Always Cas | ✔

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN; part two

     Rumi comes in at five and relieves Tasha. Tasha's got a date tonight. A Tuesday night date, she says, is promising because who goes out on a Tuesday night if they're just trying to bang? So she's gone the moment Rumi walks through the door. It's a slow night, so I send Rumi home promptly at closing and finish clearing out the front myself.

     Even though I know that Roberta and Felix will be in soon to clean, I start wiping down the counters. It's compulsory. I'm really just cleaning up the little spills I made when I was dumping the coffee. And then I rinse out the sink because why not.

     When the front door opens, I'm surprised that Roberta's here so early. I look up, ready to greet her and it's not Roberta. "Sorry, we're closed," I call to the man. He's an older gentleman, with a peppered beard, wearing one of those hats with the flaps that come down over your ears. It's a combination of green and camouflage.

     His hands are shoved into the pockets of a puffy black vest. "Are you the owner?" he asks and before I can confirm that I am he goes, "Dresden Gibson?"

     He pronounces my name incorrectly. He's never heard it before but he apparently knows of me.

     I nod my head slowly, stepping out from around the counter. "I am," I confirm, getting this feeling in my stomach that I recognize but don't know where I recognize it from. "But like I said we're closed. The hours are on the door."

     He tips his head low. I can't see the rest of his face because of the shadows the hat creates. He shifts his arms but doesn't remove his hands from his pockets. He's dressed like he's going hunting or has been hunting today — heavy boots and dark pants.

     "So then you're the queer," he responds and his voice is like a snarl.

     I know the feeling now, why I recognize it. I've felt it before in the military. This feeling like I'm not safe, like the situation is about to turn at any second. Interestingly, I hadn't felt this the day Weston died.

     "You need to leave," I repeat.

     Aurora, I think, is a small town in a progressive state that is surrounded by states that are both progressive and conservative. When Pennsylvania flipped in the two-thousand and sixteen elections, I'd been shocked, though maybe I shouldn't have been. Disgusted, actually, now that I really think about it. But Aurora is a generally very progressive town. There are houses on my street that still have Hillary signs up, nearly four years later. Aurora has felt like a bubble that warded off homophobia. Cas's experience in high school being the one anomaly I knew of.

     "You are," he says and it honestly sounds like he's getting choked up. "You are — an abomination. A blight on our military. You don't deserve to hold that title. You are no Sergeant of mine."

     I'm thinking about bombs, how they go off so unexpectedly. I'd seen what a landmine can do, how a person can be right there and the next minute be setting off the earth. It feels like I've set off the earth.

     He finally removes his hands from his pockets and he's holding a gun. This is the least surprising turn of events. Men like him don't show up without their baby bottles. They treat guns like an accessory, like it reaffirms their manhood. It doesn't.

     "Beg," he says pointing it at me, pointing it at my chest. "I want you to beg for your disgusting life."

     "Well I'm not going to do that," I say after a moment of thought. "But I will say you're on camera. Maybe I won't walk away from this but you certainly won't, either."

     This is what my brain is doing: Charles and Tasha left at five. Rumi is gone, too. But I don't remember seeing Dolores leave.

     This is what my brain is also doing: I've given Cas his letters. I've hopefully made things better not worse. I didn't tell him everything but maybe some things just don't need to be said. He'll know. He has to know. What was it I'd said to him just a few days ago? Unexpected endings are still endings. Maybe they're just more definitive when you don't get to say goodbye.