Dime a Dozen

Well, I must have slept a little, because when I opened my eyes the sun was far too bright to be early morning and I felt groggy, like I had been out for ages when I obviously hadn’t. I was sore – so sore that when I sat up a retched sob broke loose from my throat and cut it like a whip. I wanted nothing more than to fall back to sleep but I hated how I felt.

Reaching as far as I could without getting up, I grabbed my half-read book off the floor and flipped to the dog eared page. Four hours of reading didn’t give me any happiness. The soldier didn’t survive the war.

~*~

With the most cliché limp I tried to repress, I trudge through snow to the Laundromat. I regretfully dropped quarters into the machine, too lazy and in too much pain to use the sink. I then crossed over to a small hardware store for batteries. Seven more dollars spent .

Lava Java was extremely busy – I nearly turned around and left. But the second I smelled the warm, inviting air, I craved a cinnamon roll – or two…or four.

It wasn’t the same girl at the counter and, once again, my face flushed embarrassingly and I felt like I was in elementary school all over again. I ordered two cinnamon rolls. The girl didn’t give me the strange look I was expecting.

I sat in the same chair I had before. The thought of sitting anywhere else made me feel queasy, and, with my growing hunger, queasiness didn’t sound like a good idea.

Just as I bit into my second cinnamon roll the bell at the top of the door rang again. Like every other person in the shop I looked up and it was him. The boy from before, the small one, the one that...smiled at me. I think he may have been the first person to ever do that.

I watched him with curious interest while eating my roll. He made his way to the front of the line, dressed in a blue v-neck sweater, black jacket, and black chords. He was alone, which I thought was strange, but I had to remind myself that I’d only seen him once before. With a soft smile and a push of a lock of hair behind his ear, he ordered the same thing as before, and the girl put it in a white to-go bag. He chuckled quietly at something she said, and turned and…

Shit, I thought. He caught me.

With the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on someone’s face, he bounded over to me. “It’s you again,” he said.

He had eyes like butterscotch. They made me drool and nauseously nervous at the same time. I didn’t really know what to say to him.

“I’m Aden,” he chirped, and his gleaming smile faltered only slightly.

“Um…Kesler.” I felt like an idiot.

Aden then sat in the artfully metal chair across from without asking if he could. “It’s nice to meet you! I saw you here before, remember?” When I didn’t reply, only swallowed embarrassedly at the memory, he continued with a wave of his hand, “Well, it was a few weeks ago. You probably don’t remember.” Like that’s possible.

“Did you just move here or something? Are you… new?” Aden used the word ‘new’ in the total opposite way than I would have. His warm, honey eyes sparkled at me as if I was a shiny Christmas present.

“No,” I replied, and grimaced unnoticeably at how I felt at the moment.

“Oh. Well, where do you go to school?”

“I don’t.”

“So you’ve graduated,” he grinned, dipping his head down and allowing his hair to fall into his face momentarily before it was pushed up again.

“No…I dropped out.”

Aden didn’t seem fazed. He propped his head up with his elbow on the table and looked just as interested as before, if not more. “Huh. I go to the county’s school,” he offered. “I’m a sophomore this year.”

I would have been, I didn’t say. Then I cringed at the thought of school.

“I have to get going. I’m working part time at GAP and I don’t have much of a lunch break.”

GAP. I nearly choked on nothing.

“I hope we meet again, Kesler.” Aden stood and turned, but, before he left, door in hand, he looked back my way, one side of his lips turned upwards, pink dusted on his cheeks, eyes melting me like candy on his tongue. He looked different now, from just a few seconds before. Still like a movie star, but somehow more obtainable, real.

The bell rang again and it was like a signal to my body. Fire burned from my scalp and formed beads of sweat on my back. I was surprised it had waited so long.

“What the hell was that?” I exhaled.