Jolene walked back to the shop with the morning sun on her face and Jude's laugh still caught in her chest like a coin she kept checking.
Then she saw the door.
Red spray paint, still wet enough to drip. WHORE was written across the glass in letters a foot tall.
Dean was leaning on the wall beside it, red spray can still in his hand.
Dean: Morning, sweetheart. I told you I'd take what's mine.
Jolene: You painted my door like a coward in the dark. That's who you are now.
Dean: A coward? I'm the man who made you. Without my name on this shop, you're nothing but a fat bitch who burns cupcakes.
A woman from the laundromat stopped with her grocery bag and stared. A man on his way to the bus stopped too.
Her cheeks baked with heat, and she hated that his voice could still do that to her out in the open.
Dean: Name one man in this city who'd take you now. Go on, Jo. One.
Dean: You're thirty-one and barren as a desert. No man wants a used-up wife who can't even give him a kid.
Dean: That bartender from Friday? He got what he wanted and he vanished, didn't he?
Her stomach dropped. The words hit low and mean, because some of it was true and he knew it.
Dean: Monica's pregnant. Did you hear that? A real woman. A whole family on the way.
Dean: And you? You'll die alone in this sad little shop with your cakes and your cats.
Jolene: You listen to me, and you listen good.
Jolene: I was alone for two years while I was married to you. That's the loneliest a woman can get. You were never company, Dean. You were a bill I kept paying.
Dean: You think some stranger's going to save you? He doesn't even have a last name, you stupid bitch.
Dean: He fucked you once and threw you away like a used napkin. That's the only kind of wanting you'll ever get.
And then, right in the middle of Dean's ugly words, she heard it again.
Not the words. The sound underneath them. Low and warm, from a man who never once checked if laughing was allowed.
Jude: Why did the cake go to therapy? It had too many layers.
His thumb pressed warm under her ear. His voice in the dark, asking what she wanted.
Dean: Are you deaf now too? I said no one's lining up for you.
Jolene: He wanted me.
Dean: For one night! One night of pity and a cheap hotel room, and now you think you're a prize?
Jolene felt the shame rise, warm and stupid, and she let it come and then she let it go.
Jolene: He wanted me for my laugh, Dean. You never wanted me for anything but a mirror and a punching bag.
Jolene: Now get off my street before I call the cops and tell them who painted my door.
Dean: You'll come crawling back. They always do.
He said it over his shoulder, but his voice had lost its teeth. The can clanged into the bin, and he did not look back again.
Jolene stood with her palm flat on the cold glass and let her breath come back.
Jolene: Dad? Bring paint. Somebody wrote something ugly on my door, and I want it gone before I open.
She had a first name, a laugh, and no way on earth to find him.
But she had that laugh, and she had a man's hands on her because he wanted her, and Dean could never paint over that.
Somewhere out there, maybe that laugh was looking for her too.