36 minute read

The Cashier | Chelsea Keen

The Cashier The Winner of the 2020 Roberta Lee Brooker Fiction Writing Prize

The only kind of real human contact she got everyday was when her hand brushed against a customer’s as she placed their change into their hand and told them to have a nice day. Around the first week of her job at the small convenience store, there was a young woman around her age who couldn’t stop talking about her trip to Greece. She had purchased bags full of little carry on things for her trip. The woman laughed nervously about it, running her fingers through her dark locks before getting stuck, realizing she had her hair pulled back into a lazy clip. She had admitted rather bashfully that she might have waited until the last minute to get what she needed at the store. The cashier chuckled and said she understood, that she’s been in her shoes before when she went to Florida for the first time. The woman grinned and started talking about Greece again; the food, the plane ride there, the weather. Feeling a fluttering in her gut, she told the woman about the weather in Florida, about how she had been there recently to visit her mother. “Are you going to visit her again next year?” The woman asked, helping her bag her items even though she’s not the cashier. The said cashier didn’t pause in her movements, but the question made her eyes sag to her hands as she rang up the woman’s luggage tags. She said no, she wouldn’t be going next year. The woman left too quickly, taking with her her conversation of passports, planes, and travel. The next customer took her place and the world faded back to scanning items and asking for coupons. When she got home after work, she quickly changed into something comfortable, something without zippers and buttons, and waited for a guy she had met online to pick her up in a nice-looking car she’s only ever seen in commercials. They went back to his place and she was glad she didn’t wear any buttons because it’s faster when she took her clothes off. Later, the man fell asleep cuddling her with each hand on her breasts and she let herself enjoy his heat for a few more minutes before forcing herself to get up. She never left right away, sometimes she sat on the bed and looked around the bedroom she’s in, taking in every detail she could to try to figure out who she had slept with really was. This time she watched a movie she had been wanting to see on his Netflix account with one of his dogs laying in her lap. When the movie ended, instead of watching another one, she turned off the TV and headed out. She had work in the morning.

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She met Kyle soon after, one of the fellow cashiers there out of about four of them. One day she had walked into the store to find her standing at the second register next to hers that had always been closed. The other greeted her with a head nod before turning back to play on her phone and that’s the only explanation she had gotten for Kyle’s sudden appearance. Since then they’ve worked together every single day, minus their days off. She quickly noticed Kyle didn’t do much unless she absolutely had to. Often, she found the woman reading one of the magazines from the racks set out for the customers, chatting with every patron like they were old friends, or bantering back and forth with the regulars. The first real conversation they had was when Kyle had dug out a packet of gum from her back pocket and popped two pieces into her mouth. When she caught the cashier looking, she placed her index finger to her lips and made a ‘shhh’ sound. She smiled, explaining, “We aren’t allowed to chew gum.” Then she held out the still open packet, “Want one?” The cashier had felt herself smile too and slipped out a stick of gum from the packet, placing the piece of gum into her mouth. Blowing a spicy, red bubble and enjoyed the tingling sensation on her tongue, she thanked Kyle. Kyle threw her a wink and moved to show her an article in one of the magazines she had plucked from the rack. From there, she guessed the other must have decided she was worth talking to.

One day, during a nine am shift, an elderly man in an electric scooter rolled up to her. He had on one of those old man hats that her grandpa used to wear when he went fishing and the years sagged under his eyes, making his ocean irises a dark, murky blue. He was absent in spirit, but pleasant as he placed his few items on the conveyor belt. When she finished scanning his purchases, he held up a PayDay to her. His hand was shaking, making her quickly take the candy bar from him and ask if he wanted it out of a bag. “No,” he sighed, his voice was low, like he couldn’t manage to bring it higher. “I don’t want it. I don’t like them.” She had wanted to ask why he had grabbed it if he didn’t even like them, but she simply nodded instead, tossing it into her white bucket underneath her cash register where all the items customer changed their mind about go. Her confusion must have been on her face too long, because the man said, “I used to get them for my wife, but she passed away last week. I don’t need to get ‘em anymore.” She startled like she had been struck, blinking down at the scrawny little man in the scooter. He stared back at her, letting her see everything in his murky ocean eyes. The sadness, the tiredness, the lost. The pain. She swallowed down her emotions even if she suddenly felt like she couldn’t breath and all of her thoughts of how she got off in twenty minutes flew out one of the giant store windows. She struggled to make her mouth form words and shakenly tell him her mother used to like them too, that she had a big sweet tooth. Sometimes she thought about her when she saw KitKats or Oreo ice cream.

