It had been a week - well, a week and two days - since Jack and I’s ‘date.’ (Should it have even been considered an actual date? I recalled one time in high school when I asked Chasity how her arcade date with a boy went, and she responded with that it was only a ‘half-date.’ A true date, she said, was one where he takes you to a dive bar if he’s cheap or a beer garden if he’s loaded, and then you hang out at someone’s house for movies and making out. Based on that, I’d grown nervous that what Jack and I shared wasn’t a true date, and the feelings I’d felt for him were merely ones of misinterpreted friendship rather than the sensuality that’d threaten to wriggle in my lower abdomen every time I took a breath. But did one feel an urge to be closer intimately with someone that was just ‘a friend?’ Did it make me into some pervert for feeling this way?)

Jack hadn’t even been in the store, not for a lunch break or to stop in and say hello or even in a haphazard attempt to hide from the law. It was as though he’d disappeared upon the nighttime wind with that motorcycle taking him far, far away from here. From me - and whatever I did.

I was embarrassed. Was there something I did wrong? Then, I was angry - angry at Mom, at myself. Maybe it was the fact we had only Trivial Pursuit and games intended for children to play, or I couldn’t make a joke or engage in small talk as smoothly as him, or I shot down more exciting suggestions for what to watch on T.V. Or was it because I didn’t like spicy foods like him? Was it because I didn’t laugh at his jokes? 

It became a slurry of self loathing, embarrassment, and then an increasing disdain for Mom, a hatred for the memories of Chastity. How did they do it? How did Chastity do it? Why was she able to be charismatic and likable, and not me? She always had a slew of partners, but they at least hung around for a little while until they eventually grew bored of one another and went their own separate ways. A poison entered my throat. Had Jack grown bored of me?

I wouldn’t blame him if he did. I was a boring person, and maybe it was better this way, him ignoring me. I was an uninteresting human being, with limply curled hair and my colorless appearance that failed to align with new chic, with my monotone way of speaking, with my preference for staying in with magazines and music. I was his opposite, and perhaps I would’ve kept him caged if he wanted to pursue something beyond friendship.

But that loathing, after a few days, began to shift into worry.

What if he’d been arrested? What if he stole something and got caught, like Icarus flying too close to the sun? But when I remember the fresh bloodstains that marked the sink before he left, my mind then turned to if he contracted a disease. It made my skin itch when I thought too hard about what illness it could’ve been, and if there was a possibility I’d contracted it. This I tried to tame to the best of my ability, suffocating it before it’d the chance to overpower my worry for Jack’s well-being.

Regardless, with my worry and embarrassment, it made come to terms with how much I’d come to value his company in my day - and that I missed him. And that I needed to know why he was gone, if something did indeed happen to him or if it was something of my doing. I felt as though I’d known Jack for such a little time, but I also liked to entertain the idea that I’d known him just enough that it didn’t seem to be in his nature to just abandon-

No. He would abandon.

I recalled his story of leaving home, his mother, his sisters, after being drafted, and I suddenly felt ill as hope seeped itself from my body. Perhaps he just saw me as another thing to abandon.

Still, a part of me continued to foolishly cling onto hope, still feared, that he cared for me.

The shop had been quiet that day - a cool October midmorning. The sound of Bonnie Tyler on the radio and the chattering of Mom and Grandma shuffling about upstairs, watching their shows, was the ambience that surrounded me. Otherwise the store was empty. And I was bored, with my thoughts continuously circling back to Jack, so much so that I couldn’t even fathom opening a book or stocking the shelves.

While worrying my fingertips and nails between my teeth, I imagined him trapped behind bars of a cell, donning a prison jumpsuit. I saw him in the hands of the police. I saw him wasting away in a hospital bed as disease started to eat at him bit by bit from the inside out. All of them made me nauseous and I felt my brow crinkle the longer I allowed myself to stew in these thoughts. 

The taste of blood entered my mouth, and when I drew my fingers away from my face the tip of my thumb was pink and raw, with a thin rivulet of blood starting to blossom. I grumbled and suckled the blood away; a habit I never even realized I’d programmed into me, nor could I ever undo it. The finger-chewing turned into my leg bouncing as I sat behind the counter.

Minutes felt like they were eking by at a snail’s pace. I must’ve been sitting in the store for what felt like an eternity, but it was probably no longer than ten minutes. I caught myself staring longingly at the door, out the window, waiting with bated breath for Jack to swagger in while stinking of exhaust.

At some point in the morning, the door’s bell twinkled and my heart leapt. I eagerly stood, ready to greet Jack, but when I saw it was an old woman that came in for a cheap coffee, I wanted to sob.

I wanted to see Jack again, or at least feel the closure of knowing the truth of his absence, if I truly had bored him or if his kleptomania got the better of him.

I needed to know.

Lakeside Auto & Oil was six blocks away. Six blocks… Six blocks to gather courage and prepare myself for whatever truth may make itself known to me. I made a mental map in my mind of the street corners and side streets I’d need to go down, and I sighed.

The shop was empty, and I didn’t anticipate anyone coming in anytime soon. My gaze lingered on the ceiling, my ears tracking the sounds of pacing footsteps and muffled conversation, and I swallowed harshly. I could close the shop for one afternoon. It wouldn’t be a big deal, Mom would get over it. I steeled myself as anxiety began to make itself known, as that worry of what things wouldn’t be okay snaked its way down my throat. I needed to act now, or else I’d never allow myself this kind of opportunity again.

