“I literally have my mouth full,” I mutter around a chuck of chicken. “How am I not eating?”
“You’re slower than normal. Tell me what’s wrong. I know there’s something. Billie does too. Don’t you, Bill?” I turn to my left. Billie’s currently licking the sauce from the tray in front of her, blonde locks trailing behind tongue.
“Yeah. She looks super stressed.”
“She’s comfort-eating. Now tell me.”
Knowing full well she’s distracting me from the money thing, but also that she could hound me over this for hours, days even, I yield. “There’s this guy?—”
Grasping her chest, she slides into the seat beside me. “There’s a guy? There’s never been a guy. I mean, there’s a lot of them if the damn Grindr notifications and midnight disappearing acts are anything to go by, but there’s never been aguyguy.”
“You know that Grindr sound?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I do. When you first came out I heard it more than I heard my own voice, now shut up and tell me about him.”
A short on detail, long on whining retelling follows, Mom’s face morphing between,Aww,what the, andyou didn’t. The overwhelming expression though is sympathy which makes me feel equally seen, sad and pathetic.
“Honestly, I had no idea. I can’t believe you never told me you were getting teased at school, or that you felt so insecure you arrived early to practice, just to change. And why?” She grabs my chin and shakes my head. “Look at this face! Glasses or no glasses, ten feet tall or five, you’re so cute I could eat you up. What put that notion into your head?”
How do I reply to that?
I don’t know what causedit.Was it the lifetime of being the smallest in every grade? Of being the last one picked in sports even though I was often the best. Of being a target. Was it a faulty father figure? The church’s blatant homophobia mixing with my own internalized version, and the fear of being me caused me to live in for years? All I know isthat I hated me before I could learn which me I was, and after a summer spent fucking everything that moved, seeking approval from random faces then rejecting them before I could get rejected, I finally see it.
That James has helped me seeit.
Theitbeing that I don’t need to be who people want or expect me to be. That I am okay with me. Just as I am.
What a shame I had to lose something I wanted, but never really had, to see it.
I’d seen the news, knew inflation was up which meant interest rates would go north with it, but I’ve had my head so far up my ass lately, I didn’t do the math ‘til now. Now that I’m at the checkout of our grocery store, overwhelmed, overstimulated, with a credit card that’s been declined. The store is crowded, and some electrical issue has only one register open, and the checkout operator looks as though she may cry.
“I can try it again sir, but it’s not working. Do you have another card?”
“No, I don’t have another bloody card. Would I have had you try that ten times if I did?”
“Don’t be angry at her,” says one of the many assholes in line behind us acting like assholes do, staring and tutting. This one dressed head to toe in Red Sox gear. “It’s not her fault.”
I’m not angry, I think to myself, because now I can’t fucking speak.I’m … suffocating. Drowning. Every fiber of my body on the verge of exploding because every sound in this building is over amplified.
Hoping one may magically appear, I check my satchel for the hundredth time, this time pulling everything out and dumping it on the conveyor belt. I do normally carry a second bank card, Faith’s, after something similar to this happened one day, but with Dylan screaming alongside me. There’s a drink bottle, a few stray almonds, my keys, some treatment plans and a napkin that seems to have some kind of note on it. The same jerk that yelled at me for yelling, pipes up again before I can read it. “For God’s sake, man. Just admit you’re a loser, put the shopping back, go. I got a game to get to.”
Pain shoots through my chest, sweat dripping into my brow as I try and shove everything back in my bag before I become the six-foot-five loser someone live streams crying in Wegman’s. And that’s what I want to do. I want to collapse to the ground and cry if I don’t drop dead of a heart attack first.
Not a fish. Not a fish. Not a fish.
“Doc Plum?”
Oh dear God.
There’s only a handful of people on the planet that call me that. One I can rule out instantly. Actually, make that two. It’s not Cory, I’d know that voice anywhere, and there’s no accent so it’s not Brady either. Daring to look, I raise my eyes and find the soft smiling face of Sam. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”
“He needs someone to pay for his shopping, that’s what he needs,” Red Sox adds. I really hate that guy.
Before I can process what’s happening, Sam rests a steadying hand on my shoulder, and fishes his phone from his pocket with the other. “I got it, Doc.” With a tap he’s paid, is loading my shopping back into my cart, and wheeling towards the exit. After muttering another apology, I take off after him, humiliated, grateful and dreading the questions I know he must have. It takes longer than I expect for them to come, which is good as my brain is too congested with anxiety over how this must look, of what he must think of me, to let anything else exist.
Looking too scared to speak, Sam is patiently waiting for me to load the groceries into the trunk, hand annoyingly tapping on the roof rack. I crack before he does, the first words I offer him after showing such kindness become, “Must you do that?”
“Do what?” He follows the direction of my death stare, and his hand stills. “Oh, sorry.” His crestfallen expression leaves me feeling like an even bigger tit than I already do, but I can’t deny the relief I feel with out the tappity tap tap. “So.” He forces a smile. “That was?—”
