Rue

I had to clear out some of my warmer weather clothes to make room, but I managed to get the tiger to fit in my bag. I kept everything important in that bag and took it with me everywhere. It kept my dad from messing with my stuff and it meant that if things ever did get real fucked up, I’d be ready to go.

Well, as ready as I could be when I didn’t have anywhere else to go to.

That was starting to feel pretty lame now that I was legally an adult. Letting him slap me around, letting him take my money, cutting myself off from the world so that I could stay in the closet—because that was what you were supposed to do, right?

Maybe not all of that, maybe not exactly, but you didn’t rock the boat with no dry land in sight. My dad wasn’t anywhere near bad enough that I was better off on the street. A lot of kids got worse than a smack over the head. A lot of kids weren’t wanted and knew it just as much as I did.

But I wasn’t a kid anymore.

Right?

Most buses here ran only about once an hour, so they usually didn’t line up too well with the starts of my shifts, but I didn’t mind going in early. I’d heard some people say they liked the smell of petrol, but I don’t think I always had. Not before I started working at a petrol station. Now it meant I had somewhere to be, something meaningful to do for the next several hours of my life.

Relatively speaking, of course. Restocking candy bars and ringing up commuters wasn’t exactly anyone’s life’s work.

I really wanted to text Ethan more, but it was hard to know what tone to hit. Don’t get me wrong; I was pretty sure he was into me. No straight man asks so casually whether he’s on a date with another man. And then there was the touching, how close he sat to me. And the tiger, of course. Even my dad didn’t think that had been a platonic gift, though he was under the impression that a girl had given it to me.

But I still wasn’t brave enough to flirt. Also, I maybe wasn’t sure how, exactly. I couldn’t really imagine myself being romantic or sexy about it. Romantic felt like too much, too soon. And sexy? Well. Too much in other ways.

I snapped a picture of the cats outside when I scattered some kibble for them. Surely the way into any boy’s heart was mangy cats.

I liked them, anyway.

He sent me back a picture of a salad that made my mouth water more than any salad had a right to. Sure, it was mostly lettuce, but there was egg in there, slices of avocado, dressing drizzled on top, and what looked like a sprinkling of parmesan. 

Would, I sent back.

He responded with a question mark, followed by, Want to come over? I’ll make you one.

I mirrored the frown on my face with a little frowny emoji I tacked onto the text I sent him. Can’t. Working.

I kept checking my phone, but he didn’t text me back after that. Maybe because I was supposed to be working. Maybe because if I couldn’t come over and share a salad with him, I was no longer interesting. Maybe if my boss wasn’t such a good guy, I would have faked sick so that I could go eat that salad.

It was just past five in the afternoon and I was mopping up a catastrophic frozen coke spill when Ethan called me.

“Hey,” I answered, trying to sound just the right amount of… something. It was hard to hit a target when I wasn’t quite sure what I was aiming for.

“Hey,” Ethan said back, the word rushing out like even that simple exchange was more conversational preamble than he had the patience for. “Do you want to come to dinner with us?”

“What time?”

“Six.”

I winced. “Can’t. My shift doesn’t end until six thirty.”

“Well, then, six thirty. We’ll pick you up.”

“Alright.”

“Okay, bye,” Ethan said, and then immediately hung up.

Well, okay. A few more details would’ve been nice, like where we were going. Not that I cared about the food, but eating out every day was going to cut into my savings.

We were probably just going to a McDonald’s or something, though. If they were picking me up straight from work, then they’d know I wouldn’t be dressed for anywhere fancy. I dipped into my hidden stash again, transferring a twenty over to my wallet. With any luck, I could get away with feeding myself with half of that without looking weird and have a ten left to return to my stash. 

About an hour later, Ethan texted me a request for the address to my work, and I gave it to him.

I made sure to finish up all my closing out tasks so that I was ready to go when Scott came in for his shift. He didn’t look up from his phone as he walked through the automatic doors and straight behind the front counter to sign in. I’d instantly been attracted to his long, wispy blond hair and soft, fair skin, but I’d soon realised that he was no kindred spirit—just blessed with good genetics and too chronically online to get a haircut or expose his skin to the sun.

I’d been willing to overlook him being straight and kind of weird and even his obsession with conspiracy theories for the simple blessing of getting to talk to a hot guy, but then some of his conspiracy theories had started taking on a transphobic lean and I was out. He hadn’t seemed to notice or care how abruptly I stopped talking to him.

So maybe soft, strange boys had always been my type, but it was definitely a lot better when they showed interest back—and (hopefully) weren’t a bigot of any flavour.

I drew a breath in through my teeth as I headed outside, the brisk night air stealing the warmth from my skin. I tugged my hoodie on over my uniform shirt and went to wait on the corner.

The petrol station was located on the edge of town, near the turn off to head into Warrinbar, across the street from another petrol station for some reason. There was a KFC next door. Maybe we’d have dinner there. That’d be convenient.

A car pulled up next to me on the curb—either Ethan and his family were here to pick me up or I’d been mistaken for a hooker and was about to get an opportunity for a new career path. Fortunately it was indeed Ethan who got out of the car, dressed in jeans and a sweater.

Ethan was not a man who believed in great shows of emotion. A lot of men weren’t, but there was a different quality to the way Ethan went about it—no performance of cold masculinity, just his raw self, somehow soft and kind without much more than a glance in my direction. Or maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.

“Hey,” I said, a smile creeping onto my face that was probably way too revealing.

He gave a bob of his head in acknowledgement and rounded the car to get in on the other side, leaving the street side door for me.

As I got into the car, Connor turned to give me a welcoming grin over the back of the driver’s seat. “Good to see you again, Reuben! Good day at work?”

