Love in Orange

A short story.

You see him for the first time while waiting in line at the pharmacy.

You hoped that, by going early, you’d be able to avoid a long wait. Instead, you hit the store at peak old-person hours. You stand on tile stained with who-knows-what—isn’t this a pharmacy? Shouldn’t it be clean? Around you are seniors waiting for meds, filling out forms, getting their flu shots, complaining to their spouses and to themselves and to anyone who will listen and anyone who won’t.

Kitschy Halloween merch lines the walls of the Walgreens behind you. There was a time when that stuff excited you. Ghost decorations with goofy grins, parents picking out bags of candy to give out, cheap last-minute costume accessories for those headed to a last-minute costume party—and the iconic Autumnal orange that marks all of it.

What did that orange used to look like for you? Cutting out construction paper in the shape of a pumpkin in elementary school. You’d throw the extra scraps at your friends, and they’d laugh, and so would you.

Everything seems so expensive now. Decorations seem so temporary—thrown out after the holiday, or shoved into a box to be forgotten about. You know that candy will be discounted later—why get it now? And you don’t have the energy for a costume party.

You look into the orange, and all you see is pill bottles.

And, like, that makes sense. It’s a pharmacy.

You’re happy, though. You swear that. And you’re not lying, either. Therapy’s been great. Your family and friends have been great. Things have been great. They weren’t great, for a bit, but you stood strong, got the help you needed, and for the first time in months, you’re smiling. You’re not perfect. You don’t need to be perfect. You’re smiling, nonetheless. That’s something to be proud of.

And, now, you’re in a pharmacy surrounded by old people.

He stands out to you because he is, distinctly, not an old person. He’s floating through the aisles, looking for nothing in particular. Eventually, you lose sight of him behind the toys section.

Later, you see him staring at you from across the store. Thick, puffy locks of ginger hair frame his face against the sterile grime of the Walgreens. His eyes pierce into you and make the rest of the store blur. You start to get clammy. You think you might be blushing. You think about leaving your spot in line to go over to him. What would you even do? You’re burning up.

You’re brought back by the pharmacist calling you to the front of the line. She gives you a paper bag, stapled closed. You give her $8. When you turn back, you don’t see him anymore—and you don’t feel compelled to walk through the decorated aisles to find him again.

You do find him, though, four months later.

Something hit you, hard. You’re not sure what it was—your friend says it doesn’t need to be anything. That, even at your highest points—when you’re doing great with your appointments, and your pills, and your breathing exercises, and you’re even making the time for bubble baths—you don’t need a reason to be doing shitty.

That’s scary to you, so you’re ignoring it, hoping it was something. But you haven’t found that something yet. All you know is that you woke up to tears, had a few conversations you regret, and are taking a walk outside.

You’re hoping the Winter air strangles the something out of you. You want hypothermia; you want the part of you that feels cold and empty to be excommunicated from the flow of the rest of your body. Is it your fingers? You can live without fingers. Hell, take off a full limb. Save the blood for the parts that are actually doing their job.

He’s there when you reach the park, although you don’t see him at first. The rest of the playground is empty. There’s a large swing-set, enough for eight kids. Earlier in the day, it was full of kids cackling, trying to see if they could swing high enough to loop over the top of the swing. Now, you’re there.

You sit down on the metal of one of the swing seats. It’s awful. It’s too small for you, and the seat is cold enough on its own—but the chains keeping you afloat are the worst part. They set off every textural issue you have. Your fingers and hair get stuck in between the nearly-frozen links of them. Their frost digs into you, sapping out your heat.

Eventually, he sits down on the swing next to you. He grabs onto the chains with no problem, and kicks himself off the ground. This inspires you to start swinging, too. Back and forth, back and forth. That’s when you start talking.

You sit in each other’s existence for hours.

Look, he’s just so warm. That’s what you love about him. He’s warm. And warming. He knows what to say—he knows what you need to hear, and chooses to instead opt for what you want to hear. He gives you a peck on the cheek. The stubble of his chin is exactly as rough as it needs to be against your smooth face. It skids along you. And as you kiss, he bites your lip. He bites hard.

Eventually, you get a text from your roommate, asking if you’re still alive.

Your parents say that you’re not dating anyone.

You don’t know if that’s some homophobic bullshit or what, but that’s what they’re saying. They say it to relatives and friends at family events and over Skype. They even ask when you’re going to start dating.

You’ve never outright told them that you are taken, but you don’t make any effort to hide it. They should know at this point.

You’re explaining this to him as the two of you are draped over your couch. He’s laughing. You get mad, at first, think he’s not taking this seriously enough, but then you laugh, too.

You start to play with his hair. It’s coarse and beautiful. You understand what it means to lose yourself in something. You push some aside with your fingers, only to find more and more ginger to play with. It’s never-ending. You love diving through it. When you do, it chokes you. Hair fills up every airway you have. It scratches at the inside of your throat, and fills your lungs. Everything gets so fuzzy.

You wake up in the middle of the night because there’s less of you. You no longer have all of yourself, and it pains you. You’re warm—sweaty and uncomfortable.

You look over to your partner. He is already attending to you. He’s nothing but a mass of orange now. Neon, Color-Brite construction paper orange. He’s pecking at you. Not biting. Biting is too fast, unintimate. Pecking. Pecking at each individual digit on your hands, and then the hands themselves. Then, slowly, tenderly, he pecks up your arm.

Your arm falls off. He grabs it, and saves it for later. You think that he thinks about stopping there. He doesn’t. Peck, peck, peck. Across your chest, and down your thighs. It all breaks so quickly. On some level, every piece of you has been wanting to fall apart; it’s just happy to be so loved while doing it.

Finally, he goes for your eyes. First the left, then the right. You see nothing, and then you see so, so much orange.

The next morning, you wake up alone. You groggily check your phone—you hate doing that first thing in the morning. You’re sure that it’s going to burn your eyes out someday. You see a reminder—it’s October 1st.

You get dressed to head to the pharmacy and refill your medication.