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She wanted to tell him that her mother died recently too, in Florida, and she died when they were on bad terms. She’d never be able to take back what she said. She’d never be able to get her mother to understand that she never did anything wrong and just wanted to be— “Sometimes I feel like I died with her,” he mumbled, but then shook his head. “How much, sweetheart?” She fumbled reading out the small total on her register’s screen. He didn’t have to buy much for one person. She put all of his bags in his cart connected to the scooter without asking if he wanted her help. When she went to hand him his receipt, she paused. He paused too, holding out his hand. She tried to find the right words in that moment, something to say, to give the man something he can leave with to his empty home. Something maybe someone had said to her. She couldn’t think of anything, so she let the paper go and told him to have a nice day. “You too, honey. Thank you,” he said and rolled away. She watched him go and it wasn’t until he was out the doors did she start crying. She was supposed to wait until five minutes before her shift ended to close her lane, but she flipped her light off when she still had ten minutes left. Ms. Wright, her elderly Cuban boss who happened to be there for once, scolded her for it after work. Kyle had stepped in for her, surprising both of them. She said she asked if the cashier could close her lane early to mop the bathroom before leaving, that it was her fault. Ms. Wright didn’t seem to like anybody, being the bitter widow that she was, but she never raised her voice at Kyle. At first the cashier thought she just had a soft spot for Kyle like everyone else, but she quickly realized that wasn’t completely the case. One night she caught the two talking in the back office, Kyle had been reading papers to her and explaining what each paper meant, switching between Spanish and English every so often without stumbling. She hadn’t realized Kyle was bilingual until then. Ms. Wright had huffed and waved them off, wobbling back into her little office. The cashier was still crying after the old woman slammed the door and Kyle had patted her shoulder sympathetically before leaving her alone. Later, during her last 15 minute break, she almost called Alice, but paused at the screen with her contact picture when she remembered she couldn’t call her about bad days at work anymore. Instead she strolled through Instagram to pass the time, looking at the posts of ghosts she used to know. Never commenting or liking, simply staring, simply scrolling. When she got home, the first thing she did was take her uniform off and collapse onto her bed. She rolled over onto her side and stared at the empty litter box she still hadn’t gotten rid of. She used to have an ugly brown and white cat named Scraps, one that she used to let outside for a few hours every day and around the time she went to bed she’d stand on her porch and shake a bag of cats treats. Every time he would come back at the sound of the treats jumping around in the bag and she’d let him back in, giving him a treat for it. Until one day he never came back and after twenty-eight more days of searching she decided he really was gone.

Alice had gotten her Scraps for their three-year anniversary and didn’t take him with her when she had left. She wondered if he went to go find her, if that was why he left her too. Rolling onto her other side, she closed her eyes and decided that it didn’t matter. He had probably either gotten stolen or was ran over somewhere anyways. She never saw the old man again, either.

