Chapter Twelve
It wasn’t like I was unhappy. Or even all that dissatisfied with my life, on balance. My mom had always stressed the reality that no situation was ever entirely good or thoroughly bad; her challenge, to see the flip side of whatever mood I was in, had been a regular frustration growing up.
Annoying then, but - though there was no way I’d give her the satisfaction of telling her - arguably useful now I was an adult.
The thrift store could be tedious at times and the volunteers there infuriating.
Still, once you’d sifted through the dumpster-ready trash, there was enough in the donations pile to leave your heart at least slightly warmed by the generosity of your fellow man.
Seeing someone short on cash come in and discover a warm coat, or the right sized clothes for their kids, or a cheap tchotchke to simply brighten up their day, all prompted the sort of job satisfaction I knew I wouldn’t get working in an office.
My friends would tell me I should combine that with moving out of my parents’ place, too.
I’d not intended to stick around. Hadn’t expected to be well into my twenties and still under my mom and dad’s roof.
Had helped Catherine move into her tiny studio apartment not long after she’d turned eighteen; done the same with Kyle, less than a year later.
They’d moved since, too, and I’d been happy to be the “friend with a truck” called upon to shuttle furniture and boxes.
Each time fending off first subtle, then - as the years went on - blunter and blunter questions about when it’d be my turn to pack up.
My parents, I pointed out, weren’t getting any younger.
They needed me to shovel snow in the winter and mow the lawn in the summer.
To climb ladders, before my dad could try to do it; to lift bags, before my mom threw her back out attempting it.
And anyway, why move when I was able to put at least a little into savings each month?
To which Catherine and Kyle nodded, and agreed, and said yes, those were all perfectly good, respectable, admirable reasons. Rapidly followed by a list of equally good reasons why it was beyond high time that I get a place of my own.
It’d become such a rote discussion, we all knew the point where I’d scoff, and say “which guys?” when they suggested having my own apartment would mean I could bring men home.
Then we’d laugh, and they’d say I was only grumpy because I was sexually stymied, and I’d counter that by asking when, exactly, either of them had got laid.
And then we’d laugh again, and - in what I always took as a quiet victory and had no doubt that they each did the same - we’d move the conversation on to other things.
Not like, of course, I couldn’t see the appeal of my own place.
Even if I did genuinely think the reasons for sticking around in my childhood room just about outweighed the upsides to leaving it.
Perhaps it was simply that the idea had got lodged in my head, that my first move needed to be something decisive and significant.
Not just swapping one bland bedroom for another; under a different roof but with the same prospects ahead of me.
That felt a little too much like settling. Like conceding that this balance of good and frustrating was about as rich as my life was going to get.
#
Somehow, it seemed, I’d ended up with the world’s largest collection of unpaired gloves. After the fourth would-be customer turning up their nose at the deep bin I was calling the “can you find one to match” challenge, I decided it’d be down to me to do the legwork. Or handwork, even.
The spill of mismatched fingers across the counter felt like a scene from a low-budget horror movie.
As tasks went it was pretty tedious, but it did have the side-benefit of occupying my brain. Apparently I couldn’t overthink my life while whichever chunks of cortex responsible for pattern-recognition were lit up.
The door chime rang out, and I looked up to see who’d braved the cold morning.
“Morning, Mrs Gallagher.”
Somewhere nebulous in her fifties and fantastically frugal. Not, as far as I knew, for any particular reason of poverty; just that, as some men enjoy tracking game, Irene Gallagher relished chasing bargains.
She gave me a terse little nod, grudging, though I knew better than to take it personally.
For a while we went about our respective hunts in silence. Her between the aisles - generally organized, but in practice a hodgepodge of fresh stock and old - and me at my counter. A stack of the reunited alongside me, everything from colorful knitwear to outsized mittens in ballistic nylon.
“Married, yet?”
I shook my head at the called-out question, still looking down at the unpaired gloves. “Not yet, Mrs Gallagher, no.”
A noise somewhere between a grunt and a harumph. The sound you’d make when unsurprised, but still broadly disappointed.
“A handsome young lad like you, you shouldn’t be on the market, still.”
I glanced up, to wink at her. “Are you flirting with me, Mrs Gallagher?”
She shook her head, as though I was the most ridiculous thing she could imagine, but I still caught the very faint coil of a grin at the corner of her mouth.
“After a while, handsome young lads playing the field get themselves a reputation, you realize.”
Considering the last girl I’d done anything with was Laura Patterson, in 9th grade, and that’d been an awkward kiss on the cheek as the result of a spin-the-bottle dare, I suspected my reputation locally was pretty safe. Dull, even.
“I’m sure you’ll let me know, should the neighborhood whisper network start badmouthing me.”
She grunted again. “Nobody said anything about badmouthing.”
“Right, right.”
“Just that, well...”
I was content to let the silence drag out. Not like I didn’t know the trajectory of her argument: Irene Gallagher was a thrift store regular, this was well-trod territory, and it’d end with an offer I wasn’t unfamiliar with, too.
“My Julie still hasn’t found her Mister Right.” It was said with the airy, casual tone of someone who’d very much like you to think they were changing the subject, actually.
“Is that so, Mrs Gallagher.” I chewed back my smile.
