by James Hannan
Jeremy started wandering the house long before dawn. He hadn’t slept. How he handled the situation with Abigail and Cath crept in and out of his head again and again. It was so easy to think about what he should have said, and to finesse the words over and over until he got not only a cogent answer, but something cool as well.
It killed him that he couldn’t do this in real time.
And that he’d must have looked a doofus.
And that he could have said no in the first place and gone immediately home without them laughing and giggling at him and thinking whatever they were talking about so fucking funny.
And that he’d just sat there, stunned.
And that he’d been polite when they were obviously taking the piss out of him.
At 2:43 in the morning he’d gone to his parent’s bedroom and lay down on their bed. Even though they weren’t there, he could still sense them in the room. He tried to think about them—the shit they’d put him through—but nothing could expunge his self-loathing.
After Jeremy left the pub, the whole group had probably snickered, chortled, bellowed, died in fits of laughter at his expense. Once Abigail got together with Cath, her edges became icy. They froze him to the bone.
Outside, as light snuck across the land, its lustre tainting everything, Jeremy thought about his next shift. He hadn’t checked, but he prayed that at least one of them wasn’t working.
The sky today couldn’t be any bluer. He hadn’t seen it directly but that’s how it felt. He’d closed the curtains before dawn, but it hadn’t stopped light getting in. The illumination with all its reflections and shadows, hammered him.
His image. What he looked like. How he had to think about himself.
Add comment