Page 13 of Grease & Grips
I take a long pull from my Coke like it might help, but it’s warm and flat and useless. All it does is remind me how rattled I am.
He chuckles like we’re just two old friends shooting the shit. “I grew up in a place like this.”
That makes me turn without thinking, and when I meet his eyes it damn near brings me to my knees. The shop light’s too harsh, makes 'em look muddy, but there’s still gold flecks in there dancing around.
“In the Panhandle. Freeport, FL,” he says, finishing his drink and tossing the can aside. “I spent my whole life wanting out. Praying I could get somewhere else. Somewhere with more people like me.”
Those amber eyes meet mine and I can see whatever thought he’s working through sitting heavy on his soul.
“Like us,” he says.
There it is. The truth I’d been waiting on finally spoken out loud. It doesn’t knock the wind out of me. It fills me up instead. Like air rushing into a space I didn’t realize was empty.
“I moved away the second I could,” he says, gaze still steady on mine. “The day after graduation I packed a bag and got in my car and drove to the other end of the state.”
He leans back a little, fingers still wrapped around the arm of the couch as if it’s grounding him.
“I found what I was looking for, I guess. Tons of people and noise and this sense that I wasn’t weird or wrong or some... joke. It was good. Itisgood.”
The words are soft and honest and they don’t need anything more so we just let them hang there.
“But there’s something about places like this… something about the kind of silence they leave behind. It clings. You can be long gone and it doesn’t really let go. You carry it. Like static.”
He pauses, taking a long look at the worst parts of the shop. The cracked concrete floor, the busted carts piled with junk, the flickering lights that never fully wake up.
“I just don’t get it,” he says fingers scratching lazily at the back of his scalp. “Why tear down the place that made you?”
Can’t argue with a voice that gentle and steady. It lures me out and pulls under like a riptide. By the time I notice, I’m already long gone.
“I mean, I get it. I do. God, I spent years resenting where I came from. Wanted to rip it out of me like it was something toxic. But it’s still part of me. The way I talk, the way I carry myself, the way I love… even the way I fight. All of it comes from that place.”
Those eyes find me again.
“It’s like blaming your reflection for the mirror. It’s not always pretty. But it’s still yours.”
Maybe if I hold myself together hard enough I won’t fall apart from the way he just opened himself up and, without even meaning to, cracked something wide open in me too. But arms crossed tight across my chest give me away, no matter how casual I try to look leaned back on the stool.
“Joke’s on you,” I say, trying to keep it light. “I don’t like my reflection much either.”
“Why not? Can’t imagine not enjoying the view when you’re that good to look at.”
I open my mouth then think better of it and take another swig of Coke instead, because the last thing I need right now is to say something stupid, or worse, something honest.
“Something to say, Mack?”
“You shouldn’t say stuff like that,” I mutter, not meeting his gaze.
“Why not? You don’t believe me?”
His face is open in that unafraid way that makes my chest ache because I hate how much I want to believe it. How much I want to sit beside him and how much I want him to want that too.
The stretch of silence that follows feels heavy bearing down on me kinda like the air right before a storm breaks. Must be the pressure cause it makes me wanna say the dumbest, truest thing I’ve said all night.
“I don’t think I’d survive it if you kissed me and didn’t really mean it.”
If I thought that last stretch was uncomfortable, it’s got nothing on silence like this. It presses in on me until I feel like I’m drowning in it. My throat goes tight and dry so I finish off my Coke just for the moisture. I crush the can to keep my hands busy like that might do something to break the tension of the moment.
When I toss the can toward the trash without looking, it hits the rim and drops in with an echo that is too loud for how quiet it is between us.
