6. CHAPTER SIX
Theodore Tillerman had a terrible day. He relived it as he walked the streets of Portsmouth, warm street lamps illuminating his path past the brick buildings and glittering restaurants.
His bad day began when his sunrise alarm clock failed to do its job.
The secondary alarm blared with an unholy siren that stirred fears of an air raid in his semi-conscious brain.
He bolted out of bed with a spark of adrenaline that had his heart racing.
It was not the ideal way to wake up. Too much in the modern world already made you feel like you were being chased by a bear, merely waking shouldn’t involve a fight-or-flight response at six a.m..
But he also didn’t have the luxury of relying on his natural rhythms. Those would have kept his Scorpio self up until three in the morning, waking well past eleven.
Modern society was a scam, but one he knew he had to play a part in.
Which is why he had dedicated himself to being so enlightened that he knew he was not his work, not his salary, not his role in the machine of life, but rather an integral soul having a human experience.
And more often than not, he could parlay his bad experiences, setbacks, irritations, and minor slights into lessons or fodder for his poetry.
But today had been a shitstorm of little things, and he was still human after all. It began with air raid–level alarms and quickly devolved from there.
His first three appointments had all added to his angst. The worst was when he collected an extinguisher from his van, only to watch some careless idiot fling his cigarette into the bushes right outside the local pharmacy.
They went up like they were drenched in kerosene.
He emptied the new extinguisher meant for the store to put out the flames.
Instead of being thanked for quelling the inferno, the store manager yelled at him for ruining the plantings with foam.
Even worse—he had run out of extinguishers at that point and had to drive thirty minutes back to the warehouse to restock. After which, he was again berated by the pharmacy manager.
Then there was his inspection at Glitter & Glue.
He hadn’t exactly been on his best behavior.
He could admit that. A better version of him would have taken the lack of awareness of the inspection in stride, would have been kinder.
He would have enjoyed the way Effie’s gaze lingered on his eyes, his arms, his hands.
She was sweet, endearing, light. Until she wasn’t.
He let himself bristle at her indignation and the sour face she made when she said his name.
He’d been so startled he didn’t even have space to tell her to call him Theo instead.
The impossibility of her condition made it hard to believe that she could taste words, taste his name.
In all likelihood, she believed he enjoyed making people’s work harder with his inspections and decided to put him off.
He wondered what her name would taste like. Effie. Eggplant was the first thing that came to mind. That probably wasn’t how that worked.
“Are you going to brood this entire walk?” Schilling asked from beside him. They’d taken to walking off their angst together since their first week of freshman year at Keene State College when both of their roommates had locked them out with socks on the door. They’d been friends ever since.
“Just most of it,” he admitted.
“Bad day too?”
There was a droop in Schilling’s shoulders. “What happened to you?” Theodore inquired, happy to engage in someone else’s struggles instead of dwelling on his own.
“More of the same,” he said, shame marring his face.
Theodore understood. Schilling had been in the midst of a bad breakup for what felt like forever.
The woman who was once the light of his life had been unwilling to let him have the peace he so desired.
Portsmouth was a big town, but it was small enough that skeletons rarely made it into closets.
They just followed you down the street instead.
“Is there an end in sight?” Theo asked.
“I wish I knew.”
“Vacation is officially over then,” Theo teased. “Bet you wished you stayed on that island last week.”
“Yeah, but there are things I missed here too,” Schilling admitted, and the smile on his face had Theodore wondering how he could keep both things alive at once—his heartache and his hope.