Walking down the grocery store aisle, looking at the products that were thrown across the shelving, trying to read each logo and ingredient with a lost appetite and a distant mind is not an easy task. I catch myself reading the same word or line continuously, not to place it to memory but to just read it, to know what it says. My mind is far from this run-down grocery store, no good little town, a dead-end job and messed up life. I never thought I would still be here, stuck here. I thought I would be living my life to the fullest, graduated from college with my dream job and married to my dream man and yet, I'm stuck here, in this stupid town reading the word 'cake' for the twelfth time in a row.
My sore muscles ached as I stood there reading the cake box, my head beginning to throb at the fact that I hadn't eaten yet and it was already 6:00pm. I don't have the stomach to eat. My toes were cold from the current bipolar, Texas weather even though I had on white converse. I very obviously didn't dress for the weather, wearing leggings and a navy, long sleeve tee. I'm cold and dumb for not grabbing his work coat out from the back seat of my car, but I knew the coat had stains and I couldn't wear it like that. What probably made me notice all my pain through my numb nerve endings was the fact that my bra wire was poking the hell out of me.
Not painful but very annoying.
I should've worn a sports bra, but I didn't. I don't know why, I had plenty of time to change after I showered, did my makeup and threw out the rubber gloves from cleaning the house.
"Oh my gosh! James Carter?" A girl squealed, pulling me out of my thoughts. She has a bright smile on her face as her eyes recognized me from what seemed like a lifetime ago.
James as a girl's name, it was indeed unfortunate and was the cause of me being the butt of most, if not all, the jokes made in school. Teachers never believed me when I said that was my name and that I didn't go by 'Jamie'.
I knew the girl, of course, we had graduated high school together.
Kara Marshes, dressed in her normal Kara Marshes way; black high-waisted leggings and a tie-dye crop top, white slip on vans and an on-trend fuzzy coat.
She must have been home from college on a break or for the weekend. Her blonde hair seemed freshly done, curled softly to frame her face. Her vibrant blue eyes were glittering and so full of light, the signs of a good life. She had sun kissed skin matching her five-foot-five personality of the typical, popular, white girl. She has always been stunningly beautiful and kind. She was one of the nicest girls I knew in high school. Though, how she ever graduated was beyond me. She was, and still is, one of the dumbest people I know. Nevertheless, she was captain of the volleyball team and the cheer team; her mom was helping at every school event while her dad was the CEO of a law firm. The last post I saw of her on Instagram was her at a party for her sorority chapter with her boyfriend at her division-one school, faces and eyes full of smiles and happiness.
I remember when I had that kind of look in my eyes and on my face and Kara is still everything I ever wanted to be.
I wasn't like her in high school, but she was still kind to me. My long brunette hair was never as perfect, my thin five-foot-three body never as toned and tan, just naturally skinny and pale. I didn't do any sports or even really work out until a few years ago when Danny dragged me with him to the gym.
Danny.
My heart hurt at the thought of him.
Danny McCaskey is the love of my life. We met a few months after I graduated. I had taken my car in to get it looked at, he had been my mechanic. Standing at six-foot-two with deep brown hair and a brown unshaven stubble that laid on his tan face. He's the definition of blue collared and the story of rags to riches. He owned the mechanic shop and yet he was in his blue coveralls, covered in oil. It felt like a movie moment when I first met him. Our eyes had met and suddenly there was nothing else around us. I had been so zoned out, lost in his bronze eyes. When I later asked him "when was the moment you knew I was the one" he told me it was the minute I stepped out of my car. He left me his number and I agreed for him to take me out the following Saturday. We have been dating for almost three years now.