Holding my breath, I hurried. I left the shop, turned on the flashing ‘Closed’ sign, locked the door, and turned right to start my six-block journey to Lakeside Auto & Oil.

I kept my pace brisk, nervous. With every other step I faltered, glancing over my shoulder, hesitation and fear tempting me to turn back. But I shook my head and stuffed my hands deeper into the pockets of my bright blue windbreaker. Chastity wouldn’t turn back, and Jack wouldn’t either.

When I approached Lakeside Auto & Oil, a squat, windowless, one-story building of concrete blocks, all three of its garage doors were open, and from its guts echoed deeply engaged conversations and masculine laughter. Scared of interrupting something important, my entrance was hesitant and slow, and I saw a group of three mechanics talking over the open hood of what looked like a red Mustang, a kind of car that reminded me of Jack with its sleek, mischievous angles.

The closer I approached, the louder the conversation grew and the more deafening my heart’s pounding in my chest became - until it went utterly silent as the men noticed me, their conversation fading into halting quiet.

One of the men, the gangly, balding one that’d been leaning against the car bared tobacco-stained teeth. He looked me up and down with a raised brow, and it unnerved me, being perceived. The nametag on his jumpsuit read ‘Greg’ in bright red embroidery. “Hey, ma’am. What can we do you for?” said Greg, he didn’t smile but instead pursed his lips and crinkled the corners of his eyes in the imitation of one.

Anxiety squeezed my throat, hands clammy in my jacket pockets, and I said. “I… I am looking for Jack. Jack Turner.” I kept my eyes angled towards their throats, their brows, their shoes… being met with their gazes only piled onto the terror that overheated me, cooking me beneath the surface of my own skin.

All three of them exchanged glances that were accented by audible ‘oooooh’s.

“Are you this ‘Temp’ he always talks about?” The Black man (‘Steve,’ according to his embroidered name tag), his hair closely cropped, asked from where he was hovering over the mustang’s open hood. His smile reminded me of Jack’s, though it was gentler and sweeter. “He mentioned you were tall, but, boy-” he cut himself off with a small whistle, and I suddenly became painfully aware that I towered over all three of them by a good several inches. “Big lady,” he added, laughing.

Quietly, I nodded, lips beginning to purse. Heat rose in my cheeks and I wanted to hide, I wanted to vomit. A buzzing filled my ears, piercing through my brain, threatening to blind the world around me until I couldn’t perceive it any longer.

The third man, who I realized was actually a Hispanic woman with dark hair bound tightly at the nape of her neck (and ‘Nickie’ embroidered on her chest), laughed. “So that is where he goes on his lunches.”

“There’s McDonald’s only a block away but nooooooo,” Greg drawled.

Nickie then piped in a high-pitch, rasped tone, a mimicry of Jack, “‘You guys go without me, Imma go see Temp.’”

“‘Guys, I need to go early, I don’t wanna miss talking to Temp.’” said Steve, balancing his stubbled chin on steepled fingers where he puckered his lips as if to blow a kiss.

“‘I can’t go to the bar with yous guys tonight because I’m going to Temp’s for a movie,’” Greg whined, which earned him more fluctuating ‘oooooh’s from his companions.

My cheeks flushed and I scratched at my arm. The buzzing in my brain intensified, threatening to strangle me. I struggled to decide if I was embarrassed or flattered in knowing that Jack would talk about me with coworkers.

I jumped when Nickie came up to me and reached to lightly clap my shoulder. “If you can’t tell we hear a lot about you here,” she said, lips parted in a lopsided grin. “It’s great to finally put a face to a name.”

“About fucking time, too,” Greg piped up, returning to his spot resting against the mustang, arms crossed lazily. “If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Jackie-Boy was talking about a centerfold or some lady he saw on the screen at the movies.”

I winced, and Nickie gave him a glare. She pressed my shoulder again. “Don’t listen to him, Greg’s always got a stick up his ass because he can never get laid.”

The whole conversation became all the more overwhelming when the sounds of arguments ensued, Greg barking about ‘getting laid’ last weekend, and I resisted the urge to put my hands to my ears, to silence the growing buzzing in my mind, so as to not draw more attention to myself.

The heat and buzzing bubbled and frothed, lurching suddenly in my chest.

“I need your help! I’m looking for Jack!” I snapped. “He… He hasn’t been in my store for the past week. Not after our… our…” Date? “I’m worried about him. I thought you’d know where he is.”

That was when things began to quiet down again, and the three mechanics exchanged glances.

“He’s not been around here for a while, either,” Steve said, soft and low. He rose, bracing his large, grease-stained hands on either side of the car’s open hood. “Said he’s been sick.” He then winced. “He looked rough the last time I saw him.”

With a sick gut I remembered his bloodshot eye, the way he peeled his nail away from his finger, the blood that stained the bathroom sink.

“Don’t think it’s AIDS,” Greg said with a shrug that was all too casual. “He isn’t one for partners or drugs, that I know of.”

“Greg,” Nickie snapped, as she seemingly must’ve read my fallen expression (had my expressions been that noticeable?). She looked up at me. “He’s probably just at home with a bad bug.”

“That’s what I was afraid of…” When I met her gaze, I didn’t care how blunt or rude or awkward I may have sounded as I asked, “Do you have his address?”