“Bowen…”
“Kit…”
“I cannot focus when you’re… When you…” he throws his hands in the air. “I’m coming to the store with you.” With that, he scurries out of the kitchen with a look over his shoulder. He moves faster when I smirk.
The steering wheel squeaks under my tight grip, and I force my fingers to loosen. I have actually never been more aware of my hands in my life. Kit has looked at them no less than a dozen times since we got in my truck.
That was about three minutes ago.
It started when I leaned over to grab sunglasses out of the glovebox at his knees.
He’s watching them now with a blush to his cheeks and caution in his eyes.
I turn down the main road that leads into town, and Kit fidgets in his seat. He never could sit still for long. Always picking at his fingers, bouncing his legs. I used to hold his hand just to keep him from biting his nails bloody.
The steering wheel creaks again.
In a small burst of action, Kit leans forward and lowers the volume of the radio. “What do you do?”
I glance over at him, but he’s looking out the window. This summer has been brutal. Beautiful, but brutal. Hot damn near every day with little cloudy respite from the sun. There are big, white puffy clouds up there today. I’d be willing to bet my entire bank account that he’s already picked out at least one animal look alike.
“What do you mean?” The turn signal clicks softly, and I look back over at him.
“Like, for work?” His fair cheeks bloom a rosy pink, and he looks over at me from the corner of his eye.
I roll my bottom lip between my teeth as I make the turn into the store's parking lot. The fact that he even needs to ask that question makes me fucking bitter. I want to snap something petty, but I keep my mouth shut.
Nice.
“I’m a gym teacher at the high school in town. I’ll be helping out during football season this year. A few side gigs.”
Kit blinks, then smiles. “Ah. The classic hot gym teacher. Not what I expected, but it fits?” He hops out of the truck after I park and follows me to the door. “Would explain you being home all the time. Must be nice having the summer off.”
I thought it would be nice, too. To have the summer for myself. Decompress. Feed the part of me that wants nothing to do with the outside world and close myself off in my own solace of trees and lake air.
I didn’t realize how deep the spaces between the trees were until Kit showed up. As soon as he opened his eyes on that dock, the lack of life around me became glaringly obvious.
I take a cart and push it into the store. “Do you like it?” he asks when we make it into the produce section.
I shrug, tossing a head of lettuce in the cart. “It’s a job.”
“You wanted to go to school for sports medicine,” Kit says after picking up a bag of oranges, looking at them through the mesh net, then setting them in the cart.
“And you wanted to be a therapist.”
Kit snorts so loud it sounds painful. “Could you imagine? Humanity lucked out with that dead dream.”
The worddeadhits me somewhere in my center like it always does. We’re quiet as I pick out potatoes, a tomato, and an onion. Kit trails just behind my side, chewing away at the corner of his thumb.
“Ian is…nice,” Kit says when I pick up a pack of steaks. I glance from him and back to the meat. He’s blushing.
“Too, sometimes.”
“He’s cute. The poster of golden retriever energy in a guy. Easy to talk to.”
“Is this a fucking Yelp review for my neighbor?”
“If it was, he’d get five stars.” He tosses a jar of peanut butter in the cart without looking.
