Clementine
I held it together long enough to get dressed for work and put my face on. I even went in early. I couldn’t take sitting around the apartment all afternoon just stewing in my thoughts and feelings. I needed some sense of normalcy to help me through this.
Bridgette, my boss, was glad to see me when I came in.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said, gushing with happiness and gratitude when she saw me.
“Yeah, what’s going on?” I asked as I walked around the counter.
“The new girl called in this morning. First day, and she can’t even make it in.” She rolled her eyes.
“What?” I laughed. “I hope it’s because she found something better and not because she doesn’t think she can handle it.”
“I know. It’s a pretty simple gig,” Bridgette agreed. “Look, go ahead and clock in. I’ll watch the front. When you get back up here, I’ve got some paperwork to finish up.”
“Got it.” I took a deep breath to steady myself as I walked to the back. I could almost hear Falcon’s voice from the night we met, asking me out in his playful, flirtatious way.
Every time I heard the bell on the front door, I cringed. Each time it went off, it could have been him coming back in for something else or coming back in to talk to me again. Except, I knew it wasn’t, and that was what made it so hard to deal with.
I stopped by the employee restroom on the way back up to check my look in the mirror. My makeup covered up the puffy skin under my eyes. The eye drops I had used kept the red out. I looked presentable, or so I thought, so I straightened my shirt and took another deep, steadying breath before walking back out onto the floor.
“Sounds like we’ve been busy,” I commented to Bridgette when I walked back up behind the counter.
“Not hardly.” She laughed. “We’ve had a few customers, but it’s still pretty slow. Just do what you can to keep yourself occupied.” She put a hand on my shoulder as she passed by. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly in my ear.
I froze. She could see right through my little mask. She knew something was wrong. That was the only reason she would have asked anything like that. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” I told her, rushing my words out a little too quickly to be convincing.
“If you need anything, I’ll be in the office for a little while working on some paperwork. Just try to keep yourself busy. You know, the usual slow, lonely night stuff,” she said to be encouraging, patting me on the shoulder as she walked off.
I leaned on the counter and listened as she walked to the back. The store was quiet except for the air conditioning humming in the ceiling and the light classical music coming through the speakers. It was going to be another long, quiet night. Like Bridgette, said, it was going to be slow and lonely. I braced myself.
I walked the store to make sure everything looked straight and to see if there were any empty spots I could go ahead and refill. There weren’t many of those, of course, since we hadn’t really been selling any cards over the last couple of months. Summer holidays weren’t big for us. We made our money from fall through to Valentine’s Day. There was the occasional random shopper who would just come in and buy something for a birthday or just because, but those seemed to grow fewer and farther between every year.
The bell rang as the door opened, and I snapped my neck back to see who was entering the store. “Good afternoon,” I called out, and the meek little old gentleman nodded and waved. “If there’s anything I can help you find, just let me know,” I told him politely as I made my way back up to the front counter. I tried to hide my disappointment that it wasn’t Falcon coming in to check on me.
The rest of the night looked like it was going to go the same way, with the occasional customer coming in and buying a card, a gift card, or one of the little trinkets we sold up front. They wouldn’t stay in the store long enough to offer me any kind of distraction, and they would be gone again into the afternoon or evening light.
Meanwhile, Bridgette stayed in the back. The least she could have done, if she insisted on staying, was come out and keep me company. She had seen the look in my eyes. She knew I wasn’t feeling all right. I couldn’t complain, though. She wasn’t even supposed to be at work, so at least someone else was there with me. Knowing she was back there did help a little.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through all the names in my contacts. I considered calling some of the guys I had turned down in the past to see if any of them would be willing to give it another shot. I had heard it said before that the best way to get over one lover was to find another lover. Surely any of the guys who had tried before would have been willing to try again, especially now that I was open for business.
None of their names sparked anything. In fact, going through them made me simply want Falcon that much more. I didn’t want anyone else. I hadn’t been interested in those other guys before, and I certainly wasn’t interested in them now.
I sighed and leaned on the counter on my elbows. There didn’t seem to be any hope in sight, but at least I was at work. I really didn’t have to worry about anything as long as I was in that store. The only thing that mattered inside the card shop was work.
