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“Bossman’s gonna be pissed you were late,” she said. “Come on, kiddo, I’ll show you where he needs you.” She eyed me up and down like I was a piece of meat. “I know where I’d need you if I were him.” As we walked toward the back, Rhonda filled me in on the ins and outs of truck day. “Seven of us work the line. Two people in the truck, one on the dock, one on the belt, and three in the stockroom. You’re in the truck. Now, I ain’t gonna lie to you, doll. It’s hotter than Hell in there.” She blew a bubble with her gum that grew to half the size of her face. It popped, covering the entirety of her nose, mouth, and chin with saliva-coated pink goop. “Ah, hell. Just my luck.” She picked at the gum, groaning as she pulled it off her face bit by bit. “Did you bring that extra shirt like I told you?”
“Shit.”
Rhonda let out a laugh, and her entire body weight fell against my shoulder. “Honey, it’s ninety-eight degrees outside. You’re going to be dripping wet by lunchtime.” When we walked into the stockroom. Gray was standing in front of us, clipboard in hand, chuckling to himself. “Bossman,” Rhonda said, holding both arms in my direction as if she were presenting me like cattle at an auction. “Our little Kent-doll forgot to bring a spare shirt.”
Gray turned his attention back to his clipboard, ticking boxes with his pencil. “He’s just going to have to work in a sweaty shirt then, isn’t he?”
“Don’t be a jerk. Just let him borrow one of yours. Your locker is full of spares.”
The thought of wearing one of Gray’s soccer-dad polo shirts sounded less than ideal, but I knew it would be preferable to working in a soaking wet shirt that clung to my body like a second skin.
“I don’t share my clothes. I don’t know how many times I have to explain that to you, or why I have to keep explaining it.” The fact that this had been a topic of conversation in the past definitely piqued my interest, but I figured that was a fun little slice of his life I’d have to devour some other time. Without looking at me, he said, “Just call your mom and have her run you over a change of clothes for when we’re done.”
Rhonda must have grown tired of our conversation because she turned around and walked to an almost-empty U-boat across the stockroom. She pulled a candy bar out of an opened box and unwrapped it.
“That’s coming out of your check,” Gray called out to her without looking up. Rhonda lifted her hand into the air, flicking the finger at him. He rolled his eyes and glanced up at me. His pencil rose from the clipboard, pointing at the double doors that led to the dock. “Just go through there and up the ramp. You’ll be in the truck with Christian. He’ll show you the ropes. I’ll put the shirt in your locker when your mom brings it by.”
“I can’t call my mom. She’s on her way to Tyler to pick up Aunt Jeanie. She wanted to come to visit for a few days after she found out I was home.”
Gray stared up at me with a smile forming in the corners of his mouth. “Jeanie. Gosh, I haven’t thought about her in years.” He tucked his pencil behind his ear, his clipboard falling to his side. “Hey.” His voice was hushed, and he craned his neck to make sure no one was within earshot. “Do you remember that night she babysat us and let you have one of her marijuana cigarettes?”
I snorted. “Why are you whispering? Yeah, I remember. You got so stoned that you took your pants off and tried to climb on the roof.”
“At the time, it made all the sense in the world. I thought I might find God up there. I was so mad at you for not letting me go up.”
“You didn’t talk to me for an hour.” I fidgeted with my smock, darting my eyes to see if he was watching me. The second our eyes connected, he looked away. “You made it up there in the end, though.”
“Yeah, only by sneaking out the bathroom window and climbing up from there.” Gray gave me a half-smile before returning to the checklist on his clipboard.
“Listen, it’s fine. I don’t need to borrow a shirt. It’s my fault. Rhonda warned me. It must’ve just slipped my mind.”
Gray took a peek at his watch. “Could have something to do with the fact that it’s six o’clock in the morning. If memory serves, you were always useless before noon.” He bit his lip and stared at me. “It’s fine. I’ve got a locker full of polos. I just don’t like Rhonda lending them out without asking me, you know?”
I nodded. As thanks, I pulled a pack of Fruit Stripe gum from my pocket. It had always been our favorite, and I’d seen a pack in the checkout line the day before. I took two sticks that were wrapped in orange wrappers for myself and two yellow ones for him. He stared at the gum in my hand as if the sight of them had just completely rocked his world.
“You okay, Two-liter? You’re looking a little shell-shocked.”
He nodded, his gaze still locked on the gum. He looked at me, opening his mouth like he wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. After a moment of pause, he grinned. “Yeah. I’m good.”
I stepped closer, reaching my gum-holding hand toward his midsection. His eyes bulged as I slid the sticks into his pocket and winked at him. “It’s just a stick of gum, Grayson.” I shoved the rest of the pack in my smock. “Nothing to get all emotional over.”
“I’m not getting emotional, Kent.”
I tapped the tip of his nose. “Tell that to those sad, puppy-dog eyes of yours.” My hands shook at the realization that things were becoming a bit too familiar between us. That’s not what I was here for. I didn’t want to rekindle anything with him. Besides, he wasn’t interested. He’d practically tattooed the wordsKEEP YOUR HOMO HANDS OFF OF ME, KENT FOXacross his forehead that first night.
As the doors swung shut behind me, the sound of his clipboard crashing against the wall reverberated inside. The crash, coupled with Rhonda’s screams of terror, was like an audial tango of horror and mayhem.
Inside the truck, Christian Thomas, a hipster who wore painted-on jeans and a polo shirt with a pot leaf in the center, walked me through the ins and outs of unloading inventory. A trained monkey could have handled the task, but the man had been excited to share with me histricks of the trade,so I indulged him. For fifteen minutes, he monologued about arranging boxes by weight so they wouldn’t fly off the conveyor belt during their descent down the line. His eyes were bloodshot. At first, I chalked it up to seasonal allergies, but then he pulled a small plastic container with a marijuana emblem on the label, flashing me a devious grin.
“It’ll help,” he said, shaking a gummy into my hand. “We’ll be out here for a few hours. Makes the process a whole lot easier.”
I snatched the edible and swallowed it without chewing. “You’re officially my new favorite person.”
We were roughly two-thirds of the way through when I started feeling like something was off. I wasn’t sure if it was the edible or if I was getting overheated. My head was light. Airy, almost. I leaned against the wall to steady myself as waves of dizziness rushed through me. Once I had regained my balance, I walked back toward the boxes of inventory.
“Hey buddy, are you okay? You don’t look so good,” Christian said.
The sun was smashing down against the tin trailer, making it feel like I was being baked to death. I’d papercut myself with the cardboard boxes so many times that I’d removed my socks to use as gloves. Christian stared at me in awe, like I’d just completely remade the truck unloading mold for him. His socks were off his feet and covering his hands within seconds, and he told me at least twenty times that I’d rocked his world. When I offered to burrow us a little cave between the boxes of ramen noodles and canned goods to show him just how rocking it could be, he looked as if he was genuinely considering the proposition. He eventually declined, remembering he was fully heterosexual. It was a revelation he seemed saddened by, and I tried to lift his spirits by reminding him he was born that way and it was nothing to be ashamed of.
