BROWN EYES

Night

December.

Josh hated December. It reminded him of the fact that his mother was dead. She'd died two years ago of cancer, she'd loved Christmas and now that's why he hated it.

He and his father now ran a holiday shop. Currently, the aisles were full of Christmas lights and baubles and other Christmas things he hated to see. Christmas physically pained him. He hated all these things, he hated to sell to customers even though he knew they needed the money for him.

He hated it because his mother had loved it and now she was gone. Two years after her death and he was still going to therapy.
He pushed his glasses up and turned the open sign to closed.

His girlfriend Tara, was sitting on the counter, tapping on her phone, her brown legs swinging. She looked up at him and smiled, her pearly whites showing. She was beautiful and he was still a little surprised when he'd asked her out and she'd said yes.

"We have to hurry, Tara, it's starting to snow." He said as he moved closer to her and pecked her on the lips.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming." She said, as she ran a hand through his thick curly black hair and kissed his brown nose. "I've just got to retweet this thing I saw." She continued tapping on her phone, her plastic nails clacking at the screen.

Outside, it kept snowing, lightly at first but it grew in momentum. The snow beating down on houses and cars and pavement. Trees had turned an eerie colour of white. Cars roared past, people walking briskly to get to the comfort of their houses. Josh wanted to get home too. He wanted to stay beside the fire and reread Harry Potter until he fell asleep to his father's hot chocolate. But he knew that whenever she said she wanted to 'retweet' something, it meant she wanted to retweet a hundred things.

Cling ding.

The sound of the bell rang loudly in the shop. Tara stretched her head over Josh's and saw Cody, a football player at their local high school, shaking out his brown hair and stomping his boots to get the mud and snow out. Josh craned his neck to look at him and arched a brow.

He was slightly terrified of Cody Lancaster. In junior school, Cody and his buddies had bullied him and his then best friend, beating them up and taking their lunch money. Now in their last year of Senior high, Cody had stopped bullying him but some times he'd look at him and smile, a kind of sinister smile that held untold horrors.

"Joshy boy!" Cody exclaimed, "is it really you?" He shrugged off his jacket and dusted the snow off it.

"I believe it is Cody, what are you doing here?" Josh asked as he turned to fully look at him. Cody was the star of the school and the star at football. Scouts had already come for him, he'd won so many matches against rival teams that he was known, even in neighbouring towns. Josh had tried out for the team. Beginning of junior year, he'd gotten it into his mind that maybe, just maybe if he tried out. If he got in and became popular, he'd finally accepted, people would finally look at him and not laugh or look at him and not pity him.

But that was before he'd met Tara.

"Don't you sell Christmas things here?" He asked, as he got his phone from his back pocket.

"You're buying something? Didn't you read the sign out front, we're closed."

"I just need a present for my little sister and I'll go, it won't hurt to sell to me."