Oscar bit down on his tongue as he turned off Night Mode, embarrassment flooding him as all the notifications that had been suppressed glided up his screen as though to demonstrate his hastiness and how quick he was to anger. Something he’d inherited from his mother, he supposed.
Lina’s message buried itself under the steps mascot, but it wasn’t this that caught his eye. It was the essay that awaited from CowBoy0705, long enough that the message cut itself off with ellipses.
Oscar stopped walking, leaning against the brick wall of the post office, his heart racing as he clicked on the message.
CowBoy0705: I feel awful. I’m so sorry about yesterday. I know I was supposed to text you every hour for as long as you worked, but in the late afternoon I had an important errand and I don’t have data, so I couldn’t text you. By the time I got back home, my battery was dead and my brain was fried. I got into the shower and plugged my phone in, but I dozed off while I was waiting for it to charge enough to light up. I only woke up in the morning. I’m really, really sorry. I want to make it up to you!
Another message sat just below it, an hour or so later, during his session with Christina.
CowBoy0705: I’ve come up with a way to apologize. May I? *pleads*
Oscar couldn’t help the smile curling his lips. For a moment longer, he stood with his back against the wall, eyes grazing the messages that had been waiting for him. Lucas had been right, then.
Spikey: It better be good.
The bouncing dots appeared almost instantly, and Oscar suddenly felt bad. Who was he to make Aaron feel like he needed to apologize for having a life outside their conversations? They barely even knew each other, and Aaron didn’t really owe him anything. Before Aaron could send anything else, Oscar quickly typed out a teasing emoji with its tongue hanging out.
The dots stopped bouncing.
What came instead was a picture. When it loaded, it was another knitted thing, small enough to fit in the palm of ahand. Oscar’s eyes snagged on the shape of Aaron’s fingers, the way they curled to cup the small round trans-flag-coded thing.
CowBoy0705: Trans cap for Luigi :D
Something clicked in Oscar’s chest that reminded him of Papa, lighting a flame that simmered in his core. He smiled down at his phone, at Aaron’s username, at the trans cap he’d knit just to make it up to him for nottexting.
Spikey: The Court finds you innocent of all charges.
Oscar pushed himself off the wall and walked, eyes on the black screen, on the conversation that was once again a living thing. He’d meant to drink in the sights of his town, having confined himself to his home for everything except his doctor’s appointments. It hadn’t even been completely necessary after a while, but Oscarlikedbeing home. He liked sitting on his couch playing video games and eating cookies and gummy bears.
The deep scent of warm coffee and cinnamon drew his attention to the shopfront that colored so many of his best memories from before life without Papa. Oscar studied the large wooden sign, the golden lettering refreshed from a time before Oscar. It was a quaint coffee house, like most things in Oscar’s town—small and old and family-run.
Before the bouncing dots could transform into a text message, Oscar took a picture of the window, capturing the brown leather-seat booths and shiny square tables, the ghost of a waitress passing through in the middle of his snap.
Some other time. Oscar needed to get some groceries now that he was out. He’d said he’d make more cookies, and he craved the smell of Papa’s cooking in his apartment, drowningout the stench of his mother’s influence, clinging to him like a stain since his appointment with Christina.
Oscar hated supermarkets. He always had. As a child, Papa would buy his good behavior by letting him sit in the cart. As he’d grown older, Papa would let him push. And when they got to the chocolate aisle, Papa would let him go nuts and get whatever he wanted.
As a man, Oscar cringed at the memory of how many shinily-wrapped bars he’d throw in, the clear bags of gummies, the large, bright sharing bags of potato chips. Papa had never complained, but Oscar remembered him rubbing his forehead as the bill came up at the register. He’d make Oscar organize the bags while he paid, rifling through his wallet. Oscar had never quite done the addition. Now he knew his father would have been looking for coupons. Now he understood why his father’s shampoo was always so runny, topped off with water, why Papa always baked his favorite cookies and never had any ready-packed snacks to tear open for himself.
Oscar never went into supermarkets anymore, not if he could help it. Once every few months, when the spice jars got a little too empty and the stocked bags of flour and sugar and supermarket-brand kilo pasta ran out, he’d go on a cost-saving shopping trip to fill his cupboards for many weeks to come.
But today was not that day.
“Hey, Paul,” Oscar said, waving at the cashier as he picked up a blue plastic basket.
“Oz! Been a while. You good, kid?” Paulie turned the page, snapping his newspaper open. His frameless glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, two-day-old white stubble dotting his chin.
“Had my surgery,” Oscar replied, offering the old man a smile.
He’d always liked Paulie, ever since Papa would bring him and Lina in so he could get the newspaper and the magazines his mother liked. Paulie would give each of them a candy. Linaliked strawberry. Oscar liked the lemon ones. He hated how chewy the strawberry candies were and how they got stuck in his teeth.
“That’s great, son. You should’ve called. I’d have brought you groceries to your door while you were resting up.” Paulie shook his head. “Stubborn. Ever since you were five years old.”
“I’ll have you know I was stubbornwaybefore the age of five, Paulie,” Oscar said, flashing the man a smirk. “Besides, you did send groceries to my door. The nurse was picking them up for me.”
“Huh, that explains why that woman was buying so many gummy bears.” Paulie had a throaty laugh that betrayed how much he smoked more than his yellow fingernails or the stale breath he always carried, no matter how much sweetened coffee he drank.
Oscar headed to the aisles. There was no chance of getting lost in Paulie’s Mini Mart, but he’d have everything Oscar needed to get by the next few days. And no squeaky wheels driving him crazy, either.
