Homewrecker

41 - 𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓽𝓮

The soundtrack from the first film on the first screen, the one nearest to the concession stand, was still coming through the speakers behind the counter when we left the office, explosions echoing in the otherwise quiet building, and when we rounded the corner, with Ethan already calling out his order for a large onion ring and root beer, I was stopped short when I realized someone was standing on the counter.

It was the other girl who worked here, not Andi or Taylor-Elise, and I hadn't learned her name yet, but she had been there at the beach with everyone last week. Her dark hair was pulled into tight space buns, heart-shaped sunglasses tucked in front of them, and her shirt was tied into a knot right underneath her ribcage. Her hand was extended, standing on the tiptoes of her high-top sneakers, with a lighter in her hand, waving the flame in front of the wall.

I blinked, glancing around the room as Taylor-Elise told the cook back in the kitchen there was a large order of onion rings coming up and Andi went to fill a medium drink cup with ice after ringing his total up on the register. No one seemed to notice, or care, that she was standing on the counter in front of the bar stools, waving a lighter around.

"She's trying to get the AC to go up," I heard someone explain after a moment, and I turned to see that Taylor-Elise had emerged from the kitchen, a canister of wet wipes in the crook of her arm. Her hair was pulled into thick Dutch braids, the ends barely reaching her shoulders, and tonight she was wearing glasses, even though I couldn't remember her wearing them before. "It's controlled by how hot the room is, so she uses the lighter to trick it into thinking it's hotter."

Ethan frowned, glancing up at the girl. "Kass, you're using the lighter again? Don't you remember when you singed the wallpaper last summer?"

She, apparently Kass, waved her other hand dismissively at him, still holding onto the lighter and slowly drifting the frame back and forth in front of the thermostat. "It works the best and the fastest. I'm dying," she told him, retracting her hand after a moment and then nodding, seemingly satisfied, with the temperature reading, lifting her thumb from the lighter and the flame disappearing. "Coffee doesn't work as well as you think."

"You put coffee on the thermostat?" I asked him, confused.

"No, you just put it in a cup without a lid and wave it around like the lighter. Except it doesn't start a fire when someone gets startled by a car horn," he explained, his eyes drifting toward Kass in a pointed glance.

"Who hits the horn at a drive-in?" she hollered back, wandering into the office with the lighter still gripped in her hand, her long acrylic nails a bright shade of indigo blue around the middle of the BIC's fluid container. "Besides, it wasn't really a fire. I think it's gotta last for longer than five seconds to be considered a fire."

"I think fire is fire."

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, pressing my thumb against the home button to see if Kingston had texted back yet, even though it had only been a few minutes, but my screen was still blank. He could've been at work, sometimes he pulled night shifts at the deli meat factory and he could've put his phone on silent or in his pocket, or he could've been asleep, even though I knew he was more of a night owl, the lights in his trailer bright against the night until the early morning before.

I knew there were more reasonable explanations than him not wanting to talk to me anymore, but there were quieter in my mind than the one I was most afraid of. I left the text messages from him as I walked toward the front doors, instead finding the contact for the Shiloh Police Department just as I stepped outside, foot against gravel.

"You're leaving?"

I hesitated, not totally registering that he meant me at first until I glanced over my shoulder, seeing that Ethan was still at the counter but was looking over at me, holding a cardboard container of onion rings, so fresh from the deep fryer that the oil was already straining through the box. He said that the last time I was here, too, but he sounded different tonight, less casual.