She had been working at the store for over a year, long enough to know that Kyle, in all of her lack of work ethic, was never late even when returning from breaks. So, when she was five minutes late from coming back from her last break of the day, it didn’t go unnoticed. Making sure there weren’t any customers dragging up and down the aisles, she heads out the exit door through the backroom, she quickly found Kyle squatting behind one of their trash cans, her hair pulled up in a messy bun and a joint in her mouth. Kyle stared wide-eyed up at her, taking the joint in her fingers and away from her mouth. She blew the smoke into the air, eyes never leaving the cashier. “Hey,” she greeted, stubbing the joint out against the cold ground. “Need something?” The cashier slowly blinked down at her, eyes flickering from the rolled up weed to Kyle’s unreadable expression. Kyle had always been attractive; she wasn’t blind not to notice. Looking at her today; however, she took note of the dark rings around her gray eyes, her lips lacked the never smudged lipstick she always sported, and her eyeliner didn’t have its wings. She was still attractive, she thought Kyle was the type to never not be attractive, but the lack of brightness and life looked wrong on her. Her stomach churned and she wondered what or who made someone like Kyle lose her spark. Kyle frowned and got to her feet, brushing off her rear even though she hadn’t been sitting on the ground. “Look,” she began, firm but not mean. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? I don’t normally do it during hours, I’ve just been stressed lately. This stays between us, okay?” She pulled out a packet of gum, shoving two pieces into her mouth. Without a word, she offered up the opened packet. Looking at the mint flavored gum, the cashier took a piece and Kyle started to grin. Blowing a white bubble and enjoying the taste of her favorite flavor of gum, the cashier nodded in agreement to keep quiet.

After their shifts ended around the same time, Kyle shyly asked her if she could bum a ride. The cashier checked the time on her phone and decided that she had time to do so. Which is what led to Kyle climbing into the passenger side of her car, buckling up and adjusting the seat. She asked to turn the radio on and sang along to every 90s song that came on, nudging the cashier to join her.

“Thanks for this,” Kyle said, after telling her to take a right turn. “I’ve been struggling lately with classes and my dad passed away a few months ago. It’s...it’s been hard.” Too busy staring out the window, Kyle didn’t notice the way her companion’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. The cashier’s eyes flickered to Kyle briefly before looking back at the poorly lit road with a lump in her throat. She struggled to find her words, growing uncomfortable with the silence between them. With a wavering voice, she told Kyle about her mother. She told her about visiting her mother in Florida, about her mother’s illness, about her mother’s narrow-minded views. Once she voiced what had been festering inside her out loud for the first time, she felt like a busted dam. She couldn’t stop herself, like a gushing waterfall of words and emotions, even when she started bringing up Alice, who broke up with her after she came out to her mother, who left their stupid cat with her after they broke up even though Alice was the animal person—not her. Alice, who she couldn’t stop thinking about, who probably already forgot about her. Alice, who her mother had hated, who wasn’t there for her when her mother died because she had already dumped her like yesterday’s news just weeks after Alice had brought up the word marriage one night when they were sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot. Alice, who reached over and wiped the ketchup that had been on the corner of her mouth before kissing her and telling her that she loved her and sometimes she wished she’d have the confidence to ask her to marry her. Alice, who, if she actually had asked to marry her right there in the McDonlad’s parking lot at one am when she had ketchup on her face and they were both still in their uniforms, would have gotten a yes. She would have said yes and then Alice broke up with her weeks later for reasons she’ll never know. Alice, who doesn’t talk to her anymore. Alice, who’s gone. Once she was done, the cashier realized she was shaking and had been parked at a stop sign for who knew how long. She felt her eyes water and reached up to wipe the streams of tears away. The only noise after she was done yelling was some rock song on the radio, but no one was singing along anymore. No one was laughing and a heavy pit started to grow in her stomach. She exhaled a wavering deep breath, wishing the car seat would come alive and swallow her whole. She heard herself apologize in a voice she couldn’t completely pinpoint as hers, and she wasn’t able to meet Kyle’s eyes as she collected herself. She shouldn’t have exploded as she had done. None of her issues were Kyle’s business, she shouldn’t bug the woman with her hot garbage mess just because Kyle’d been nice to her. When she reached over to pull the car out of park, arms wrapped around her shoulders, causing her to freeze in her spot. Kyle sniffled into her collarbone, squeezing her tighter. “Fuck, I never knew,” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Numbly, she shrugged, feeling strands of Kyle’s brown bangs tickling her neck. “I’m so sorry,” Kyle continued. “That must have been so hard for you.”

