Page 5 of All That History
He didn’t, though.Face shuttering, coldness descending.
“Fine, Oli, whatever you say.I’ll let you get back to feeling bitter and jerking off, then.”
I flipped him off, as he pulled the door shut behind him.
Chapter Two
Iwoke up with a hangoverand a sense of dread.
The former was my own fault, of course.Sneaking back into the lounge when my parents had gone to bed, and working my way through the bottle of peach schnapps they seemed to think was essential to achieving festive spirit.Drinking past the point where I could tell myself it was casual; tempting fate for the headache of all headaches from cheap liquor and an excess of sugar.
At the time, though, it’d meant I could put off the dread until the morning.
Fear of what Flynn and I had discussed, what he now knew of me.Fear of how I’d spoken to him; of the untempered frustration I’d allowed myself to show.And, inextricably woven through all that - like a syrup of poison, slow moving but inescapable - the fear of how he might retaliate.
I should’ve lied, even if it would’ve been unbelievable, the excuses tissue-thin.Told him he’d misheard; done my best to gaslight him into thinking the cringeworthy porn dialog was something different.Flipped it around on him, even: asked Flynn just what sort of perverted stuff he’d been watching, in order to mistake those innocent words for something so obscene.
Instead, he’d flustered me - my cock still hard despite the shock, stuffed back into my precum-slicked briefs - and I’d done the thing I’d spent years sidestepping.Spilled the truth, and made myself vulnerable in the process.Because while Flynn was undoubtedly thinking ahead to whenever he might be leaving, my future was pinned to this tiny, frustrating little town.
I opened the curtains and felt a surge of annoyance that his car was still there.Weirdly, that feeling proved more capable of keeping my hangover nausea at arm’s length than the black coffee did.
#
Astack of garbagebags leaned precariously against the door of the thrift store, already waist height.Gingerly - there was a roughly fifty-fifty chance that they were donations rather than actual trash - I moved them to the side, so that I could reach the lock.
The holidays always brought an uptick in drop-offs, though I’d quickly learned that it was less about charity and more about people hoping physical cleaning would make them feel mentally lighter in the new year.That explained the stained pillow cases and broken appliances; toys with obvious parts missing; and books with scrawled notes escaping the margins and roaming across the text itself.Chipped plates and mugs with handles long gone, wadded in with clothes that were more hole than fabric, or stiff with old deodorant.
Ninety percent of it all would go in the trash, into the dumpster at the back of the store.That, we kept locked, lest even the one-in-10 items worth saving just get tossed in there.Even if doing so would mean people missed out on the flicker of “I did a good thing” from plopping a Hefty bag on our front step.
It made you cynical - made me cynical - or so my friend Catherine told me.Such an obvious demonstration of people’s capacity for self-deception, day-in, day-out: their eagerness to deem themselves “a good person,” as though it didn’t matter what you stacked upon Anubis’ scale, trash or treasure, just as long as it outweighed the feather on the other side.
The tube lights buzzed into life, seeming to stir the familiar, musty smell of the store.
It wasn’t depressing, I told Catherine, because you got to see the upside in the aisles and at the register.The people who needed a winter coat but couldn’t afford new; the parents desperate for toys, without the budget for even the cheapest offerings in the discount store.
The realities of poverty, punctuated by the occasional glimmer of what - if you squinted - you could see as hopeful.Like the person last summer in girl’s clothes, hair chopped short, nervously draping an armful of men’s pants and shirts across the counter, expression as fearful as it was challenging.I’d tried to smile, nodded to the tiny cubicle that was our changing room and said anyone was welcome to try on whatever they liked.A jerky shake of the head in response, and a few dollars still damp from a hand’s sweat, and that was the only time I saw them.Left hoping they’d found whatever they’d needed, anyway, both on the cluttered rails of a small town thrift store, and broader still.
