Fiction from Dawn Tasaka Steffler

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So Tightly Wound

Roland and I have been arguing the whole way to Coachella: I hate camping, it’s too hot, we can’t afford this. But I never actually said no.

When we arrive, some band’s bass is making the air jump. We find his friends in the car camping area, getting drunk under a pop-up. They are so happy to see him. I watch Roland sniff the air and walk over to the propane camp stove, lift the lid of the pot simmering away. It’s the same thing he does when he comes home from work, dirty and sweaty, and he goes straight to the kitchen to see what’s for dinner. Then he’ll come over to the sofa where I’m watching Judge Judy and whisper, “Looks delicious, I’m starving,” while he kisses and sucks on my neck, and I’ll pretend that I don’t like it and push him away half-heartedly. But in reality, my panties are already soaked.

Sometimes, we eat dinner in the bathtub, intentionally dripping food on each other so we can lick it up.

Around dusk, we head over to the main stage. I notice a friend palms him a small piece of folded tinfoil, and he quickly shoves it in his pocket, nodding, Cool dude, cool. He catches me watching and makes a beeline over, puts his arm around my shoulder, but I shrug it off. “I thought we could have some fun this weekend,” he explains earnestly, “But I’m okay tossing it if you don’t want to drop.” He’s always accepted my baggage about my parents without question, so I accept his: the weed, the countless hours he spends on his Xbox, the way money slips through his fingers. Also, my ex before Roland wouldn’t have cared about my wishes, he would’ve just disappeared and done it without me. So, I don’t say anything.

People are dressing like it’s Halloween. I see a group of girls in sexy Star Trek costumes, and they remind me of my dad; like Captain Kirk, he was such a womanizer. Sometimes, I wish I could relax. I watch girls bump into Roland all night long. Some obviously drunk, some not. Each time I watch to see if he flirts back, but he never does; he catches them, then sets them right like a wobbly toddler. I think again that he’d make a great dad until I remember how much time he spends praying at the altar of Xbox.

Once, my mom was so stoned she didn’t turn the stove down and the food had caught on fire. Fortunately, my dad smelled smoke and threw the pot lid on. Later that night, I woke to the sound of them fighting in the bedroom next to mine, him yelling, her screaming, and the reverberating thud of someone (my mom?) as they were thrown against the wall. More recently, I dreamed Roland and I were in the bathtub and smelled burnt food, so I hopped out and ran to the kitchen, naked and dripping water. But it was just my imagination; the soup of my worries had already boiled away, and the pot was bone dry.

Hours later, my feet are killing me. Roland leads me to a patch of grass at the edge of the festival grounds. I think about the tinfoil in his pocket. Any of the girls here would’ve done it with him. So I say, “I changed my mind, let’s do it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, surprised but already digging into his pocket. I watch him unfold the square. I close my eyes and open my mouth like a baby bird. Then he leans back against a palm tree and arranges me between his legs like we’re sitting in our bathtub at home, his arms protective around me, my back leaning on his chest. His dick wakes up; I feel it pressing against the crack of my ass. I watch the world walk past from our bathtub on the grass. And through the forest of legs, I think I see another couple just like us across the way, leaning against a palm tree, her in front of him. I keep staring, trying to catch a better view because there’s something about them that I covet. Gradually, the crowds thin, so I get a better view and I realize with a start: That’s us! And I point, “Look!” And he says, “What?” And I say, “We’re over there…” and he cranes his neck trying to see. And I think, We look happy. We look fine. And I tell him, “We look so cute.” And he says, “Of course, we do.” Roland never seems to question our relationship; he always says, “You worry too much.”
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Dawn Tasaka Steffler is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, winner of the October 2023 Bath Flash Fiction Award, and was selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 long list. Her stories appear or are forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, Flash Frog, Ghost Parachute, Fractured Lit, Moon City Review, Iron Horse Literary Review’s PhotoFinish 2024 and more. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com and on X, BlueSky and Instagram @dawnsteffler.