Life, Love & Other Short Stories

:lawrence:

"Oh no. Absolutely not." I looked over at Wyatt, my best friend, and recent roommate who was ogling the thing (and at first, that was the only way I could think about it) in front of us. It was near the beginning of July, I was wearing nothing but my bikini top and a pair of shorts, and we were standing in some stranger's yard in the angry midday heat of Florida.

"But why not," he whined, not even paying me any real attention as he bounced on the balls of his bare feet excitedly. This was the third garage sale we'd been to since we had bought our house. This was the third thing he'd insisted on buying since we moved in together, even after I had tried and tried to let him know we didn't need it!
This time, the thing in question was a disgusting hunk of rusted metal covered in chipping white paint with the ugliest, puke green and blue lattice patterned webbing I had ever seen. Or at least it had been puke green and blue at one point. When we came into contact with it, however, it was faded from use and covered in dust, mold, and other unknown dark stains. After staring at it for more than a second, I had to take a moment to vomit in my mouth.

"And where exactly are you trying to put this...uh-" I swung both of my hands out in a vague encompassing gesture, hoping that would be enough.

"Lawnchair."

"No, see a lawn chair is nice and comfortable and looks great in the yard when my mother comes to visit. This," I continued, motioning vehemently towards the thing again as if to prove my point. "Is where tetanus and bacterial infections come to procreate."

"You're looking at it all wrong," he said, shaking his head, moving closer to me, and forcing my head in the direction of the chair I knew we were going to end up owning anyway. He was persuasive that way. "This seat has a story. It has character! Here, just close your eyes. Can't you feel it?"

"Uh, no," I said after a moment, peeking at him out of the corner of my eye, noticing that his eyes were still closed and he was taking deep inhalations of the air around us. When he had dropped his hand and opened his eyes again, he was glaring daggers at me.

"You aren't even trying Val!"

"I don't exactly have 'field experience' with feeling the auras of rancid lawn chairs at garage sales, Wyatt," I spoke sarcastically. "So, I'm sorry if I disappoint." He nodded to himself as if this made complete sense before running off to the older couple holding the garage sale and buying the damn chair. If I'm honest with myself, that is probably when I should have run. Wyatt had a sort of power over objects. He could bring them to life, always had been able to, even when we were kids. Not to mention, he was never the best at realizing when I was being sarcastic (either that or he chose to ignore it just to annoy me). Either way, what I knew for a fact was that we definitely didn't need a fucking animated lawn chair!
Clearly, he thought otherwise.

"Guess what!" Wyatt practically yelled happily into my face once he had come back, waving the money that was still in his hand. Somehow he took my unamused face as the go-ahead to keep talking and I had to ask myself why we were even friends in the first place. "They said we can just have it! The chair, I mean. It's not part of the sale, they were just throwing it out!"

"Really? I couldn't imagine why," I said dryly, mostly to myself.

"Yeah! We must be lucky-" He said starting in on an excited ramble. It's like he didn't even need me there to have the conversation.

"It's literal garbage, Wyatt. You can't be serious!" I said once I was able to spew a word in edgewise. He nodded at me to show that he was, in fact, serious.

"One man's trash," he said with a smile.

"Is still trash," I insisted, running a hand through my hair, pulling slightly on the ends.
After relieving the couple of the chair I watched as he struggled to lift it by himself until he turned to me with a pout. Rolling my eyes, I groaned and stomped over to help him carry the unreasonably heavy piece of garbage. Holding back my bile, we carried [read dragged] it along between us to our house. Once we had gotten into the yard, I dropped the offending lawn furniture and started the march to the front door only to be stopped by one of the other things he had bought, standing at the bottom of the stairs.