“Which makes no sense, because she’s a lovely girl. Whole life ahead of her. Everything in order.”
Poor Julie sounded a lot like livestock, at least as her mother framed it. Or perhaps a used car.
“I’m sure she’ll find the right guy soon,” I ventured.
Mrs Gallagher glanced up, sharply. “Well, you could just come out and say it.”
I frowned at her across the rails. “Say what?”
“That you think she’s an old maid, destined to be a spinster.”
Sighing, I set down the gloves I’d been trying to convince myself were actually a pair. “I said, and thought, nothing of the sort, Mrs Gallagher. You know I like Julie.”
She opened her mouth.
“As a friend, I mean,” I added quickly. Ignored the glare I got in return. “She’s a lovely person, a credit to you and Mr Gallagher, and the right guy is clearly out there for her, somewhere.”
Maybe it was the emphasis I’d put on “out there”; perhaps it was just that Mrs Gallagher remembered this part from the twenty, thirty, maybe forty or more times we’d had this discussion before. I waited, regardless, for the pursing of lips.
The expression was like that of someone sipping pure vinegar. She hoisted a brown cardigan up by the hanger. “How much is this one, then?”
“Does it not have a tag?”
Now the expression was fresh vinegar and exasperation. “Would I ask you, young man, if it did?”
I clenched my toes in my shoes. Anything more obvious, and I feared she’d spot my frustration.
“Let’s say eight dollars, then.”
Calling Julie the neighborhood slut - which would be unfair, since as far as I knew she was far from that - probably would’ve prompted a better reaction. Mrs Gallagher stared at the cardigan as though I’d just declared it European royalty.
“For this?”
I took a deep breath. “What budget did you have in mind today, Mrs Gallagher?”
She pursed her lips. “I’ll not be spending more than five dollars.”
I widened my eyes, as if in astonished surprise. “Well, what a happy coincidence. That particular delight of a cardigan just so happens to be in today’s five-dollar-sale.”
A nod, as if she’d expected it to be the case all along. “You should put more signs up, when you’re running these promotions. Then people would know what to expect from you.”
Including, I thought to myself, a big rainbow flag across my chest, and maybe a banner saying “I’m gay, keep your daughters to yourselves” on the wall behind me.
“That’s an excellent idea,” I said instead. “I’ll bear that in mind, for next time.”
#
The thrift store regulars could be frustrating but they were at least predictable, and over the years I’d come to convince myself that predictability was preferable to surprises. Those, I’d never handled well.
Even as a kid, the couple of times my parents had tried to spring birthday parties on me had been disastrous.
Tears, followed by muteness and a stubborn refusal to engage.
There were photos in the family albums of me, at six or seven, wearing an expression of outrage while around me classmates played and shrieked.
My parents had learned their lesson eventually, though by then my antipathy was well-rooted.
Catherine and Kyle called me a creature of habit, the critique in which seemed to vacillate depending on how difficult they thought I was being.
My counter-argument was generally that I knew what I liked, and that the dumped bags of often-questionable donations at the thrift provided more than enough unpredictability.
A sort of unpredictability I thrived with, even.
Little things, at first: not quite diamonds in the rough, but something still more than warranted the five-dollar-sale for Mrs Gallagher.
First editions among the checkout aisle paperbacks; Spode china sandwiched in-between dollar store plates.
Enough to get me noticed, by the people at head office paid to notice those who paid attention.
Enough to warrant a phone call, and a “temperature check” for a job offer.
No longer just the guy who sifts through one store’s trash bags, but the guy who makes his rounds, unearths the gems all around the state.
I’d opened their letter, and read it, once, and then folded it back into its envelope. Set it on the shelf in my room. The surprise too much to handle, too real to consider. Representing too great an upheaval.
It was atypical, then - weird, even - for me to get so fixated on what an old friend I’d already mentally discarded might be doing with his day in the city. Even I could see this wasn’t normal for me, and I knew my friends would say the same if I dared actually explain it to them.
Attempting that would first involve figuring out what I was actually feeling though, a hurdle I wasn’t ready to tackle.
That uncertainty was embarrassing, quite frankly, almost as much as the sting of rejection by Flynn outside the restaurant.
When I’d been so confident about the signals I was sure I’d been reading, and then so thoroughly mortified by his gentle demurral.
The best thing to do - the obvious thing - would be to neatly file those feelings, those cringe-inducing experiences, into some box in the depths of my brain.
Forget them, as best I could, and forget the warmth of Flynn’s hug and the scent of him as he wrapped his arms around me on that cold sidewalk.
Shore up that sensible, practical wall between who you fuck and who you let close, and consign the tingle of his lips brushing mine to the same inky depths as every other stupid mistake and misread signal.
The ones which you dared not recall, lest ancient embarrassment keep you awake until the early hours.
I told myself I was moving on, even as I pulled up the travel app on my phone and searched for the next weekend’s dates.
Insisted that I was looking to make new memories, to replace these galling ones, as I picked the same hotel as the last time; as I filled in my credit card details; as I checked the box that said yes, fine, all bookings are nonrefundable.
I locked the phone, left staring at my reflection in the black glass. Flynn was not the only hot guy in the city, and the others had the benefit of not being skeletons dragged out of my closet.