Offside

“Yeah,” I said again. I looked down at my hands and used one finger to smear around a missed droplet of water. After a minute, when he hadn’t said anything else, I looked back at him.

He was, for lack of a better term, shaking. He was taking in deep breaths—like I sometimes do to calm myself—but then as he let them out, his whole body shook with the effort.

“Are you okay?” I asked quietly.

“Yes,” he breathed and then quickly changed his mind. “No! Shit! I have to get out of here…”

He stood up and slammed his legs into the bottom of the table, which knocked over my water and brought forth some more cursing. I might have found it funny, except for what he had said.

He had to get out.

Get away from me.

I felt my shoulders slump as my body tensed up.

“Shit! Thomas…I just…I didn’t mean…fuck!”

“It’s okay,” I whispered.

“No! I didn’t mean…I just need to get outside a minute…um…to smoke? I really need a cigarette right now.”

“Oh,” I said as I glanced up at him. He was pulling a pack out of his pocket. “Okay.”

I looked down at our plates, both really about as untouched as they could be, and didn’t really feel like eating anything.

“You had enough of this place?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Come outside with me?”

“Yeah.”

He shuffled around until he was out of the booth and then stood there for a second with his hand in his hair.

“Do you, um…need some help? I could push you…”

“No, I got it.”

He followed me as I made my way around the other tables, trying to ignore the stares. I wasn’t sure if my perception was accurate, but I felt as if they all knew exactly who I was. All the people there knew what I used to be.

Gardner ran around me to open the door. Once we were outside, he lit up.

“Do you…um…smoke?”

“Nah,” I replied. “I used to, sometimes. Nicole would kill me.”

“Gotcha.” He took a long drag and started to pace a little. “I didn’t…I…shit.”

I kept looking down at my hands. Eventually he stopped in front of me and bent at the knees so he could look up at me.

“Thomas…I had no idea.”

I shrugged.

“No one did,” I said. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not!” he said then sighed and ran his free hand through his hair again. “I should have…I should have pushed. I should have just come here. I wanted to—I did. I was just…Shit, Thomas! I was scared. I was such a pussy about all of it. I didn’t even know about you, and then what he said—it made sense…at the time. Now…now…shit!”