“Hey, Julian,” Her words came out a little louder than a whisper.
I leaned forward, “What’s wrong?”
She looked up but wouldn’t meet my eyes, “I started thinking after the last time we hung out and I thought a lot.” She went quiet for a moment. I was totally lost at this point. She was being ambiguous. “If you aren’t doing anything tonight, would you want to go out to eat? With me?” Her eyes finally came back to look into mine and they were filled with hope. Her face was red as she waited for an answer. I felt my heart drop when she asked the question and I was sure my own face was as white as a fresh sheet.
I took a deep breath and gulped down the lump in my throat. I had to be honest. I cared about her too much to string her along, even though I had apparently been doing so since we met. It hurt to think that I would be the reason the light left her eyes. It hurt even worse to feel the fear that she would be angry with me or that I would be the reason she was sad. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but this had to be stopped now.
“You mean a date.” I stated it simply. It took everything in me to keep the emotion out of my voice. She nodded, but her hopeful grin was marred by the confused fear on her face. My hand went to the back of my neck and I looked away from her face. I picked at a loose string in the hem of my hoodie. “Lyria,” I spoke slow, afraid of my own words, “you’re one of my favorite people and you’re my only friend.” That last word said more than enough for her. Her face flushed and she looked embarrassed. I got a little frantic and leaned forward, “It’s just… you’re my best friend and you’re like a little sister to me. I didn’t want to hurt you and I’m so sorry that I am.” She just nodded in silence. She put her laptop into her bag and started gathering everything up to leave. “Lyria, I’m sorry, please don’t go. Don’t hate me. I can’t live with you hating me, please.” I was desperate now. I couldn’t lose her, of all people.
She shook her head, “I don’t hate you, Julian. I’m sorry I put you in an awkward position. I just have to go.” She stood up from her seat and I stood up with her. She didn’t say goodbye, she didn’t spare me another glance. She just walked out of the café and left me with the fear that it would be the last time I ever saw her.
“Dude,” The barista said behind me. All I had to do was shoot a glare back at him and he was silent, but still looked disgruntled by the scene he had just witnessed. He probably thought I was a jerk and I didn’t blame him. He was the same barista that was always there when we were there and he had probably seen how she felt when I never had. I had never wanted to see that though, I just wanted her to be my friend, but now that was probably ruined too.
My luck had finally run out.
~~~~
The day had gotten bleak after the Lyria situation. I pickpocketed a couple more people, but I soon stopped. My mood was one of gloom and doom, making it too difficult to play off anything I did to grab something out of anyone’s pocket. It did help with one guy though. He’d just been dumped and when I bumped him with a depressed look on my face, he patted my shoulder and told me that he ‘totally gets it’. I smiled and nodded at him. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes when I turned away from him. He was far too perky for me at that moment. It wasn’t his fault though, he really didn’t get it and no one really would.
It became apparent to me that pickpocketing was too bad an idea to keep trying to do it and I probably looked too much like a sad puppy to be walking around the city. I decided to head home to the pawn shop and turn into Desmond what I had gotten that day. I was sure he would be confused by tiny haul, but I didn’t care. I just needed to go home and take a nap to sleep it off, even though I knew that wouldn’t help as much as I wanted it to.
When I got back to the pawn shop, Kara, one of the people on our crew and second oldest at 36, was working the shop. She was in negotiations with a woman that wanted to buy a watch in the glass case. That watch was actually one of our legal acquisitions. Kara leaned forward on the desk and stared at the woman, “Lady,” Her voice was firm and her gaze icy, “I will not go below $500. We bought the watch for $750. I am doing you a favor by giving it to you for this much and doing myself a favor by getting you the hell out of our store. Take it or leave it.” I stifled the laugh that wanted to come out. She wasn’t always so harsh, but there were times when she was scary. I went behind the desk and leaned into Kara to whisper.
“Are you hung over?” It wasn’t a crazy assumption.
She looked at me and whispered, “Blame Desmond, he talked me into a shot contest last night. If you can’t tell, I won.” She looked over my face a bit and asked, “You alright?” I nodded, lying. She accepted it and went back to glaring at the woman who was obviously a little fearful of Kara. I let my laugh come out in a chuckle as I walked into the back office. It was mostly empty besides a desk and some bookshelves. The bookshelf on the right wall was the most important one. It slid out to reveal a door with a keypad code lock on it. I typed in the code, a combination of my birthday and Desmond’s birthday, and it clicked open. I slid the bookshelf into place and closed the door behind me.
The door opened up to another door directly across from the one with the keypad and a flight of stairs on the left. The door went directly into the warehouse that kept a lot of our merchandise and the stairs went down to where we lived in the underground portion of the warehouse. Desmond had built this little connection himself when he first bought the property years before. I went downstairs to find Desmond and get rid of everything I had stolen before going to take a much-needed nap.