The cashier’s heart fluttered at her words. She heard them before, at her mother’s funeral, in calls to her relatives. She read them in letters, cards, and messages. For some reason Kyle’s lips made them sound softer, more genuine. Before she could stop herself, she bowed her head and cried into the other’s shoulder, wrapping her own loosely around Kyle’s waist. Half an hour later, when they both had nothing left to cry about, they pulled away with knowing smiles. She watched as Kyle wiped her face with the sleeves of her jacket. For the first time, her heart felt light and the world didn’t seem out to get her. “Let me give you my number,” Kyle said when they pulled into her driveway. Without waiting for a response, she plucked the cashier’s phone out of cupholder and swiped to unlock it. She punched her cell number into the contacts, sending herself a quick message. Her own phone dinged in her back pocket. The two shared another grin. “Text me some time,” Kyle told her, hopping out of the car. “It’d be nice to talk with you when we’re not having to baby customers.” Her heart skipping a beat for the first time in months, the cashier leaned over to the passenger’s window to tell Kyle that she would. She watched Kyle tread up her walkway to her front door, the other turning to give her a small wave before closing the front door. She sat in her car a few minutes after Kyle’s front porch lamp turned on, her body feeling like it was floating. Her phone buzzing snapped her out of her thoughts. She looked down at her cell, checking who messaged her. It was Kyle. She had sent her a picture of a german shepherd with a green bandana around their neck and the caption of ‘This is my bby Chewy.’ Sitting back in her seat, she watched new messages pop up, one right after the other. She got a few more pictures, all of Kyle posing with her dog in different angles that she must have taken throughout the years. With a moment of brief hesitation, she sent an old picture of Scraps that Alice had taken with her phone. ‘This was Scraps, he was an asshole,’ she typed, then tucked her phone away. When her phone vibrated again a minute later, she didn’t look at it in favor of keeping her eyes on the road, but the sound still made her smile.

She started giving Kyle rides home regularly after that since she found Kyle mostly walked everywhere and their shifts tended to end around the same time anyways. A few times they’d hit up fast food places or hung out at Kyle’s house for a few hours. One time Kyle offered her a hit from the joint she had been smoking. They had been sitting on Kyle’s brown couch she said she stole from her parents’ garage years back. A thick blanket was thrown over their laps and a horror movie was playing on the tv screen. Chewy, who turned out to be nine years old, laid at their feet, happily taking a nap like the old man that he was.

“You ever smoked before?” Kyle had asked, holding up the joint in offering. “Yeah,” she had lied, leaning in to press her lips to the rolled up paper and inhaled as much as she could. She jerked back seconds later, gagging and trying to catch her breath. Kyle had startled, reaching over to pat her back as she whispered soft encouragement to calm down and breathe. Minutes after she finally calmed down, they exchanged looks; her's bashful, Kyle’s smug. Seconds later, the two had burst into fits of giggles. “So you’ve done it before, huh?” Kyle smirked, laughing again when she got a not so friendly shove for her teasing. The cashier watched the other lean back, noticing the way Kyle’s eyes crinkled when she smiled. Kyle had offered the joint to her again later that night, she sourly said no, but enjoyed watching Kyle blow smoke circles. The memory made her smile, she didn’t even notice the young woman outside the store’s doors until she started banging her fist against the glass, making the cashier jump at the loud thuds that echoed off the walls of the little convenience store. She paused mid-wipe, having been cleaning off her register. Even Kyle looked up from her magazine to watch Ms. Wright stomp towards the door to yell at the woman that they were closed. “Please! You’re the only place within walking distance that’s still open!” The young woman pressed. Which was true, most stores closed around midnight due to the crime rate in the neighborhood. Though, the cashier thought to herself, that made the fact the young woman was out by herself at midnight concerning. “No, we are close!” Ms. Wright scowled, making a shooing motion with her hand at the girl. The door was already locked. They locked it when they started to clean up each night, only to unlock it so they could leave after turning off the lights, and lock it back again. The cashier turned to give Kyle a worried look, one that made Kyle grimace. Like Ms. Wright, she didn’t want to stay after any longer for any straggling customers, but the cashier’s concerned expression must have won out because she let out a defeated sigh. “Hey, Ms. Wright,” Kyle intervened, turning her head to the store owner and causing the elderly woman to jerk her attention to Kyle instead of the young woman outside. “Maybe we should let her in, just this once? Por favor? We still have to clean the bathroom anyway.” Ms. Wright’s face pinkened with anger and the cashier braced herself for the small Cuban woman’s wrath, but the elderly woman only huffed and wobbled back into her office. Before she slammed the door, she jabbed a boney finger at them, warning, “If she make a mess, you clean it up!” The cashier nodded while Kyle gave her a salute as she threw the magazine down onto the counter and made her way to the door. The young woman stumbled into the store when the door was unlocked and opened. “Thank you,” she rushed out, speed walking somewhere behind the store. Kyle raised her brow and let the door go, it slowly closing on its own as

