Page 8 of Him
Fucking Cassel. I should have left him in the crowded lobby. “Dude. It’s not like that.” Even if I wish it were. “This guy—Canning, their goalie—we used to be tight.” I reluctantly add, “Until I wrecked it by being an ass.”
“You? Who woulda guessed.”
“I know, right?”
I scan the row of storefronts. They’re full of the Boston tourist crap that is usually invisible to me: toy lobsters, Bruins pennants, Freedom Trail T-shirts. Something here would definitely fit the bill for what I have in mind.
“C’mon.” I wave Cassel into the cheesiest store and start scanning the shelves. Everything is garish as hell. I pick up a bobblehead doll of Paul Revere and then put it down.
“These are funny,” Cassel says. He’s holding a box of Red Sox condoms.
I laugh before I think better of the idea. “True. But that’s not what I’m looking for.” Whatever I choose, it cannot have anything to do with sex. We used to send each other all sorts of gag gifts—the dirtier the better.
But not this time.
“May I help you?” The sales girl is dressed in colonial garb, complete with the bosom-squishing flouncy dress.
“Sure you can, doll.” I lean against the counter in the cockiest way possible, and her eyes open a little wider. “You got anything with kittens on it?”
“Kittens?” Cassel chokes back a laugh. “What the hell for?”
“His team is the tigers.” Duh.
“Sure!” Miss Betsy Ross perks up at the request, probably because this job is boring as fuck. “One sec.”
“What’s the deal?” Cassel tosses the condoms down onto a table. “You never buy me prezzies.”
“Canning and I were summer camp friends. Tight, but we only saw each other for six weeks a year.” A very intense six weeks. “You have friends like that?”
Cassel shakes his head.
“Me neither. Not before, and not since. But we didn’t speak during the year. We texted, and we sent the box.”
“The box?”
“Yeah…” I scratch my chin. “I think it started on his birthday. He must have been turning…fourteen?” Christ. Were we ever that young? “I sent him this obnoxious purple jock strap. I put it in one of my dad’s Cuban cigar boxes.”
I could still remember wrapping the box in brown paper and taping it all to hell so that it would get there in one piece. I’d hoped he’d open it in front of his friends and get embarrassed.
“Here we go!” Betsy Ross returns to spread several things on the counter in front of me. She’s found a Hello Kitty pencil box, a big plush cat wearing a Bruins T-shirt, and white boxers covered with kittens.
“These.” I push the boxers to her. Underwear hadn’t been my goal, but the kittens are even the right shade of orange. “Now, for bonus points, I need a box. Cigar-shaped, if possible.”
She hesitates. “Gift boxes cost extra.”
“I’m good for it.” I wink at her and she blushes a little. She’s checking out my tats where they peek from the V-neck of my T-shirt. Can’t blame her. Most women do. Better yet, men like ’em, too.
“Let me see what I can find.” She scurries off.
I turn to Cassel, who’s chewing his gum, watching me like I’m not making sense. “I still don’t get it.”
Right. “So, a couple of months later I get the box in the mail. No note. It’s just the box I sent him but it’s filled to the top with purple Skittles.”
“Gross.”
“No, man. I fucking love purple Skittles. Took me a month to eat them, though. That’s a lot of Skittles. And eventually I sent the box back.”
“With what?”
