Fiction
Emptily
He always seemed to know what I wanted, even when I didn’t
I liked that he called me Kid. Nice going, Kid. Good work, Kid. Like where your head’s at, Kid. It was a manly combination of the film noir gumshoe and the well-meaning misogynist. I was quickly possessed. Because when a man gives you a nickname, he somehow comes to own you.
He had blue eyes and a good smirk. He would roll his tongue around his mouth and look like that Marlon Brando GIF everyone posts on Reddit. When I got my first promotion and I moved to a cubicle closer to his, I got my first good glimpse at his face. Never mind the scar where he took a lacrosse stick to the jaw.
“I prefer solitary sports now,” he said to me. And he invited me to one of those obstacle course events, something like a steeplechase for human beings.
So many fitness freaks, all decked out in free white T-shirts, similarly powerful calves weaving in and out of truck tires, and yet it was easy to spot him. Those gemstone eyes underneath a mask of mud and sweat. “You came,” he said, and he wrapped his sinewy arms around me. I took a deep sniff into the furry forest of his underarm.
I liked that when he invited me to lunch, none of our other colleagues joined us. So we would sit on the patio at Florence and order…