“Uh, yeah, not bad,” I said, thrown off balance by the dramatic tonal shift between Ethan and his dad. Not that I was a whole hell of a lot like my own father.

It was Wendy, giving me a small smile and a wave from the passenger seat as Connor turned to start the car who made me second guess myself, though. She was wearing more make up than last time I saw her, dangling earrings, a nice floral top…

We weren’t going to a McDonalds, were we?

Connor was dressed like his son, in a sweater and jeans, so it couldn’t be anywhere too fancy, right? To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if Coralie Heads had any true fine dining, and we hadn’t taken the turn out of town. I’d never been to a proper restaurant in my goddamn life, but maybe there were some places you wouldn’t be insane to be all dressed up like Wendy was and wouldn’t be kicked out for rocking up in an old shabby hoodie.

At least I was wearing my black slacks from my work uniform on my bottom half. The half no one would see, because it would be under a table. Excellent.

But no one had said anything about how I was dressed or even given me a funny look, so maybe it was fine.

I didn’t get a chance to get too in my head about it, because Connor had questions. Very friendly questions, actually, about whether I liked fishing—not really; if I’d ever tried paragliding—nope; what I liked to do for fun—I panicked and told him swimming and hoped he wouldn’t ask for a second item on that list because that was about the only thing I could think of that would sound normal.

Thankfully he didn’t because we’d arrived at our destination, which was slightly confusingly the beachfront public pool. There was a shop along the poolside that sold ice cream and other snacks, but the pool was empty and it seemed unlikely they’d be open on a winter night. Besides, with the way Wendy hissed in a breath as she got out of the car and immediately sought out the warmth of Connor’s side, we clearly weren’t staying outside.

What hadn’t crossed my mind—but really should have, because come on—was the restaurant that sat above the snack shop and sheltered outdoor seating. I’d never been there and it wasn’t something you really noticed while you were swimming, so I’d kinda forgotten it even existed. 

My steps slowed and I dropped to the back of the group as my mind raced. This was a proper restaurant and I was wearing a hoodie. Would they kick me out? If I took the hoodie off, would my work shirt be any better? It was a fucking bright orange polo.

When I came to a hesitant stop halfway up the stairs leading to the restaurant, Ethan stopped too, his head canting to the side as he turned back to look at me.

“Maybe I should get changed,” I said, plucking at the bottom of my hoodie. “I have another shirt in my bag. Which I left in the car…”

Ethan offered no response, just turned and hurried to catch up with his dad. Right. If my bag wasn’t in the car, I might have seriously considered just quietly turning and walking away.

But then Ethan was jogging back down the stairs, his dad’s car keys jingling in his hand. Oh. Okay.

“You could’ve warned me we were going to a restaurant, you know,” I groused to him in a murmur as we headed back down the stairs. 

He shrugged. “I figured you’d ask if it mattered.”

“Yeah, well, I figured you wouldn’t invite me somewhere nice when you thought all I’d have to wear was my work uniform.”

“Is that a problem?”

“It’s fucking embarrassing,” I grumbled. “I bet every other person in that place will be dressed at least decent, like you all are, and I’m—” I plucked at my hoodie. “Well, I’m going to get changed.”

The car chirped as Ethan unlocked it. I ducked in to grab my bag from the back seat.

“So that’s important to you?” Ethan asked as I dug through my bag, piling clothes I wore more often and my new plush tiger on the back seat as I hunted down the shirt I was after. “Like… dress codes and stuff?”

I finally found my quarry, a deep blue button down made of fibres so artificial it was impervious to wrinkles. I turned back to Ethan to find something vulnerable in his eyes as he waited for my answer.

I ran his words back through my head. Were dress codes important to me? Fuck no. I’d rather they didn’t exist. “No, I just… don’t want people to look at me and realise I don’t belong somewhere like this.”

“Oh, okay,” Ethan said. “I don’t really think about what I’m wearing or what other people will think about it and I don’t really notice when people are looking at me, so this,” he flapped his arms in my direction, “is mostly just confusing to me. But I think I understand now.”

It was kind of comforting that for all my panicking, the one person I really cared about probably wouldn’t have even given a second thought to how I was dressed. I stripped out of my hoodie and work shirt and then pulled the button down on. I turned back to Ethan as I started to do up the buttons and found his eyes shamelessly on me, skimming my stomach, my chest, the sharp points of my chilled nipples as the winter air chafed them.

“You’re skinnier than you were in the mirror picture,” Ethan said, his tone almost accusing.

A small sound of acknowledgement was my only answer. It was hard to explain the whole rice and beans diet without making it sound like a problem. I did have money to buy food; I was just choosing to save up instead. I’d lost weight, but I wouldn’t let myself actually starve. It was hard to work up much of an appetite for the same bland meal day after day, but I had as much of it as I was willing to eat.

He continued watching me as I did the rest of the buttons up, lips pursed together in a frown.

“What?” I prompted, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“I was okay with taking your hoodie when we were trapped on the beach because I thought you were meatier than me. I was hoodwinkled.”

I snorted out a laugh. “I was fine. You damn near froze to death even with the hoodie.”

“Hmm…” he said, not willing to concede the point but unable to refute it. “By the way, this is a date. I invited you, so I get to decide this time.”

I could feel my face going bright fucking red and the parking lot was lit up way too bright to hide it. I did my best to only smile a little bit. “Well, uh, can I change mine to have also been a date? You kinda took me off guard when you asked if it was. I hadn’t realised that was an option.”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “I’d be willing to agree that it became a date over lunch. But lunch was my idea, so I’m taking credit for that one as well.”

“I’ll do the next one,” I promised as I started shoving my stuff back in my bag. I left the tiger for last, carefully nestling it on top before zipping my bag shut. I heaved out a sigh. “Okay, let’s go eat in a fucking restaurant, I guess.”