“I kind of thought he might be from what you’ve told me about him.”
“He’s one of those people who has a birthday month, not a birthday day. He was always like that. The year I met him, he called me when he woke up on his birthday and made me sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him over the phone.” Connor chuckles softly. “When I didn’t sing loudly enough, or with enoughenthusiasm for his liking, he started singing too.” I shake my head at the memory. “It became a thing. Every year, he’d make me sing to him. I’d almost die of embarrassment, and to save me, he’d sing with me.”
Years flash before me. Little kid Havi with ash-blond hair. Gawky teen Havi with bad skin and an attitude problem. Grown Havi at the store, acting like an adult but still a kid at heart. All the Havis in my mind’s eye belt out “Happy Birthday, dear Havi,” at the top of their lungs. It chokes me up like it did last night, but today, it’s not just pain. It’s not just missing and anger. It’s good memories too. Memories that I don’t know what to do with, given what happened.
“Last year, we were working on his birthday, so I got a whole lot of helium balloons delivered to the store, and one big foil one that hadBirthday Girrrlon it.” I turn to Connor and see that the morning rays have softened his features, blurring his freckles, leaving his eyes in sharp focus. I expect to regret talking about Havi. I usually do. I usually feel worse when I say his name than I do when I don’t say it at all. This morning—with the sun, and the roof, and Connor, and what happened last night—it feels different. Not easy exactly, but not as barbed as it usually does. “He loves shit like that. Big over-the-top shit that makes everyone notice him. That kind of attention is like crack to him. Last year, he liked the dumb foil balloon so much that I tied it around his neck as a joke. He kept it on all day, bobbing around a few feet above him. All fucking day.”
Connor laughs soft and low. He laughs for me. Because he wants to support me. Because he doesn’t want me to feel like a dumbass for saying all that. He must because what I said wasn’t particularly funny.
I wish to fuck I was done talking about Havi. The barbs will be back soon, and I know it. Soon, my head will start spinning and a siren only I can hear will blare, but I’m not done yet. “That’s thething about a long friendship ending badly. The good memories are almost as hard to deal with as the bad ones.”
Connor sits with what I’ve said. His hands are turned upward in his lap, palms catching sun rays as they land on him. He looks at the horizon, and I swear to fucking God, he absorbs my words. He lets them flow from me into him. Not only my words, but the meaning and pain they carry as well.
It fucks with me badly, so I scramble to wrestle my errant emotions and verbal diarrhea back into the box they belong in.
“Pretty average sunrise, huh?” I scoff when I’ve successfully managed to shut my shit down.
He smiles at me, which lets me know that even though I’m not very bright, and I might well be missing the whole point of life, he doesn’t judge me. “Nah. It was the best.”
I spend most of the day hiding from Connor. It’s Saturday, thank fuck, so I go for a drive and end up at the store. I park across the street, where I have a good view of the entrance. Customers come and go like they always used to. There’s a chalkboard near the door that I haven’t seen before, advertising a sale. The text has been written in narrow block letters. It makes me irrationally angry. Narrow block letters? We’re a swirly cursive brand with a graffiti slant. Everyone knows that.
Narrow fucking block letters. What the fuck next?
Todd, the manager, is lucky I’m a mess, or I’d be in the store right now giving him hell for this.
I start my car in an impotent rage. I don’t mean impotent as in my dick isn’t working, I mean impotent as in powerless. Ineffective. Weak because I’m stuck in my car when I should be in the store managing my business, but I’m too much of a pussy to go inside.
My dick is working fine, believe me.
It got hard in the kitchen this morning when Connor frothed milk for my coffee, and since then, it’s been chubbing up for no reason. It’s hard as a rock now, and I’m alone in my car, stalking a store I legally own.
What I should do is get out of my head, go out, and get laid. That’s what I should do. It’s been way too long, and the cracks are starting to show. I have friends I could call. Tash and Lacey are cool. I haven’t seen them in ages, but I could definitely hit them up. I could call either one of them. Or both of them. Or I could activate my account on the apps again.
Either way, I should heed the warning my dick is giving me before I do something stupid.
Instead, I drive home to Connor.
It’s late, and I’m in bed. It’s been a fucked-up day. When I wasn’t hiding from Connor, I was waiting for him to do or say something about what happened last night.
For his part, he seemed completely oblivious. He moved around me with well-practiced ease all afternoon. Weaving past me in the living room and sitting on the counter watching mecook dinner like he always does. Like what happened last night was completely normal.
At first, I was grateful, but then it occurred to me that maybe for him, it is normal. Maybe he gets into bed and puts his arms around people all the time. Maybe he smells their hair because he likes the way hair smells, not because he particularly likes the way mine smells. Maybe he makes happy sounds no matter who he’s close to.
The thought of that makes me even angrier than the narrow block letters at the store did.
I have my phone in my hand, messages open. I haven’t bothered to check if Havi has read my messages today because I can’t be assed, but I have changed Connor’s name to Connor Lockwood.
And I’ve changed it back to Connor The Spark again.
I don’t know what kind of help exists for people like me, but I’m pretty sure I need it.
I’ve typedI need youto Connor at least ten times and deleted it each time. Even as fucked up as I am, I don’t think it’s right to cry for help when you don’t need it. I mean, I do need help, clearly. It’s just that I need professional help, not the kind of help that involves my hot roommate getting into bed with me.
Because like it or not, what I am tonight is horny, not sad.
33
Lennon