Of course, leaving my problems at home was much easier said than done. They were my problems, so of course they came with me no matter where I went.
I buried my head on the counter and waited to hear the bell on the door again so I could have something else to do to get me out of my head. I stood there and listened to the silence of the store while the door waited for someone to open it.
“Clementine?” Bridgette asked as she came back up from the back.
“Yeah?” I didn’t lift my head.
“Do you need to go home?” she asked.
I lifted my weary eyes to face her. I wanted to tell her I needed to stay at work to keep some sense of sanity in my life at that moment, but I also wanted to cry out that yes, I needed to go home. I needed to go deal with this the best way I knew how, which usually involved crying and binge-watching my favorite shows.
I stared at her concerned brown eyes, not knowing how to answer her but wanting to say something nonetheless.
“Look,” she said, grabbing my shoulders. “What happened?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “I think I got dumped.”
“Oh, poor thing,” she said, laughing. “It’s not the end of the world. Surely you’ve been dumped before!”
“No. This was my first attempt at dating, the first time I went beyond one date with a guy,” I explained. I could feel the tears welling up again as I talked about it.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Bridgette said, her tone becoming more sympathetic as she pulled me in for a hug. “The first one is always the worst, but don’t worry, there will be others.”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t want any others. I never wanted any of the others. I’ve only ever wanted the one.”
“Well, why’d you break up?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her after thinking about it a moment. “I feel like he just used me for sex.”
“Was he your first?” she asked quietly, and her voice reminded me of how Southern women always talked about sex like it was a scandal in the movies.
“He was.” And there they were—the tears flowed like rain from my eyes as I admitted to my boss that I had just lost my virginity at the ripe old age of twenty-three.
“It’s okay,” she said, patting me on the back. “Take the night off, Clementine. You need it.” She looked into my eyes and I could see she wasn’t talking to me like my boss. She was looking at me as an equal, as one woman looking at another, and she could see I needed some time to get over what I was dealing with.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I need to work. I need the routine, the normalcy,” I insisted.
I didn’t want to leave because I knew what I was going to do if I did. I knew I was still going to go over to the MC’s headquarters after work, but if I left early, that would mean going over there early, in this shape, crying and almost hysterical. I knew I would be no good in my current condition. I wouldn’t be able to face Falcon.
“No, Clementine. You’ll be fine. Tell you what: I’ll still pay you for tonight, so I’ll clock you out on time instead of early, but you need to take that time and go home. Maybe go out for a few drinks. Call another guy friend. See if you can’t find some way to take your mind and your heart off this guy,” she suggested.
I sniffled and tried to straighten my posture. “No, really,” I insisted. “I’ll be fine.”
“Exactly, you will be, once you go home.” She stepped around me and started pushing me out from behind the counter.
“Okay,” I said finally. “I’ll go. Are you sure?” I wanted to give her one last chance to tell me to stay.
“I’m sure,” she said with a nod and a smile. “Go home. Take care of yourself.”
“Thanks, Bridgette.” I started through the door. I wasn’t going to go home, and I wasn’t sure if what I was about to do would count as taking care of myself, but I knew what I was about to do.
I walked out to my car and sat in it for a few minutes before cranking it up. Part of me wanted to go home and climb into bed. The other part of me wanted to track Falcon down and give him a piece of my mind. I knew where he would be, and I knew where it was.
I had found the old firehouse online when I was browsing through information on him. I knew how to get there. Nothing downtown was more than a few blocks away from anything else. I could have walked over there if I had wanted.
It was still early afternoon. The light was beginning to change as the sun finally shifted out of the middle of the sky. The golden yellow light bounced back from the windows in the tall buildings around me. I put the keys in the ignition and started the car.
“There’s still a chance to go home and move past all of this,” I told myself, sounding like Bridgette.
“No,” I answered, “I think I’d rather take my answers from the source’s mouth.”
I pulled away from the curb and started driving towards the firehouse. There was no turning back at that point. I was on my way to see Falcon and get some answers for the things he’d done to me. I knew there was a pretty good chance I wouldn’t like what he had to say, but I didn’t care anymore. I needed something to help me understand what was going on, and there was only one person I knew who could provide me with it.