Desmond was sitting at his desk in the middle of the room, looking over some papers and filing them into folders to be filed into the filing cabinets on the far-right side of the room. The room was huge and had seven doors leading to our bedrooms, two of which were not occupied. The middle door on the back wall was my room. The one to the left of it was Desmond’s and the one to the right of it was unfilled. Having Desmond right next door to me was sometimes awkward when he and Kara would have some casual ‘fun’, as he called it when I was younger. I think he thought I was stupid or something.
He looked up when I walked up to his desk and started emptying my pockets, pants, and hoodie onto his desk. He watched every item go from pocket to desk as I put them down. When I was finally finished, he looked over everything then back to me. He had his business face on, showing he was not my adoptive father at this moment but my boss. “What else?” He asked simply.
I shoved my hands into my hoodie pocket and shrugged, “That’s it this time.”
He looked confused now, somewhere between adoptive father and boss. He put down the papers in his hands and leaned forward, “That’s it?” I nodded. He picked everything up and started devolving into adoptive father mode, “What happened? Did you almost get caught?” I huffed out a breath and rolled my eyes, annoyed that this was taking longer than I had expected it to take, and shook my head. He leaned back and crossed his arms.
Damn it.
He was in adoptive father mode alright, and not the good side of it. I still lived at home and he reserved the right to ground me as long as that remained true. “Am I keeping you from something or are you trying to act that way?” His voice was stern and reminded me of when I was a child.
Drop the sass, Julian, I thought. Drop the sass.
“No, sir,” My hands found their way down into my pants pockets and I made myself small, “I’m sorry. It’s just been a bad day.” His stern gaze held my own sad sack one for a moment. His eyes softened and his expression changed from anger to concern.
“Is everything alright?” He asked. He stood up and walked around the desk to stand next to me. I was a couple inches taller than him and he had to cast his eyes up to look at me when we were standing close. “Are you sick?” He reached up to feel my forehead but I dodged his hand and stepped back.
“No, I’m not sick,” It had come out sounding harsher than I had wanted it to. Des looked sad now as he stared at me. I had always run away from his attempts at being fatherly in the affectionate way. He just wanted to help. “I’m sorry, I’m not sick. It was just a bad day.”
He crossed his arms and nodded, “Did you get to see the girl today? Lyria? She usually makes you feel better.”
My heart sunk, “Yeah, well, seeing her is kind of what set off the bad day. She asked me out and I said no. You’ve turned down women before, how does that usually go for you?” He made a face that showed understanding and remorse. He had rejected plenty of women hoping to go farther than just one night. That didn’t always end well.
“I’m sorry, Jules. I’m sure she’ll get past it though. If she’s anything like you, she’s tough. It’ll be alright,” He reached over and patted my shoulder. “Do you need a beer though? That can help.” I grinned and he smiled, “There we go. Go on, you probably want some quiet, right?”
I nodded, “I think I’ll sleep it off.” He nodded and gave me a friendly pat on the back when I walked past him. I got to my door and stopped. I turned around and smiled, “Have you ever been turned down? Say, maybe, by a certain hungover woman?” Desmond, who had sat back down, spun his chair around to look at me. His glare shot icy daggers at me. I winked and went into my room, feeling a little better than I had before.
My room was simple, not especially inviting but it was comfortable to me. There was a desk in the corner with my laptop, a little TV above the dresser directly across the room from my bed that faced it. The bed was big enough for me, maybe two if we cuddled up super close. There was a large bookshelf next to the bed with books and items that I had collected over the years. Some of the items were cool things I had stolen and really liked, others were memories. My favorite memory wasn’t on the shelf though, but on my wrist. It was a string bracelet made for a child, but it was made big enough so that it could be tied to fit her as she grew. I had made it with my mom when I was young. It was all I had left from that time that didn’t have scorch marks on it. A few things on the shelf had come from the rubble of my burned down house. There was a baseball that had belonged to my dad, autographed by a baseball player whose name was unreadable due to that side being burned by the fire. There was a teddy bear with one eye, stained by ashes that I had gotten my parents to buy so I could give it to my little sister on her birthday. She was adopted before they gave me anything from the rubble and she had her fifth birthday far away from me. They were things from a time long past, my parents were gone and my sister probably didn’t remember, having been so young. I was the only one left.
With those sad thoughts in mind, I fell into my bed and stared at the ceiling. I wondered if Lyria would ever talk to me again. I couldn’t lose her from my life. I had lost too much to let her go so easy. I would go to her graduation to try and make up for it. She had told me when it was a couple of weeks before.
Next Saturday. Damn!
Next Saturday was the job. I had to find a way to go, to see her. It couldn’t end like this. My stupid job wouldn’t keep me from going.
For now, I would sleep and try to calm myself down and get rid of the pain of the day.
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