“Do you have a friend who can stop by?”
Lyle shrugged. “I don’t make friends really well. I have some good ones, but they work, like me, and they’re farther away than I am. Carrie works in Camp Hill, and a lot of my other friends work in Harrisburg. I managed to get a job here where I grew up.”
“Then you should know lots of people,” James said casually.
Lyle shrugged. “I went away for college, and sometimes it seems like everything changed in that time. Some of the people I knew stayed here in town and got jobs.
Others moved away and… well. Four years is a long time, or maybe we weren’t those kind of friends. I don’t know. When I got the job at the warehouse, I moved in next to Corky. She had her daughter, but a lot of her friends had passed away. So she was growing lonely, and lord knows I was. Being on your own can be hard, I guess.” They pulled into the Home Depot parking lot. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to take a turn down Maudlin Way.” James chuckled. “It’s okay. I live with three other people, and I’m rarely alone.
They’re all good folks and we’re in the same program at the law school, so we work together on classwork. But….” It was hard to put his finger on it. “We’re friends….”
“But not the kind you tell your darkest secrets to,” Lyle interjected.
“Exactly. We like each other and get along pretty well, but the friendship is born out of a sort of shared hardship, and a lot of work that will only get done if we work together. So it’s kind of out of necessity. I don’t see myself bringing any of them home for a weekend when I visit my parents or something.”
“You sort of keep your distance and have things that are private.” Lyle certainly seemed to understand. “It’s okay not to be open with everyone about everything.”
“Yeah, I’m finding that out. Anne is a bit of a gossip, and I sometimes worry about how she’ll keep her clients’ business to herself. Wes is really tight-lipped and he likes to think of himself as professional, but he doesn’t know that we’re all aware that his mother still buys his socks and underwear. No self-respecting professional would have boxers with ice cream cones on them that say ‘Lick Me.’” He snickered. “I met his mom and asked her about it once. She told me she buys the tackiest boxers she can find out of hope that he will start getting his own.” James couldn’t help laughing as they got out of the car and loaded the supplies to be returned into a cart. “Mostly they’re good people.”
Lyle pushed the cart toward the door and then stopped “So what weird things do they say about you?”
James chuckled; he couldn’t help it. “Food. I have lots of issues about food. It cannot touch on the plate because I do not like the juices to mix. And once it’s on my plate, don’t reach for anything. I might bite. My mother had this food-stealing thing. If you saved what you wanted until the end, then you might find it gone because my mother would snatch it off your plate. The last time she did it, I set her up and stabbed her with a fork when she did it. I might have drawn blood. I’m not sure, but she didn’t do it again.” They both laughed as they entered the store.
“Okay,” Lyle said. “And here I thought my compulsion that everything have its place and be exactly where it belongs was strange.”
James patted him on the shoulder. “That won’t last long. You have four King Charles Spaniels, and they are going to want things the way they want them sometimes. Growing up, we had a golden retriever, Ally. She was an amazing dog….” He paused his story as they reached the service desk. Lyle explained the situation, and they issued the refund without a problem.
Title: Rescue Them
Andrew grew up in western Michigan with a father who loved to tell stories and a mother who loved to read them. Since then, he has lived throughout the country and traveled throughout the world. He has a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and works in information systems for a large corporation.
Andrew Grey
