“I think you’d better head out.” She handed me the bottle.
Thad furrowed his brows, his eyes widening. We weren’t the ones who’d started any trouble, but I cut him off as he started to speak. “Yeah. Let’s go.” I grabbed his hand.
“Are you okay?” he asked me. We had been sitting in the car for a few minutes sipping on water to try to sober up. Well, he needed sobering up. I needed to refocus after banging my head.
“I’m good. What happened in there?” I wasn’t good. My head was pounding, and I thought I might have bruised my right hip. But I didn’t want to exacerbate the situation by telling him about it.
“I just… I flipped.” He grabbed his head before adding, “The guy walked by and called me a fag. Out of nowhere.”
“It happens. But they’re just words. You could have gotten hurt in there. Or worse, arrested for fighting in the bar,” I warned.
The fact is, we were both teenagers in a bar drinking alcohol. Adding a fight to that would have made matters worse for everyone involved.
“But I…” He was trying to find the words to express his thoughts. “I’m not a fag. I…I can’t have people looking at me like that.”
And there it was—the truth. It wasn’t the word that bothered him, it was the idea that people would look at him in that way. He liked me. I knew he did. The evidence was there to support it. But he felt insulted. Insulted in admitting that there was truth to what that guy called him.
I didn’t respond and restrained myself from asking him further questions as I drove us home. If he didn’t like the thought of being with a guy, then he didn’t like the thought of being with me. Everyone deals with it differently, and some people deny it for years before finally accepting it. Hell, even I couldn’t say it yet out loud to my family and friends. But facing the fact that the person you’re falling for might be ashamed of being with you is a hard hit in the chest.
Our exit on the freeway was nearing and I had been facing forward the entire time, music on low, trying not to catch Thad’s eye. If he saw mine, he’d know I was upset.
“Hey,” he spoke softly, placing his hand in my lap.
I looked over at him and forced a grin as his blue eyes met with mine. I grabbed his hand, then my eyes started to swell.
I don’t want to lose you,I thought, directing my wish through the windshield and to the moon above.
16
DANA
Friday was kind of a blah day for me. My head still throbbed from being slammed against the floor. And I had to work the closing shift at the jewelry store without Rhonda, which was a pain in the ass. Luckily whenever she was there, the owner wouldn’t bother me as much. She was one of his best sales associates. He needed her, and she knew it. She’d hold that over his head and get in his face sometimes when he was bothering me. She was like a mom, or an older sister. Have you ever had someone like that? Someone to look out for you like Rhonda did me?
I was expecting her to be there and wanted to fill her in on everything that had happened Thursday night at the bar. And Friday morning at my house, which I’ll eventually tell you all about.
Eww. Why did I request to be off today? You need to tell me everything, she wrote after I texted her that Thad and I went out the night before.
The two of us planned to hang out Saturday afternoon so I could “spill the tea,” as she would say. Though the term is common now in American vernacular, it definitely wasn’t at that time, unless you spent a lot of time around drag queens. Did she?
I was supposed to hang out with Dana on Saturday. When she picked me up from work on Wednesday, the last day of school for the twins when my mom neglected to inform me that she wouldn’t be picking me up, we planned on hanging out. She felt hurt that I had made a new friend. I understood that, and I wanted to assure her that our close friendship remained the same. Well, I was obviously wrong.
I spent Friday morning before work thinking about what Dana and I could do together. We could have hung out on the Detroit riverfront. Gone swimming and lay out on one of the many beaches of Lake Saint Clair. Dana liked baseball, which bored me half to death. But we could have gotten tickets to a Tigers game if she wanted. We could have even stayed at my house. I was sure my mom wouldn’t have cared if we had one drink since she would be home. I would have even watched someSpongeBob, her guilty pleasure and favorite childhood show. Well, our favorite childhood show.
I was going to text her later in the day during my break at work, but Jason thought it would be a cool idea to have me take everyone’s order and use my break time to run to the nearest Coney Island and grab lunch for the whole team. Of course, Jason had to order the most complicated dish on the menu, and then asked for substitutions, messing up the entire order. I spent almost my entire break waiting for them to correct the mistake before going back to work. He even had the nerve to tell me he wouldn’t have taken as long as I had.
You really want a punch in the face, don’t you?I closed my eyes as he stood there comparing my work ethic to that of an unambitious spoiled kid. Which I was not, I don’t think.
Texting Dana had slipped my mind and I continued with my shift as normal, doing Jason’s dirty work in the back room. There was still a lot more organizing to do with molds that were thrown into boxes over the years. There were thousands of them, rubber molds used to cast wax before melting gold into a ring, or any other type of jewelry. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t throw them away after a few years when ring designs and trends changed. Besides, he employed two full-time jewelers: one who made the molds and the other who melted the gold into them and then set the stones before polishing them.
Other than dealing with Jason, working at a jewelry store was interesting. Aside from being blinded by the gaudy, shiny decorations that littered the sales floor, the actual mechanics of the industry worked like a well-oiled machine. The ones who made the jewelry by hand needed intense upper body strength and hands of steel to deal with the heat and manual labor. They really are artists.
It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when I realized it was time to clock out. I’d gotten through a few more boxes, but there were still several to organize during my next shift. I swear, looking back at all the molds I had to go through, you’d think Jason made me do it to laugh at me. I guarantee that hundreds of them had only ever been used once and would never be used again. I neatly put everything away, save the boxes that still needed my attention which I set in the corner. Then I entered the kitchen where the time punch machine hung on the wall next to the two-way mirror that surveyed the sales floor.
Where are you?Kayla texted.
?I responded.
When are you getting here? I can’t be the only one helping Dana.