It’s the third time he’s asked. “Yes, Mr. Billy, I’m …” I glance at a sweet couple we just served, sitting in the corner together under a large framed picture of one of the beaches on Dreamwood Isle, Billy and his husband eclipsing the sunset.Real romantic stuff. Just like the couple sitting under it enjoying sundaes. The regular kind, not Billy’s special Football ones.
“Y’know you really don’t have to do the ‘Mr.’ thing anymore,” Billy teases. “You’re about to be a college graduate.”
As if I need reminding how close my life sentence to office purgatory is… “I need a breather,” I decide, turning to him. “Can I take one?”
“Of course, no customers. You don’t need to ask,” he chuckles. “Take the rest of the day if you’d like.”
“Nah, I … I need to keep busy. But thanks, Mr. Bill—uh, Billy. Just plain Billy. Totally mature, adult-to-adult, Billy. I’ll sweep the front,” I decide. Billy looks like he wants to say something else, but I’ve already come around him, snatched the broom from the back, and am out the front door with a cute littledingof the bell.
The air today is unseasonably mild. Which is saying a lot for a summer day in Spruce where you can normally cook a decent pair of sunny-side-ups on the sidewalk at high noon. There isn’t much to sweep, but I do it anyway. I wander a bit from the front of T&S’s (to avoid the eerie suspicion that Billy is watching me through our giant front window with concern in his sensitive eyes) and sweep the walkway, lost in my thoughts. Mostly thoughts of an office I did not expect to fall in love with so quickly. A view that makes my house look like a new exotic place, even if it’s just the same ol’. Things I love surrounding my desk, keeping my mind and heart alight as I do my work.
But that bright, wonderful office is going to shrink.
I already know it. Like my dorm room on campus. Like every classroom I’m in. Even my bedroom in the main house. Even this town. Shrinking and shrinking until it’s all I know.
My phone buzzes. Thought I left it in the Shoppe. I pull it out to find a text from AJ. They made it to the west coast. He’s chilling on the beach in the pic he sends me, but he’s scowling.His bad handwriting is scribbled over the corner—IT’S BALLZ HOT—with a couple sweaty red-faced emojis stamped next to it.
Can’t help but feel like he’s really playing up the worst parts.
Y’know, so I feel less like I’m missing out.
He’s more likely having the time of his life.
I type back, “Don’t forget your sunscreen,” and hardly a second later he hearts my text, and that’s that.
Maybe it’s an errant gust of wind, or a cloud’s shadow passing over the screen, I don’t know why, but I pick this exact moment to look up from my phone.
A guy walking past.
Loose heather gray t-shirt, V-neck.
Old faded jeans, frayed at the bottoms of the legs.
Baseball cap on, shadowing his eyes.
And those eyes catch mine the next second.
Recognition strikes him at the precise moment it strikes me. I point at him and blurt, “You,” stunned.
His eyes widen like he sees Jesus.
The next thing he sees are stars as he smacks face-first into a lamppost.
He grunts—the lamppost rings out like a bell, hat knocked off and tumbling onto the ground—and he grabs his face.
“Sorry!” I shout. Wait, was it my fault? Why am I apologizing?
He pulls his hands away to sneak a look at them. There’s a big gash on his eyebrow he doesn’t see.
“You have a gash,” I tell him, still pointing for some reason.
“No, I don’t,” he mumbles, then starts walking off.
“Hey, where’re you going?” Then I yell, “I know who you are!”
He stops, his back to me.
His gray shirt is sweated through, especially the pits. It’s not a forgiving color for perspiration in this humidity, admittedly,even when it’s mild outside. He just stands there taking one breath after another, fingers fidgeting as his arms hang at his sides.