“I’m really not.”
“Do you want to fuck then?” Kara asked flatly. “Is that direct enough?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty direct. But we can’t fuck in a public space.”
“Well, in private then. Stop being a smart-ass. You know what I mean.”
He looked at her as closely as he could, but he couldn’t fathom what was going on inside her indolent mind.
“We haven’t seen each other in, what, four, five weeks?” Thomas said. “Haven’t talked either. I thought we were done.”
“I miss you. I miss being with you. It’s that simple.”
“But you wanted to date…”
“Forget about that. We can be friends-with-benefits. I should’ve known I couldn’t push you into a relationship. It’s just… I wanted something more, but I ended up with nothing.”
“That’s… so you haven’t been with any other guys? Since we, you know, stopped?”
“Um.”
“It doesn’t bother me… unless they have STDs, and you get ’em and pass ’em on to me…”
“Thomas.”
“What? It’s a legitimate concern, and we never really talked about it.”
“Thomas.”
“Don’t ‘Thomas’ me. Why are you coming at me like this all of a sudden? You can’t have missed me that much…”
Suddenly the tears came. In many cases, female tears melt right through male defenses, as if they were weaponized acid instead of salt water. This was not one of those cases. It was a sight that filled Thomas with irritation instead of pity. The way her face bunched up and turned red, the way she sob-snorted — it was unseemly. He wanted to slap her, like the men did in those old movies when their women started weeping and being dramatic. He hoped to God no one saw this scene — but just as he was thinking this, he felt a presence at his back, at the end of the aisle. He looked behind him quickly, and just caught Orianna disappearing around the next aisle. There was another issue he had to deal with. They’d barely spoken since “Are You Interested?,” so he had no idea where they stood — or if they stood anywhere at all. But no matter what they thought or didn’t think of each other, he didn’t want her — or anyone — to see him with this teary woman.
“But I do miss you,” Kara blubbered. “You’re the best guy I’ve ever been with. What do I have to do” — face-rattling sob — “to convince you of that?”
Briefly, Thomas’s loins pulsed, triggered by “you’re the best guy I’ve ever been with.” He could say she’d convinced him so she’d stop this damn crying, and they’d hug and make up, and then after work they’d go to his apartment and fuck each other’s brains out. And then they’d rest and put their brains back in, and then fuck them out again.
But deep down he knew it wouldn’t last. Within a week, they’d be right back to “I have a lot on my plate” and “Why won’t you date me?” No, it wasn’t worth it — and his now-soft penis agreed that he was making the right decision.
“Nothing, Kara,” he said calmly. “I think we’re done. You shoved me away, and I guess you expected me to keep crawling after you like a desperate teenager, and when I didn’t, it hurt your ego. You just came here to prove you can pull me back in if you want to.”
“But — I’m standing here crying, and you’re so calm…”
“Well, that should tell you something, shouldn’t it?”
Abruptly the sobs stopped, almost as if they hadn’t been real at all. Kara straightened up and wiped her hands across her face. Makeup streaked, making her look goth and sinister. Thomas felt like she was about to slap him, and he readied himself in the hope that he could block it and avoid the indignity.
“This isn’t over,” she hissed. She glared at him for a few more seconds, then turned and marched away. Thomas watched her blocky body until it was out of sight, then slowly resumed his pickle-stocking.
He smiled at how he’d manfully rebuffed her. Reggie, that bastard, would have been proud. What the fuck was she thinking, coming in here and acting like that? Crying and wailing like he was her One True Lover, and then doing an about-face and hissing at him like a viper…
But his sense of pride and power slowly ebbed. Her last words were already haunting him. What did she mean, it wasn’t over? If she wanted revenge, what could she conceivably do to him? His mind played out various scenarios, from the reasonable (she could come bother him at work, maybe claim he was sexually incompetent in front of other employees) to the sensational (she could slash off his limbs with a chainsaw and then feed his dismembered parts to a bunch of mud-wallowing pigs).
Kara’s eyes were usually as lively as bedridden invalids, but as she’d said her last words there had been holy fire in them. That did not bode well.
Well, he comforted himself, at least no one besides Orianna had seen what happened. The last thing he wanted was a lot of gossip floating around the store.
He was fooling himself, of course. Vernon was the first to accost him.
“Who was that girl you were jawing with?” he asked, leering as if he’d just caught Thomas making out with someone in the walk-in cooler.
“No one,” Thomas replied, frowning. “Just a friend.”
“I know better than that. I saw, I heard. I’ve got eyes, I’ve got ears. Seemed like you two were having a row.”
“No, we weren’t.”
“Alright, fine, be tight-lipped. You can handle your own affairs. But in my opinion, she looked a bit soggy to me — if ya know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” Thomas growled.
“Well, uh, you’ll figure it out. Now — we still have four boxes of those gosh durn green beans back here? Don’t people want to eat their veggies?”
Next was Eldridge, and this surprised Thomas, since Eldridge usually avoided gossip, and talking in general.
“Did I hear you made some girl cry?” he grunted.
After Thomas had recovered from this startling question — which took far too long, judging by the impatient look on Eldridge’s bulldog face — he croaked out: “No, I didn’t. She — uh — has a lot on her plate. Gettin’ to her. Stress. You know.”
“Well, if you did make her cry, she probably deserved it. I been married twice, and both of ’em were fit to strangle. You gotta make ’em cry sometimes just to keep ’em honest.”
Thomas knew nothing about Eldridge’s previous marriages. He pictured gray, church-going, bridge-playing women trying to nag the un-naggable Eldridge. He could not imagine what sex had been like, because he couldn’t imagine Eldridge young and virile.
“Uh — I don’t plan on getting married,” Thomas said.
“Good choice,” Eldridge said spitefully. “If I’d’a stuck to that when I was young, I would’ve saved myself a lot of time and money.”
Thomas nodded and retreated to the back room.
Next was Cynthia, who came at him with wide, sympathetic eyes and clasped hands, as if he were a refugee just escaped from a war zone.
“I heard something happened,” she caressed. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” Thomas snapped.
“Oh. OK. Just thought I’d ask.”
He immediately regretted what he’d done, and he followed the slumped and pouting Cynthia a few steps, intent on stopping her and apologizing. Then he said to hell with it, people needed to stay out of his business. This whole goddamn store was one big den of gossip, just a bunch of nibbling little rodents trying to find something interesting to chew on.
But he was being too harsh. The people who had asked him about Kara were his friends, or at least his acquaintances. They were concerned, not nosy.