Strong Enough

I put my shoes on again and went out to the garage, where I rummaged around on my workbench shelves. Where the hell were those gloves? I knew where everything was in this garage, so why the fuck couldn’t I find them? My mind was cloudy with confusion and shame. Had he seen what I was doing? He couldn’t have. He wasn’t even looking at me when he knocked. And even if he had, he knew how I was about neatness. He probably thought I was going to hang the sweatshirt up somewhere, or put it in the guest room.

My heart rate slowed, and I remembered where the gloves were. I pulled them off the shelf and slipped them on for a second, flexing and fisting my hands.

“Find some?” Maxim called from outside.

“Yeah.” Quickly I tugged them off and headed into the sunshine, squinting at the light. I’d forgotten to put my sunglasses back on. “Here you go.”

I handed them to him and watched him put them on, sliding his fingers into the spaces mine had occupied a moment before.

It was almost like touching him.

“Hey.” I switched my phone to my left hand and reached for a couple lemons with my right.

“Hey, big brother. How’d it go today with our Russian orphan? Thanks again for doing that.”

“No problem. It was, uh, interesting.” I grabbed a few limes too, in case anyone wanted them for cocktails.

“Did you drop him off?”

“Yes and no.”

“Yes and no?”

I frowned at the bunches of herbs, scanning the selection for thyme. “I took him to the apartment he was supposed to live in, but I couldn’t leave him there.”

“Why not?”

“It was disgusting.”

Ellen laughed. “Like what, the toilet seat was up? There were damp towels on the floor? Cookie crumbs on the counter?”

“No, like roach-infested, filthy dirty, stained-mattress, you-couldn’t-pay-me-a-million-dollars-to-stay-one-night-there disgusting.” A woman perusing vegetables to my right gave me a horrified look and moved away.

My sister gasped. “Seriously? So he wouldn’t stay?”

“No, he was fine with it. I mean, he wasn’t, of course he wasn’t, but he said he’d be okay and it was what he could afford and it was only temporary.”

“Wait, I thought he was staying with a friend, the one that didn’t show up last night.”

“No. That guy was just going to give him a ride to the apartment. But his car broke down in the mountains or something.”

She laughed. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Exactly. Anyway, I couldn’t leave him. It was that bad.”

“

Wow. So what did you do with him?”

“What could I do with him? His mom is wiring his savings, but it won’t be here until Monday. So I brought him home with me.”

“Of course you did.” She giggled. “You big softie.”

I grimaced, scouring the tiers of root vegetables. Where the fuck was the fennel? “I’m not a softie. It’s only temporary, and I’m telling you, nobody could have left a friend in that place.”

“You guys are friends now? That’s so cute.”

“We’re not friends exactly, I just—I don’t know what we are.” Spying a bag of fennel, I grabbed it and tossed it into my cart. “But I said I’d help him.”