Some days are just days where you need to run away and today was no different for Bad Boy Tilly. Named so not because he was a law-breaking ne’er do well the women fawned over but rather a rather embarrassing choice of snack as an infant. (Vaseline while non-lethal does create a mess.)
No, Tilly didn’t live up to his name and commit some atrocious crime that required a life on the lam today. He, yet again, waved at that cute girl in his store who always waves at his friend and most certainly, not him. Today she saw him and rolled her eyes. Try as he might he did not manage to melt into the puddle he wanted to and awkwardly mumbled some excuse as she passed him by on the way to go out back and smoke with his friend. To make matters worse his friend just clapped him on the back and invited him out back with them with an empathetic chuckle. It would have been much easier to hate him if he would have outright laughed at Tilly or made some rude gesture, but no, he was always kind. It’s very difficult to hate kind people, take it from me.
So here it is, a chilly spring evening after just turning twenty-one and following the advice of his hip older sister he came to the bar to ‘make friends and meet people.’ So far the only person he’s met officially was Olivia whom he let cut in front of him for the line to the bathroom so she could puke. She did kiss him on the cheek afterwards and now the smell of rancid beer and pretzels invades his every breath. No matter how hard he scrubs his face.
Now uninterested in making friends, meeting people or imbibing the correct amount of alcohol to facilitate that process he just sits and contemplates the city air.
The change in the wind with the spring has pushed the constant smell of dog food out of the air that the factory on the edge of town manufactures. The entire city seems to have taken one big sigh. And then they collectively coughed and hacked from the 1/2” of pollen coating everything. Nonetheless, it was a happy sigh. Everyone wandered around town with a pep in their step, with that renewed hope that spring seems to bring.
Everyone except Tilly. Even though the air didn’t smell like dog food, even though the flowers were blooming, even though everyone in town felt hopeful for the first time in months, Tilly just wanted to run. Anywhere, as long as it wasn’t this exact spot, this exact city, this exact minute.
But here’s the thing about Bad Boy Tilly,
He wasn’t running anywhere. He wasn’t bad at all. In fact, he was very predictable.
