Bear Hugs

Laundry Day

Day Four: Rain

Normally, he loved laundry day. The feeling of clean clothes in his hands, as if they were made new again, gave him a sense of comfort.

Softly whirring machines in general, he loved very much. The sound of a dishwasher running at night while he melted into the living room couch and watched Saturday Night Live was a dream. He lived for these sensations.

Cleaning was the one thing he had control over.

And all of it was destroyed by his roommate, Jarrod.

Jarrod chewed too loud, never silenced his phone, left his empty noodle bowls on the floor, let dishes pile up in the sink, used almost all of Kyle's sunscreen, and worst of all: he never put a sock on the door when he was sleeping with someone. Time and time again, Kyle unlocked the door to see taints in unpleasant places. He often stood outside the door for a moment, trying to listen for telling sounds before going inside.

This particular evening, lightning storms were striking through Auburn Hills. Rain poured down sideways and thunder shot its way so far down Kyle's eardrums that he couldn't be bothered to listen for Jarrod's wheezing groans and some poor girl about to get gonorrhea.

He knocked twice, bellowed "I'm coming in!", then cracked open the door. His red, curly hair dripping like a mop all over his face.

There was a girl in the bed, though she still had a tee-shirt on.

"Hey man," Jarrod had his arms behind his head, grinning. It became glaringly obvious to Kyle that she had been giving him a handjob under the blanket. "This is Amber."

"Hi, Amber," Kyle said flippantly. "I'll leave you guys alone in a sec, I just need to get the laundry."

He swiped a towel from the bathroom, drying his face and hair.

Jarrod called out to him, "Dude, I was just downstairs and the laundry room was busy as fuck."

Kyle shrugged. He whipped the towel into the tall, white basket. "I'll go to the laundromat."

"In this rain?"

"I'm from Colorado, dude. I've driven through worse," he said, dragging it through the minuscule room to the front door.

Amber whispered something in Jarrod's ear, then flashed a smile at Kyle, who was bent over re-tying his shoes.

"Hey, Kyle. Amber has an idea."

"What's that?"

"Why don't you stay with us?"

Kyle stood up and looked at them, "Oh, Nah, dude. You can have your privacy. I'll be an hour and a half at the most."

"No, we mean, like, you can join us if you want."

Kyle Broflovski was a polite person. Always tried to keep a poker face no matter what people said to him. But he knew for a fact that Jarrod more than likely had a two-day-old eggroll hidden in his bedsheets and he tried not to gag while thinking about it.

He quickly opened the door, muttered a rushed goodbye, and left.

...

Bubbles Coin Laundry stood in a plaza off Walton Boulevard, not too far from the apartments.

When he entered, the smell of fabric softener hit him like a thin blanket hanging on a line. Fake plants wavered with the air conditioning. A small television echoed the local news throughout the room.

Kyle wiped rainwater off his brow and stared down the rows of washing machines. It looked like they took debit cards, thankfully. He never had cash on him anymore.

He watched a blonde boy, over in the corner, pressing buttons on one of the machines, so that he could see how it was done. Kyle lugged the basket to the nearest and machine, squat down, and started loading. His wardrobe wasn't anything declarative - a lot of plain tee-shirts, sweatpants, and jeans. The only thing that was set apart was the yellow Casa Bonita shirt from the last time they went for his birthday before Sheila died. He stared at this shirt for a moment before turning it inside out and throwing it in.

The boy in the corner walked past him, stopped, and turned around.

"Kyle?"

Kyle stiffened. That voice. It was different in tone, but the way he said his name...

Kyle turned around and looked up at Kenny. Both of them had wide eyes, but Kenny was grinning. He grabbed Kyle's hand and pulled him up into a hug, "Dude!"

"H-Hi, Ken," Kyle awkwardly pat him on the back. The amount of strength that Kenny was putting into this hug was the same as Grizz's hug.

They separated. Kenny put his hands on Kyle's shoulders. Kyle noticed that Kenny had on a little mascara. His shirt had a drawing of a cinnamon bun and said "Cinnamon Rolls, Not Gender Roles."

"So that's why you love the GSC so much," Kyle blurted.

"Huh?"

"I... your shirt."

"Oh," Kenny glanced down at it, "Yeah, this thing. I love this shirt."

Kyle took a step back, "I didn't think I would ever see you. At least not here."

"I saw you."

"I know you did... Grizz."

Kenny chuckled, "You caught me."

...

They sat with each other, watching their laundry tumble in soap and water while the windows were assaulted by quarter-sized bullets of rain.

"So what are you majoring in?" Kenny asked, shifting in the plastic seat.

"Um, political science. And music."

"Holy shit, you're double-majoring?"

"Yeah. Couldn't make up my mind, I guess."

"Oh dude, are you gonna be like Tom Morello and go all Rage Against the Machine on everyone?"

"Ha, no," Kyle nervously rubbed his hands together, "No, I'm not that cool. I play the piano."

"Piano's cool. What's your favorite thing to play?"

Kyle swallowed. He glanced up at his clothes, hoping that they would be done so he'd have a reason to get up. They were still spinning. "The Beatles."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Kenny sighed, "I am really sorry about your mom. Can I ask what happened?"

A tingling sensation flourished in his knees, where he fell on them to the hospital floor, upon finding his dead mother. They busted open, leaving permanent scars.

"She just... got sick one day. She wouldn't stop throwing up, so we took her to urgent care, and they referred us to someone else and... they said she had lung cancer. Lung cancer. She wasn't even a smoker. We didn't understand, how... I don't know. But no even six weeks later, she died. She was gone just like that."

"I am so sorry..."

"She kept telling me the whole time to be positive... that if I keep putting good thoughts into the universe it'll come back to us and everything will be okay. But I kept being cynical. Sometimes I just wanted to shake her and tell her she was being insane. She was barely a bag of bones by the time she died. And I wonder, still, if I had just believed her, she might still be here... that I might have killed her-"

"-Kyle, stop, no. No. It's not your fault," he grabbed Kyle's fidgeting hand, "I think she just wanted you to have something to hope for, even if it wasn't realistic. You know, something to keep you going."

Outside, the rain let up a little, and the evening sun peeked through.

"Thank you," Kyle whispered. No one, not even his own father, told him anything nearly as comforting. With a sniffle, he turned to Kenny, who was still holding his hand.

"So, what is all this? You've got mascara on."

"Oh, I'm just, you know," Kenny shrugged, "Being myself."

Kyle smiled, "Well, you pull it off really well."