Red Writing Hood Post

This week's theme for The Red Dress Club is to write a short piece of fiction from a male perspective.  Specifically, it was to be on seeing an ex at the grocery store, written from the male POV. I kinda left that part out, and just stuck to the male perspective. 

He had made up his mind. He would do it tonight.  He was tired of always thinking about it, and wanting it. He was so very, very tired of that.

It didn't make sense that others had what he wanted to feel so badly, and didn't even know the gift they had. How could someone not know how lucky they were? How could there be people like that, that think this is just an ordinary thing? He wasn't going to question it anymore, he was just going to have to make it happen.

For his plan to work, everything had to be perfectly timed. No one could be there to watch, to put a stop to what he would get to feel tonight. He laid out the things he would need to take on his bed. Raised in a household of all women, he had learned to smooth the covers of his bedspread until there was not a ripple left. He walked to his dresser and reached for the drawer that kept his things for tonight. He knew what every drawer held, and he reached behind the neatly creased T shirts to remove the last article that needed to be packed. He began to pull the zipper up on his black case. Even though it was nearly three years old, it still looked so new. It was his father's. The thought of how his own father's fingers had pulled this zipper closed, for this very same occasion, stilled him. He watched his own fingers now, now the ones to close this case, as he pulled the zipper shut.

He picked up his black case, and began to walk across his room. His hand quietly turned the silver knob of his door, and no one heard it squeak open. His soft shoes made it easy to come down the stairs with not a sound.  Just one more turn, at the bottom of the stairs, and he'd be out. He knew he wouldn't breathe until he was on the other side of the door that was standing open in front of him. He slowly pushed the screen door, holding it's edge until he closed it quietly behind him.

Once outside, he turned his head and looked back, quickly scanning the upstairs bedroom window to the right, and the kitchen window next. No one was looking. He had made it. Now, he had to walk quickly to make it to the park on time. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes only. Only twenty minutes, and everything would work just perfectly. It would work just the way he had played it over and over and over in his head.

He was almost there. He looked at his watch one more time, they should be here now, he thought. He slowed his steps, and panicked for an instant. The thought that perhaps they wouldn't be here made him stop walking. As this possibility filled his mind with anguish, he heard a car's tires crush the gravel as it approached the park. His hope sprang up, and he was tempted to snap his head around to see them,  but was stopped by the cold slap of fear. What if it wasn't them? He didn't want to know.

But it had to be them. He had decided that it would be them, before he even turned around. He would just stand still, and let the car pass him, and then he'd see. He knew it'd be them.

He heard the flat thud of two car doors slamming shut, first one, then the other; he stood, holding his breath. His mouth broke into a quick grin that no one saw, as he recognized their voices. It was them. They were here. Everything was going to work. It would happen tonight. He switched the case from the hand that had been carrying it to the other hand. He wiped the sweaty palm of his free hand against his pants. He breathed in deeply, and knew he could not turn back. It would happen tonight. He would, for tonight, have what all the other boys he knew had.  He would no longer live the cards that were dealt him.

They were walking ahead of him now, and would soon be on the other side of the park. If he was going to change his life, he had to do it now. "Hey, Mister! Hey, Mister!"  He saw the man and his son, who always came to the park at exactly 5:10 P.M. every night, except Thursdays and Sundays, stop.  "Hey, Mister, would you and your boy let me play catch with you? Would you? I brought my own stuff. See, it's here, in my dad's bag, or... it was his bag, but he died 3 years ago. I still use it for ball games. He used it for ball games, too. Will you, Mister, will you play catch with me?"

He was finally going to get what he had been seeing the other boys get. He was going to play catch with a man that, if you squinted your eyes when you  looked at him, looked just like his dad. It was going to happen tonight.