Seasons Change:
A Romantic Thanksgiving Story
By Rusty Fischer, author of A Town Called Snowflake
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Seasons Change
Rusty Fischer
Copyright 2014 by Rusty Fischer
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: © lithian – Fotolia.com
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Author’s Note:
The following is a FREE short story edited by the author himself. If you see any glaring mistakes, I apologize in advance and hope you don’t take it out on my poor characters, who had nothing to do with their author’s bad grammar!
Happy reading… and Happy Thanksgiving!
Enjoy!
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Seasons Change:
A Romantic Thanksgiving Story
He comes out while I’m trying the door for the third, maybe fifth, possibly fifteenth time. Rattle, grunt, rattle, huff, shake, hiss, tug… nothing.
He works next door at the diner place or whatever. Cute enough, but on the young side. Short red hair, cut close to his head, more like stubble than actual hair. He’s wearing his red apron, the one I always see him in, and a striped long sleeve shirt underneath.
I try to ignore him, jiggle the door a couple more times until I smell smoke. Glorious, heavenly smoke. I haven’t had a cigarette since college but I turn, force a smile and beg, “Do you… can I…?”
He smirks, blushes a little and slides the pack across the little patio table where he’s sitting. It’s the metal kind, heavy, so folks don’t run off with it after closing time. There are two chairs on either side and a red, white and green umbrella sticking out of a hole in the middle.
“Thanks,” I gush, sliding into the empty seat across from him and snaking one out of the pack. They’re cheap, some kind of convenience store brand, and my hands are trembling slightly as I raise it to my lips.
“You might need this,” he offers, gently, as I sit there, the cigarette between my lips, as if I’ve forgotten what to do next. I turn and he’s leaning across the table with long, athletic arms, flicking a lighter to life.
“Oh, yeah,” I snort and… whoof… it goes right out.
“Let’s try this again,” he says, flicking it once more and I chuckle… blowing it out again.
“Oh. My. God,” he chuckles merrily, laugh lines around his soft green eyes. Rather than trying again, he just slides the lighter over so I can use it myself.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I lie, igniting the cigarette and taking a large, blissful drag as the smoke fills my virgin lungs. “Yes I do,” I confess, and his polite smile freezes as the smoke oozes deliciously back out between my lips.
When I clam up, enjoying my cigarette, he frowns. “What could be wrong on Thanksgiving?” he asks.
“Plenty,” I grunt, smoke spilling in a great, big plume. I’ve forgotten how much I love that sensation. The crisp, acrid crackle, the soft, velvet smoke. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I savor it, eyelids fluttering in ecstasy as I watch the smoke drift from my mouth and into the late afternoon sky.
“Like?” he prods, lighting another cheap cigarette for himself.
I shrug, waving my free hand dismissively. “I’m sure you have problems of your own,” I say. “You don’t need to hear mine.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know,” he insists, and I turn, to see if he’s joking; he’s not.
I shake my head, tamping out my cigarette on the ground at my feet and smushing it with my shoe, for good measure. Out of habit I reach for another and he yanks the pack just out of reach, playfully.
“Not until you tell me your troubles,” he teases, wagging a long, flour dusted finger.
I sigh and nod, taking the cigarette, lighting it, but staying mute.
“Like?” he prods, rolling his hands like people do when they want you to spill the beans.
“Like… see that door right there?” I point to it with my smoldering cigarette between two still trembling fingers.
“The marketing place?” he asks, nodding toward my former office door.
I nod. “Multimedia Marketing, Inc.,” I explain. “Take a good look, because by Christmas it will probably be a shoe store or something.”
He chuckles, but not at my expense. “Not if I beat you to it,” he says cryptically, stamping out his cigarette in the little tin ashtray between us.
I kind of ignore him and say, “Whatever it becomes, it’s no longer a marketing company because, despite me working my butt off for eighty hours a work for him for the last two years, my boss decided to close the place. Today. On Thanksgiving.”
“Good,” he grunts, wiping flour off his apron. When I glare at him, he adds quickly, “I mean, you shouldn’t be working on Thanksgiving weekend anyway.”
“Please,” I say. “I’ve been working nights, weekends, holidays, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, whatever, you name it since I started there. I never much cared because the money was good and the bonuses were fat. Like, just for coming in today, I was going to make close to a grand.”
“A grand?” he whistles, impressed. “For a day?”
“Well,” I explain, “if I closed the deal on that new greeting card account we got just after Halloween…” My voice trails off as the reality of my situation hits me. Hard.
Reaching for another cigarette, I suddenly remember they’re not mine. My hand outstretched, I arch one eyebrow beseechingly. He sees it, nods and waves a flour dusted hand.
“Keep it,” he mutters. “A Thanksgiving present.”
I smile, blush a little and snatch out one more.
“Thanks,” I say, suddenly getting choked up for no reason. Well, not no reason but… out of nowhere, for sure.
“Nobody warned you?” he presses, crossing one leg and peering at me.
“Not a hint,” I confess, feeling high from the nicotine rush and letting my cigarette burn down in the little ashtray as I give my virgin lungs a rest. “I mean, last night was business as usual. I go home, thinking I’m a grand richer the next day and everything’s fine, then I get this…” I toss my smart phone on the table, the email my boss sent the entire staff still open in the browser window.
He looks at it distrustfully, and I snort. “I’ll summarize: my boss just declared bankruptcy, locked up shop, skipped town and, if we ever do get paid, it will likely be after all his creditors, bill collectors, the courts, the bank, the landlord, etc.”
His face is scrunched up, and not from the smoke curling out of my forgotten cigarette. “How… how can he do that?” He sounds hurt, as if maybe it just happened to him instead of me. Or maybe, like he said, he really does care.
I shake my head, biting off my words bitterly, “I. Have. No. Idea.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, wriggling in his seat a little, like all this heavy talk has suddenly made him uncomfortable. “That… that sucks.”
I chuckle, if only to keep from crying. “Yeah, sure does.”
I wait until my eyes are safe and dry and turn back to him. “I’m Tyler,” I say, extending a hand across the table. “Thanks… thanks for caring.”
“Cliff,” he says, returning the handshake just firmly enough. “Of course I care. It’s like we’re neighbors, kind of. I mean, I see you going in and going out every day, sure… I care.”
I cock my head. “How… how long have you been in business?”
He looks back, blank-faced, mildly insulted. ?
??Uh… nearly a year now?”
I sag, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, I… I should have come in sooner. I see you in the window, from time to time. I just, I work so much, and such odd hours…”
He waves a hand, no big deal. “I’m coming, you’re going, it happens,” he says unconvincingly.
“Still,” I say, looking down the row of our humble strip mall and back again. “It’s not very neighborly of me.”
He chuckles, perking up. “Listen, I know you were planning on working today, but… do you have plans now that, well… you’re not?”
I go to make an excuse, my default response when I meet someone new, but then I think about it and… no. Everyone I know has quit asking me over for the holidays because I’m always working, and have already made plans for this Thanksgiving and so… here I am. Plan-free, sans plan, plan-less, completely without a plan of any kind.
“No,” I blurt, letting out a half-snort, half-chuckle. “I am absolutely without plans for once.”
“Good,” he says, standing up, then extending a hand. I take it and he helps me up from the chair. Not that I need it, but… it’s kind of nice. He’s slightly taller