Chapter Five #2
His father had started by threatening to cut him off. Just enough, at first, to make it sting. When that didn’t work, he’d gone in for the kill. Freezing accounts, canceling credit cards, threatening to revoke Niles’ trust if he didn’t “quit dressing like a colorblind degenerate.”
Niles was fighting to hold on to his identity, while his father was fighting to scrub it clean.
He hit the cigarette, exhaling slowly.
“Another fight?” I lit another one. Normally I didn’t smoke this much, but it was better than driving to Mr. Cohen’s house and screaming at him for what he was doing to Niles.
Possibly a slap to wake him the fuck up.
Niles shrugged. “What else is new?”
“Wanna talk about it, hon?”
He twisted his lips to the side and shook his head. His eyes were misted, like he was fighting back tears.
“He sent me a box of ties. Like actual ties. Hermes, I think. Still had the price tags. No note.”
“He wants you to sell out in style.”
He snorted, the sound thin and bitter. “He wants a son he can put on a billboard. Not…this.” He gestured at himself with a limp flick of the wrist, bracelets jangling.
“His loss,” I said, and meant it, but Niles only shrugged again.
He reached for his coffee, but the ice had already melted into a watery pink at the bottom. He sucked it down anyway, not caring about the taste. “Some days I wish I was the kind of person who could just go home and let them fix me. Wouldn’t that be easier?”
I thought about it for a second. “Not for me. I’d lose my favorite source of drama.”
He grinned at that, but it faded fast. His gaze drifted to the laundromat window, where Mrs. Hensley and her cronies were now watching us as if we were TV. “You ever feel like you’re just…waiting? Like for your real life to start?”
“Yeah,” I said, meaning it more than I wanted to admit. “But if it ever did, I’d probably screw it up.”
He looked at me then nodded like he understood something I didn’t.
A yellow bus rumbled by, trailing a cloud of exhaust. The world was loud, but our little spot on the brick wall felt isolated, like a pause button had been pressed.
“Just want to hang out and forget.”
“Okay.” We passed the smoke back and forth, both of us lost in thought.
“Stop twitching.” Niles lowered his sunglasses enough to peer at me. “Why’re you vibrating at a different frequency?”
I snorted smoke through my nose. “I’m at work.”
“No.” He pointed his straw at my face. “This is boy jumpy. Who’s the guy that has my baby bird so nervous?”
“Sorry to bother you,” Mrs. Hensley called from the door.
Niles slowly turned his head toward the sound then looked back at me. “She is totally not sorry.”
I flicked the cigarette butt. “At this point, I might start charging her by the apology.”
Inside, Mrs. Hensley was standing by the change machine this time. I pushed the door open with my hip, Niles following.
The machine had eaten a dollar then chosen silence. I jiggled the return slot, smacked both sides, loosening the coins free. Sometimes theatrics were part of customer service.
“Here you go.” I handed them to her.
“Oh, thank you so much. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“No bother at all.”
She smiled and shuffled off with her little mesh bag of delicates.
“Liar,” Niles murmured, the straw between his lips.
“She smiled. Worth the lie.”
He leaned against the detergent shelf and watched me tuck my cigarette pack back into my apron pocket.
“I would’ve lasted six minutes at this job before committing a misdemeanor.”
“You would’ve adopted them,” I said. “Stop acting like your insides aren’t made of fluffy marshmallows.”
“Who’s the guy, baby bird? Don’t think I’ve forgotten. Spill the tea. I want details. Leave nothing out.”
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. Pulling it out, I saw my boss’s name and already knew I wasn’t going to enjoy this.
With a sigh, I answered. “If this is about the broken lint trap, I deny everything.”
“Beth called off,” Carla said without pretending to care about my emotional state. “Family emergency.”
I glanced at the clock over the office window, surprised at how much time had passed since Niles arrived. One fifty-three. My shift ended at three. Beth was supposed to come in at two-thirty for overlap.
“I need you to stay until I can find someone to cover her shift.”
“How long is until?” I asked, barely keeping the whine out of my voice.