she moved back to her original spot next to the cashier. She had already closed her lane down and had nothing left to do, but instead of cleaning the bathroom, she picked her magazine back up and flipped to the page she had previously been on. Minutes later, the young woman was racing to the register, an arm wrapped around notebooks and packages of pens and highlighters. “Coffee drinks,” she fumbled out at the cashier, pointing at the back of the store. The cashier blinked, confused. Kyle flipped a page of her magazine. “I mean,” the woman reiterated, “do you have any coffee or energy drinks?” Finally understanding, the cashier nodded and left Kyle to her reading to show the young woman where they kept their refrigerated coffee jars and energy drinks. The young woman followed behind her every step, looking around at everything on the shelves and inside the fridge doors, as if trying to see if she could spot what she was looking for before the cashier could show her. The store had a few shelves of chilled coffee and energy drinks in the very corner, each being off brand. “I’ve never seen these kinds before,” the young woman muttered, looking warily at the drinks, as if they’ll come to life and bite her. The cashier looked at each of the drinks, remembering how Alice used to pluck out can after can of the energy drinks every night or so, wanting to try every single one the small convenience store had on days where she needed to stay up to finish off a heavy school load. When she started working here, the cashier would use her employee discount for her and later Alice would share whichever drink she had decided to get when they were sprawled out on their apartment floor with their textbooks and assignments. After a few months or so, the two of them had tried every energy drink in the store at least five times. The reminder of Alice made her throat grow tight in a way she hates, because cheap energy drinks shouldn’t have the ability to make her so upset. She shoved the memory away, forcing it back into the depths of her mind for when she’s alone in her apartment. Grabbing a can from the bottom shelf, she handed it to the young woman and explained that the ones on the last shelf, the Extreme Wonder brand, whose flavors consisted of Purple, Red, Green, and other various colors, was probably the best she was going to get here. When the young woman was ready to be rang up, she had placed three cans of Extreme Wonder on the counter with the rest of her items. Kyle glanced over at them, having grown bored of her swiped magazine. “Mid-terms?” she guessed. The young woman let out a groan as she fished out her debit card. “They’re killing me this semester,” she frowned. Kyle pulled out a package of gum, automatically handing a piece to the cashier after popping two sticks into her mouth. “I’m in the same boat as you. I doubt I’ll survive anthropology.” The young woman winced in sympathy, “I hate science courses too. What are you studying?”

“Right now Communications and Fashion Merchandising, but I’m planning to get into Fashion Design, partially for wedding dresses,” Kyle responded, blowing a green bubble. The cashier listened intently as the two went back and forth, but remained quiet as Kyle and the customer talked. She suddenly felt small, having nothing to input on the subject. Not that her silence was noticed as she stood rigid at the counter, slowly moving aside so Kyle could better see the young woman and started wiping down her register again. She numbly chewed her piece of gum to give her mouth something to do, letting the conversation in front of her fade into background noise. After a few minutes, Ms. Wright marched out of her office and made the young woman leave before doing the same to Kyle and the cashier. Name tags crammed into their jacket pockets, the two quietly piled into her car, buckling up without a word until Kyle broke the silence. “I’m sorry,” she said when the car started. The cashier looked over at her, bewildered. “I didn’t mean to leave you out like that,” she explained, tucking a brown strand of hair behind her ear. “I forget that you had dropped out.” The cashier’s body felt heavy, drained of energy. She shook her head, not wanting to think about any of it, and she told Kyle that it was okay. “College is overrated anyways,” Kyle continued on, frowning. “And it’s not for everyone. Don’t feel bad.” The cashier only gave a short nod, but her shoulders relaxed against her seat.

