The scratchy lace of my twelve-dollar thrift store dress rubbed against my collarbone every time I took a breath.
We sat in the corner booth of the downtown diner, where the smell of old grease and floor wax always clung to the blue vinyl seats.
Outside, the Ocala afternoon was thick with the kind of damp heat that makes your clothes stick to your skin before you even cross the parking lot.
Between us sat a red plastic basket of french fries, already growing cold and limp.
Daniel wiped his clean hands on a gray rag from his garage, his fingers still stained black around the knuckles from a transmission job he had finished at noon.
He had not even had time to wash the oil from under his fingernails before we met at the courthouse.
“We should have gone somewhere with tablecloths,” Daniel said.
His voice had that rough, gravelly scrape from twenty years of breathing motor oil and Florida dust.
