um...'private nudity'...but private is private, dude." Erik hung his head. "I thought you guys were out." (Deep down, Lawrence wished he were out at the pizza place still. Or at least a little unhinged from cheap beer to endure this.) "No, man,...

Stanley beckoned little Kimberly over with a gnarly finger, like a tree branch twitching in the winter wind. She waddled slowly toward him, her hands and lips sticky from her mint chip ice cream cone. As the elderly man scooped her up in his arms, his eyes melted against hers in pools of emerald and indigo. "She's so precious," he said, smiling faintly as he looked at his son, her father, grinning from ear to ear.