The man she met up with nights after bought her a slushie at a gas station along the way to his house. He talked about a lot of things and she listened as much as she wanted to, but every so often she’d check her phone to see that Kyle messaged her. A smile lit up her face at the fimlaur ding and she checked her messages to find another photo of Chewy. “Your hair looks nice,” came the man beside her. Looking up from her phone, she turned her head over at him, touching the end of her lazy braid. She watched as he drummed his fingers along the steering wheel, his eyes flickering over to her face, her cleavage, and then the road. She thanked him and looked back at her phone, responding to Kyle’s photo. He didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. When they got to his house, one that makes three of her apartment, he offered her wine and a movie. Sitting back on the black leather, she noted the way everything looked new and worth three times her paycheck, which was impossible for a college undergrad who lived by themselves. As he came back from the kitchen, wine in hand she deduced he was the groomed rich boy type, the ones with parents who’s got money. The explanation made sense. She stared at the way the bright red liquid poured into her glass from the black bottle that’s too expensive to ever be bought from her store. She was already

going to have sex with him, she decided that the moment he picked her up and his face matched his profile pictures. He didn’t have to sweeten her up. She didn’t let him know that though, and quietly sipped her second glass as he went on about his classes. He was a senior, he told her, apparently the top of his class and destined to do big things. She remembered thinking something like that too once, when she had been in college studying psychology and sociology. She thought she could help people with their problems, give them someone who could listen, but reality caught up to her and she dropped out. Who needs another psychiatrist anyway. She was cut from her musings when a gray cat jumped into her lap, almost causing her to spill her wine on the man’s nice couch. “Finnigan!” The man scolded, ready to push the feline off, but paused when she started to pet the cat. “Sorry about him.” She shook her head, telling him it was fine. Finnigan was really soft and warm. He curled up on her legs like he owned them and stared at the tv in front of him as if he was actually watching it. “You really do look nice tonight,” the man said suddenly, moving in closer to tuck a red strand behind her ear. Sensing that pleasantries were over, she downed what was left in her glass and maneuvered Finnegan off her lap, ignoring his loud protest. Taking her hand, he led her into his bedroom and sat her on his king sized bed. She watched him start to slowly strip, wishing she had more wine in her system, when her phone buzzed. Making sure she could get away with it, she opened her messages, clicking on Klye’s contact to see the picture she was sent. Reading the caption, she felt her heart sink and all of the butterflies in her stomach simultaneously died. She reread the words, ‘This is my nerd, Benjy’ and she zeroed in on the way the two were pressed close together, the way a tall, handsome man with a clean shave, dark curls, and thick glasses was kissing Kyle’s cheek as she grinned at the camera. The image made her sick and angry, like she didn’t know if she was going to throw her cell against the wall or throw up. “Are you seriously on your phone right now?” She blinked up at the man she momentarily forgot was there. He was standing in front of her, arms crossed and in his gray boxer briefs. She thought he looked like a ruffled, wet kitten before his scowl fell and his expression shifted into something more uncomfortable and alarmed. “Shit, are you okay? Why are you crying?” he asked, arms raised to reach out to her as if he could help. She opened her mouth to tell him that no, she wasn’t crying. There wasn’t anything to cry over, but she suddenly felt something wet on her cheeks and rushed to wipe away the tears she didn’t know she had been shedding. She rubbed her face until her eyes stung and she felt her face burn. “Do you need me to take you home or...?” The man looked around, for his pants she guessed, but she shook her head. She uncurled her fists, fury trembling