My head fell back, and I stared at the stained ceiling tile over the change machine. Riot was supposed to see me after work. I’d already spent my entire shift being weirdly excited about it. I was not emotionally built for disappointment before dinner.
“I’m working on Tammy.”
“Which means you don’t have a replacement yet.” Tammy never answered her phone when she wasn’t on the schedule. She believed in a life outside of work. So did I, and now I finally had one to covet. I wasn’t sure how Beth kept her job. She called off more than she worked.
Carla ignored me. “Please, Calvin. Just until somebody gets there.”
Near the front, a washer hit the spin cycle hard enough to rattle. Mrs. Hensley flinched. Mrs. Ortega didn’t even look up from folding a towel so many times it resembled a brown chicklet.
“Fine.” I blew out a breath, knowing I had no other choice. “But if Tammy doesn’t show, I’m setting the place on fire and leaving.”
“You’re an angel.”
“I’m really not.”
She had already hung up.
I shoved my phone back into my pocket and stood there for a moment, annoyed and trying not to let it ruin my mood. It sort of did anyway. Riot would understand. Probably. He seemed unfairly sane. Still, I didn’t like having my plans jerked around. My whole life had enough of that already.
Niles watched my face, sipping his coffee. “What happened?”
“Beth called off. I have to stay until somebody covers.” I scrubbed a hand over my mouth and stared at the row of machines without seeing any of them. “I was supposed to leave in an hour.”
I told him about Riot and the cookout. How we’d met, leaving nothing out as requested. Like I actually would.
Niles made a sympathetic noise. “And now your biker date is delayed.”
“It’s not a date.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s hanging out.”
He lifted his cup. “With the man you want to climb like a tree.”
“Trees are outdoors. Too much pollen.”
Niles grinned then glanced toward the front windows. Sunlight bounced off the glass and made the room look brighter than it felt. Inside, one of the washers clunked into a new cycle. Mrs. Ortega was transferring slacks from a cart with the slowness of a snail.
“Text your leather daddy,” Niles said.
I didn’t bother arguing that Riot wasn’t my leather anything. “I will.”
“Do it now before you start making it weird in your own head.”
“I am never weird in my own head.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
Then I took my phone out again and opened a new thread. My thumb hovered for a beat because suddenly every sentence felt dumb.
Need to stay late at work. Coworker called off. Might be a while.
I read it twice, added sorry, then deleted that impulse. I hadn’t caused Beth to implode her own schedule.
Finally I hit Send and put the phone face down on the counter before I could rewrite myself into a hostage note.
“There,” I said.
Niles nodded approvingly. “Healthy communication. Disgusting. You’re growing.”
“I’m having a medical event, actually.”
“Same thing.”
Mrs. Hensley cleared her throat from across the room. “Sorry to bother you.”
I looked at the ceiling. “I’m being tested by god.”
Niles folded over laughing while I went to see what she wanted.
“Yes?” I asked.
She held up a single pink sock. “Is this yours?”
I stared at it. The sock was tiny, frilly, and absolutely not mine unless I’d developed a hidden life as a toddler.
“Mrs. Hensley,” I said carefully, “do I look like I own that?”
She considered me. “No.”
“Then probably not.” I smiled at her.
“Oh.” Her cheeks turned rosy. “Sorry to bother you.”
After she shuffled off, Niles put a hand to his heart. “You do look frilly, though. In spirit.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Eat glass.”
“Not with these teeth.” He took a loud sip of his iced coffee and perched on the edge of a folding table. The machine hum filled the pause. Somewhere behind us, quarters clinked into a slot. A dryer door slammed. The oldies radio station switched songs and got worse.
“You want me to fake a seizure so you can close early?” he asked.
“Tempting.” I moved behind the counter and grabbed the spray bottle to wipe down a patch of detergent someone had spilled near the register. “But you’d overact and ruin it.”
“I have range.”
“You have jazz hands.”
He gasped, like he was personally wounded. Then his attention shifted past me toward the front door when the bell jangled.