Long winded, unemployed, and timid, on the first date Brendan Bloom is already in love. Comfortably arched over his body, Ryan contemplates murder. Cold, necklace gleaming against the pale tint of her collarbone, the passenger could have mercy. Not a little black book, but a faded love letter out from under the sheets. Some romances ignite on sight, others flare at the base of waterless tubs soaked in agitation. Rooted in the South, this collection of short stories delivers five electric confessions of love, sexuality, and identity across time.

““You’re not asking someone studied—you know? I guess the rough kind of good. Like when you floss your teeth till your gums bleed. Hurts a bit, but the taste and feel are good to you.”
My first “real” talk came from you in 1992. I was fourteen sitting on the edge of my father’s leather recliner watching you cut the edges off a peanut butter sandwich. You didn’t have any tattoos back then. You had on this red sweater with blue stripes swishing through it. That pesky string of acne was still running down your right cheek when you offered me half of the sandwich.
“Anna. Why do you want to know about sex—from me?”
I wanted to tell you that the walls in my house had grown thin. Even with the stretches of screeching cars passing by and gargled whispers from the Mississippi River outside, I could hear everything tiptoeing inside. The high pitched turned guttural shrieks the women in my brother’s magazines evoked. The sound of the calluses on his hands attacking flesh like rubberized sandpaper; then, the wheezing attack followed by a hushed “guuu-ah” and tissues sopping up warm ooze. The late-night lullaby to my summers had changed, and I wanted to know the words.” –Excerpt from Intellectuals Are Fools