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- 06/14/2013
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Bad Stereotypes - 24. Wednesday 31st July 2013
To my absolute and total lack of surprise, Zoltan was no longer speaking to me. Fuck speaking, he wasn’t even partially civil of my presence at the South Alaska, and he was not backwards in being vocal about it. I stayed behind the bar and sent Batty out to collect glasses if Zoltan was in, and I took my breaks upstairs in the flat instead of going outside. It was like his personality had been replaced by the angrier version of Zupan.
Zupan, who had damned me with one breath when he refused to tell me where Issac lived, and I kicked myself to think that I had never asked to go to his place, because the flat above the South Alaska had been close and convenient and private. I’d jogged to The Fish and Antlers after my run-in with Zupan and found it shut. On Monday of course, everything was shut, so I’d done what I did best, and gone for a really long run.
My brain started up doing the real thinking after about an hour of sweating.
I filtered the things I said in front of Issac because I knew that I would offend him. Since coming to live in the city by the sea I had kept my social circle small, restricted pretty much to straight people and goths, or straight people who were goths and rockers, and Issac. And that was it. I’d nearly beat up that little scene-boi in the club for being camp. As I ran, I knew I had to admit, that there were things wrong with me.
I hated guys who were like me but much more so. And now I needed to figure out why. I wanted nothing more than to have Issac back in my arms, to rewind time and let him… and even in my head I couldn’t think it. I loved Issac. I hated lied when I’d said it; I loved him. And we’d never actually talked about sex. When he’d been nervous of me leaving I’d just told him what I wanted and he’d gone with it. I’d confidently assumed that I could just kept getting my own way until… Until I screwed up.
And how I had screwed up.
Tuesday I went back to The Fish and Antlers at lunch service, but all Micky could tell me in between seating wealthy diner’s was that Issac had called Big Mack the day before and said that he wouldn’t be in. That was it. He gave me a half a hug and a soft grin, but he couldn’t tell me anything else.
I lay in bed that night feeling worse than I had done any night since I’d sat and cried for about six hours when I was seventeen. The inside of my brain hurt, my chest hurt. My shoulder hurt from my collision with the ground and my shin hurt from my impact with Zupan, but those things I could handle. I had no name for the pain that lived inside me, but it ate away at my brain until all I had left were the shitty things I’d said to Issac, and the look on his face when he’d left.
Wednesday dawned hot and bright, so I ran. I arrived at the restaurant to find it locked up, and sat panting on the step with a bottle of water and my shirt stuck to my back as the day grew hotter. I stared along the street in the direction of the sea, glinting and glowing in the sun, and if I hadn’t been staring so hard I would have missed him altogether.
A dark shape against the bright sea, a profile I knew in the back of my mind and the front of my heart. I leapt up, dropped the rest of the water, half a syllable out of my mouth before I saw him see me, before I saw him back off, turn away as though he didn’t know me.
“Issac!” and thank god I was faster than anyone else, because I caught him. Fresh from the market in shorts with his hi-tech leg on, which meant he was running a little bit, with a blue plastic bag of groceries in one hand, “Wait.”
“Why?” that one word was hard and flat, and Issac looked down at me like he was really pleased he could look down at me.
“I’m sorry.” Nothing, Issac looked at me like that I’d said didn’t matter, “I’m sorry. I love you. I-”
“I don’t care Bay.”
I stopped breathing.
“I don’t care.” He pushed me away, a hand on my chest, and I moved to grab at him, but got the grocery bag instead, “I don’t care. I’m not going back to being hurt.” Issac pushed me away, dropped the bag, “I’m through with you.”
"You said you couldn't live without me!"
"Well I was wrong!"
I don’t remember falling to my knees, but I remember watching him walk away. I think I yelled something.
When he was out of sight I noticed the blue bag sitting by me with the contents spilled. Lamb wrapped in cling film, candy striped beetroot, golden carrots, a cauliflower that looked like a lizard.
He was thinking of me.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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