An Extremely Typical Short Story

                Bradley looked up from his guitar strumming and at the woman standing in front of him. She had her hands on her hips and seemed to be saying something important. She was red in the face and her forehead was deeply furrowed.

                “What did you say baby,” asked Bradley.

                “I asked you what the hell you think you’re doing with these,” shouted Amanda.

                Amanda held up a pair of lacy red panties. She shoved them towards Bradley’s face. He didn’t recognize them right away.

                “I don’t know baby. Aren’t they yours,” he asked.

                “Mine! Mine!? When have I ever worn red panties,” yelled Amanda.  

                “I don’t know. Christmas maybe?”

                Amanda threw the lacy red panties into Bradley’s face and she started to storm away. Bradley removed the panties from his forehead and looked at them. He assumed that the panties were not Amanda’s.

                “Baby, I don’t know whose panties these are. Why do you think that I would know,” he asked.

               

                Amanda froze in her tracks. She turned back around to see Bradley holding the panties in his hand up to his nose, sniffing them slightly.

                “You’re a bastard,” said Amanda.

                “What? Why am I a bastard,” asked Bradley, “What did I do?”

                “You really are going to sit there, like some god damn hippie in your ratty tee shirt, strumming that useless guitar and play all innocent. You know full well what those panties mean. They mean that you cheated on me,” shouted Amanda.

                Amanda hated how hot her face was. When she found the panties balled up under the bed; the bed she and Bradley have shared for the last eight months. She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t going to get upset. She was going to stay calm and confront Bradley. She was feeling the tears in her eyes and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of her anger.

                “I didn’t cheat on you. And you bought me this shirt. I love this shirt,” said Bradley as he pulled on this shirt collar. Which ripped a little more.

                “Bullshit. Then why were those panties under our bed,” said Amanda.

                “I don’t know,” shouted Bradley.

                “Did your whore forget them as you rushed her out of our apartment,” said Amanda.

                “I don’t know any whores,” said Bradley.

                Amanda crossed her arms across her chest. Bradley looked at her breasts. Her forearms were pushing her breasts up giving her a surprising amount of cleavage.

                “Are you looking at my breasts,” shouted Amanda, “You jerk!”

                “What, they’re great breasts. I can’t look at them?”

                “Not while we’re arguing you asshole,” yelled Amanda.

                “They look great though,” said a smirking Bradley.

                Amanda uncrossed her arms and put her hands back on her hips. She stepped closer to Bradley. He stood up from his bean bag chair and put his guitar down.

                “You can go to hell Bradley. You can eat shit and die. You think you’re some sort of rock star, but you’re not. You an unemployed jackass who only thinks about himself and only about what is going in your life. You don’t care about anyone else. You’re a bad person and I knew I should have listened to my mother when she said not to fall in love with a musician. And you’re not even that good of one,” said Amanda.

                Bradley shuffled back a step. He thought she was going to kiss him after his really awesome compliment about her breasts.  She didn’t though. Bradley thought about what she said.

                “Not a good musician,” said Bradley.

               

                Amanda bent down and picked the panties up off the floor.

                “Yeah, not a good musician. Here…” said Amanda, “play these!”

                Amanda threw the panties at Bradley again and she pounded her feet into the hardwood apartment floor as she walked away. She grabbed her bag from the closet as she walked by and went into the bedroom. She slammed the door behind her.

                “Not a good musician,” questioned Bradley as he pointed at himself. 

“What did she know,” he thought. She came up to him after that day he played in Potbelly’s Sandwich shop. She told him that she liked the way he played. “Was she just lying,” wondered Bradley. He thought she really liked his music.  He looked at the panties on the ground. They had fallen next to his guitar after the second time Amanda had thrown them at him. Bradley looked at the panties and started writing song lyrics in his head.  

Amanda opened the bedroom door with her bag strapped over her shoulder. Her make-up tackle box in her right hand.  She stood in the hallway for a moment staring at Bradley. He looked back at her and shrugged.

                “Where you going baby,” asked Bradley.

                “I’ll be back for the rest of my stuff when you’re not here,” said Amanda.

She opened the apartment door and slammed it behind her.

                Bradley looked back down at the red lacy panties. He sat back down on the bean bag chair. He looked back at the panties. The red, lacy panties. There was something about them. They seemed familiar but not. Familiar because they were panties, but that was all he could think. Except that time he slept with Camilla while Amanda was visiting her grandmother in Iowa.

                “Camilla,” shouted Bradley as he slapped himself in the forehead. “I wonder what she’s doing tonight.”