in her veins. Taking his wrists, she turned the two of them around and pushed him onto the bed, watching him fumble down onto the mattress. His momentary look of shock stretched into a grin as she pulled her shirt off and dropped her pants. Climbing on top of him, she made herself focus on his lips and his touch. She told herself she didn’t care about Kyle’s boyfriend as the man’s hands trailed over her body. She didn’t care about Kyle and she didn’t feel any sense of loss. Because you couldn’t lose something that was never yours. When the man was finally spent, she sat on his bed and looked around the room. For the first time she noticed he had a varsity jacket thrown over his desk chair and trophies on his dresser. The bedroom was of a man who was going somewhere and the cashier felt a pang in her chest at the realization that this really had been her once. She used to have textbooks stacked on her own desk and Alice’s clothes scattered on her bedroom floor when no one bothered to pick them up. Now everything had been shoved away for years and the only thing that laid on her desk was trash she forgot to throw away or the occasional empty bowl of whatever she microwaved for dinner after work before falling asleep. The cashier looked down at her body, protected only by her underwear that she had slipped on after they were done, and at places covered in bite marks and scratches. She used to be more subtle when showing her curves. She used to take pride in what she wore. Swallowing down a bad taste in her mouth, she wondered if Alice hadn’t left the person she was, but the person she had been becoming. She felt like crying all over again, but she had nothing left to give so her eyes stayed dry. The cashier suddenly felt something soft brushed against her legs, causing her to jump. She looked down at Finnegan, the gray cat meowing at her for attention. She reached down and ran her fingers through his thick, short fur. Listening to his rewarding purr, her heart squeezed itself in her chest as she remembered Scraps. The cat had been a pain and his litter box stunk, but there were times where he’d curl up on her chest when she got home late and went straight to bed. He was always someone to come home to and his constant whining filled the empty house with noise. She stared down at the cat and Finnegan’s own green ones met her gaze. Biting her lip, she glanced at the man sleeping on the bed before looking back down at Finnegan. She missed having someone to come home to.

She called an uber to take her home without waking the man up. The driver gave her a funny look but didn’t seem all that bothered. When she got home she showered quickly and threw on clean clothes. Not caring enough to dry her hair, she collapsed on her couch and watched as Finnegan explored her cramped apartment. The cat ended up finding a toy mouse that had been kicked under a piece of furniture at one point or another and played with it for a few moments before getting bored and scurrying off somewhere else in her apartment. She thought he might be a bit younger than Scraps was, the old cat had never played with any of

the toys Alice and her had gotten for him and they’d end up either thrown away or under places neither of them ever bother to look. Without Finnegan in the room, her eyes lacked something to focus on and she gazed around the room numbly. Without Alice’s things, the place looked empty and bare. There wasn’t anything on her walls, no fuzzy rugs Alice had bought, and she put away most of her picture frames of her mom or Alice, people she didn’t need reminders of, into a box along with anything else Alice hadn’t wanted to take with her. That box was shoved into her closet to collect dust just like her textbooks and whatever else she doesn’t know what to do with. Months ago, when it arrived in the mail, inside a small care package from Florida, she shoved her mother’s urn inside her closet too. Her spiralling of thoughts suddenly snapped to a halt when her phone vibrated on her coffee table. Hesitantly, she reached for the device and unlocked it, putting the cell to her ear. “Hey, sorry to call you like this,” the man said from the other end of the phone. “I’m not going to make this a thing, but you must’ve not closed the door all the way on your way out, because it’s wide open and Finnegan got out. I’ve been looking for him, but I haven’t found him. Have you seen him at all?” She glanced at Finnegan, who had returned to play with a shoelace on one of her sneakers by her front door, and told him no. The man cursed, sighing, “Figured, but it was worth a try. Can you tell me if you see him or anything? I got to go.” The call ended with a click and she lowered the phone from her face, feeling panic rise up inside her chest as the gravity of the situation weighed down on her. She scrolled through her contacts, looking for someone to help but no one from her list of old college peers and high school friends seemed right. She couldn’t just message them after years of strained communication and tell them she stole a cat from a man she had sex with, whose name she never bothered to remember, because she had been feeling more lonely than usual. For a moment she thought of calling Alice, but the idea passed her mind soon after. Best case scenario was she wouldn’t even pick up, the worst being she would. The dawning realization that she no longer had anybody haunted her and she shakenly sat her phone back down on the coffee table. She spent the next few hours in a daze, occasionally watching Finnegan if he was in the room. Some time later, she ended up passing out on her couch, the lights in her apartment on and her still without any idea what to do. Finnegan ended up staying. She took the time to think about everything within the last couple of years as she bought more cat litter and cans of food for him. He still wasn’t Scraps, but he made the place a little less lonely. Finnagen himself didn’t seem to mind any of the changes and made himself right at home. The couch was his throne and he ruled over her apartment like a king, making sure to remind her of this by shedding everywhere. The first few days, she ignored the feeling of displacement, the wrongness

