Yeah, I’m late again this week. Cannot blame the internet this time, though. Just a busy week. I initially decided to bow out of this week’s Red Writing Hood meme, but once life calmed down again I decided to give it go. I really want to read the other submissions, but couldn’t bring myself to do so until I wrote my own… Kind of felt like a loser reading other people’s efforts without having put forth some of my own.

This week we had to write about running into an ex at the grocery story. And we had to write it from the perspective of the guy. Here goes…

********************************************************************************

Brad stopped to catch his breath. The parking lot was a madhouse and he had to park on the very last row, next to the road. The walk to the grocery store entrance might as well have been a marathon. A half-marathon at minimum.

I’m so out of shape, Brad thought. How did I let this happen?

The former high school basketball star heard giggles and then, “Uh, excuse me?” as two petite, current high school cheerleaders made their way past him.

The sweat rolled down Brad’s face. And his chest. And back. And legs. Only sixty-five degrees out, yet it was as if he had forgotten to towel off after the shower. His XXXL tee shirt stuck to his body, revealing curves a man was never meant to have.

Brad jerked, and a cart reluctantly broke free from the line of shopping carts, all parked snugly inside one another. He fished the list out of his pocket, as if he actually needed it. Every week, same purchases, the total price varying by only a few dollars, depending on what was on sale.

As he made his way out of the produce section where he picked up a bag of potatoes and little else, someone caught his eye. No, that could not be Lisa, could it? Brad thought Lisa was married to some financial genius and living the high life in town. What would she be doing way out here, in the farthest outpost of the suburbs?

He realized he had been standing still too long; moving or not, he was kind of hard to miss. Just five inches shy of seven feet and significantly more than his high school weight of two-fifteen, Brad stood out. And up. Lisa stared at him for a second more. “Brad?”

“Lisa? Hey, hey,” Brad laughed, as casually and cooly as he could. “I haven’t seen you since the Grad Night party fourteen years ago. You look good.”

But she didn’t, really. Look good, that is. She looked tired. Her body could still stop traffic, but her face looked like road kill. Lisa had been the tallest girl in their class at almost six feet. But she wasn’t ever gawky. No, Lisa had been a goddess. A total knock-out. Strong, curvy, completely at ease in a body that would have made any other high school girl completely self conscious.

Lisa, though, well she was in control of that body. Brad felt the color rise in his cheeks as he let his mind wander back to that Grad Night party. Oh, the things she could do with all five feet, ten inches of her body.

“Thank you, but you’re lying. I look like hell. My mom is sick, so I’ve been living here and taking care of her. And my husband left me. Took the dog. Sold the house without asking me…” Lisa trailed off, looking embarrassed.

“Lisa, I didn’t know. About your mom. I don’t talk to many people from high school. Nobody, actually,” Brad confessed.

After leaving high school as a star, he’d gotten hurt freshman year, lost his scholarship and finished his degree at a small, unremarkable state school. The looks on his former classmates’ faces that summer after freshman year, the looks of smug satisfaction that Mr. Wonderful was finally dealt a crap hand? Well, he couldn’t take it. Brad withdrew, finished his geology degree and went to work for the state highway commission. He never talked to another high school classmate again.

Suddenly aware of how pathetic he must look to Lisa, Brad shifted gears.

“I mean after high school I moved on. Bigger and better. Bigger and better,” he said, totally unaware of the irony. “Got my degree, got a job, have my own life and plenty of money.”

Lisa smiled, and even Brad could sense the pity there. Here she was, sick mother, no husband, and she felt sorry for him.

“That’s great, Brad, really. I’m glad you’re doing so well. We all knew you would make it big,” smiled Lisa, and Brad knew the pun was absolutely intended.

Nothing ever changes, thought Brad. Eighteen or 32, they are all still just assholes. I’m the one who won two state championships for those assholes. I deserve a little more respect.

“Well, I have to run. Big party tonight, don’t want to be late. Hope your mom gets better real soon, Lisa. Good to see you.”

Lisa started to say something, but Brad turned, leaving his cart and bag of potatoes, and walked away. She watched him haul his body through the automatic doors, holding his head high.

Brad tried as hard as he could to make the rest of his body follow his head, but no matter how far out on the horizon he gazed, across the road and into the fields, his thoughts turned inward. As he shuffled heavily to his car, he felt his shoulders sag.

The next morning as Lisa read the community’s newspaper to her dying mother, she skipped over the one-paragraph notice in the high school sports section about a former school basketball champion who was found at a rest stop, three miles from the grocery store.