of it all, and if she ever thought about if the man missed Finnagen like she did Scraps, she brushed the thought away minutes later. She stopped hanging out with Kyle with the excuse she wasn’t feeling good lately. Which wasn’t a lie, everytime the other offered for her to come in she’d remember the picture of Kyle’s boyfriend and then Finnegan who was waiting for her at home and she’d feel sick to her stomach. By the end of the week, after the third time she cancelled on Kyle in a row, she got a knock at her door. It couldn’t have been much later than two pm, but Kyle still showed up in her pajamas and her eyes were a bit hazy in the way they got after she smoked. “Hey,” she said, hands in the pockets of her jacket. The cashier swallowed and repeated her greeting. “You seem to be feeling better,” Kyle observed, and the cashier couldn’t ignore the underlying anger and hurt in her words. “It’s like you never were even sick.” Looking away guiltily, the cashier mumbled out an apology, but even she knew that it wasn’t even scratching the surface of being enough. Kyle’s frown and the way her face darkens was proof enough. The truth was there, on the tip of her tongue, sworming so much in her mouth to get out that she had to bite her lip to keep it down. Before either of them can say another word, a meow cut them off. The two looked down at their feet and, to the cashier’s horror, there was Finnegan, brushing up against Kyle’s legs. She watched as Kyle furrowed her brows and asked, “When did you get a cat—” The cashier had been quick to cut her off, blurting out the entire story before Kyle could get another word in. When she was done, she had to take a few glops of breath to keep from getting light-headed. Kyle stared at her wide-eyed, mouth slowly closing after a moment or two before she finally said, “Well, shit.” And as unhelpful as her answer was, the cashier felt her response deep in her bones. “Okay, okay,” Kyle took a deep breath. “You stole a cat. Is this why you were avoiding me, because you thought I’d tell?” The cashier watched as Kyle bent down to run her fingers through Finnegan’s fluff and could only muster up the energy to shrug. Kyle hummed and scooped the gray cat up, holding him like a new born baby. “You’ve had a lot on your plate, I get it. We’ve all stolen something or another. Want to get some breakfast and talk about it?” Her eyes flickered to Kyle’s pajamas before drifting back to her easy smile. Kyle would always be something she would never understand. “Well?” The other sat Finnegan down and he bolted back into her apartment for his safety. The cashier noticed the way Kyle’s brown hair caught the sunlight through the upstairs hallway window at a perfect angle, giving her a halo around her head.

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The cashier’s heart didn’t skip a beat like it would’ve a few days ago, but she found herself smiling back.

“You okay?” Kyle asked when the two of them made their way down the apartment’s stairs. Watching the way Kyle turned back to her at the bottom step, the cashier thought about the people she left behind, wondering if they’d respond if she reached out. Most of them she never cared to lose, but some of them had been there when Alice hadn’t or had sent their sympathy texts about her mother. She thought about going through her closet on her next day off, dragging out everything that had been shoved there. The idea of pulling out her mother’s urn made her sick. She’d save it for last until she figured out what to do with the jar of ashes. Her old textbooks and Alice’s abandoned stuff would be the first step over anything. “Paige?” Kyle nudged her again. “Hello?” The cashier, Paige, smiled and nodded her head. As she jumped off the second to last step to catch up with Kyle, she wondered how much she could give away to thrift stores.

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