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Exer pulls the car into the parking lot of the grocery store, and David unclips his seatbelt. It gets dark pretty early now, being the middle of winter, so the sky is pitch black and twinkling with stars. The lights from inside the store feel blindingly bright in comparison.
It’s the store owned by Jackson’s tía and tío David realises distantly. He kind of hopes they don’t run into Jackson, he’s too tired to deal with pretty much anyone or anything except movie night right now, including Jackson and Exer’s new friendship that he doesn’t really trust will last. But that feels mean, so as they get out of the car and head inside, he pushes those thoughts down out of the way and tries to focus on movie night. They’re watching Ghostbusters, because Exer has it on VHS and David remembers the plot enough he won’t have to concentrate too hard.
They make it inside and the two of them split up. Exer goes to grab them some sweets whilst David picks up some chips, that way it (hopefully) won’t take too long and they can get to watching the movie quicker.
David, thinking very hard about what flavour he should grab for himself, and knowing exactly what flavour to get Exer, zones out a little as he walks. It’s only when he’s centimetres away from walking straight into someone that he snaps out of it.
He looks down at the woman he’d almost bumped into, apology on the tip of his tongue.
And then he sees dark, curly hair, and the same hexagonal glasses that he used to see every day at the dinner table, and he bolts, running straight into the freezer aisle and curling up on the floor to hide.
It’s too late of course, Linda saw him and she immediately starts calling out his name.
He sits on the floor of the freezer aisle, shivering, shallow breaths not giving him nearly enough air as he needs, and his heart hammering in his chest. He’s almost certain he’s going to pass out, but Mr. Harry had told him that it was almost impossible to pass out from something like this, and he trusts Mr. Harry on these things.
He sits there, frozen, listening for any sign that his father is here too. He should’ve known something would go wrong. He’s had too many good days in a row and now something’s had to come and balance it all out.
There are no heavy footsteps, no snide remarks at Linda or angry shouting. He waits, but nothing comes, except the sound of Linda calling his name softly, and the buzz of the lights overhead.
She rounds the corner and sees him on the floor. “David?”
He scrambles upright, rubbing at his eyes and plastering an awkward smile onto his face. “Um. Hi Linda.”
”Hi David,” she smiles, “I’ve missed you.” And he shuffles awkwardly in place and doesn’t know what to say, because truthfully he thinks he’s also missed her a little, but that maybe feels like a bit of a betrayal to his mother, and the last time he saw Linda was right before, you know, and it’s all a bit much.
He settles on saying, “Yeah it's uh, been a while.” Whilst desperately looking for Exer, which isn’t working because his boyfriend is too short to stick out above the aisles and doesn’t happen to be in the immediate vicinity.
Then Linda speaks again, and her tone is more serious.
“Your dad’s not here.”
David feels some of the tension seep out of his shoulders. Okay, this is good, he just has to brute force his way through this interaction and they can get back to movie night. God he so badly wants to have a Normal Movie Night.
Linda is speaking again.
“David, I know what happened. And I. I just want to say, it’s not your fault.”
“You— What? No, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” It comes out harsher than David intends it to. Linda doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does she doesn’t care.
“It wasn’t your fault, none of it was your fault, I just—” She trails off for a second. “I just want to make sure you know that.”
David’s stomach does a weird flip and he feels a little like he’s going to throw up. He’s also pretty sure he’s about to cry judging by the way his vision is blurring around the edges. But he does his best to hold it together.
“Thank you.” He says, voice thick and a lump in his throat, even though he’s still not quite sure he believes it, that it wasn’t his fault. Everyone’s been saying it to him, over and over again, his mom, Brenda, Exer, Mr. Harry, Ron. It just, won’t quite set in yet.
He’s snapped out of that train of thought by Linda’s voice. “Is there anything you left at the house?” She asks, “I can grab some stuff for you.”
It takes him a moment to really think about it, having not stepped into his room in a few weeks now. But he thinks of two things. A small teddy bear he’d shoved right into the back of his closet, after promising his father he’d gotten rid of it, and a particularly incriminating photo strip of him and Exer. One that he’d pinned to the back of his cork board, facing into the cork so you had to pry up the pins to be able to look at the photos. Sentimental stuff, he didn’t want to bother Linda with anything replaceable.
Then, a thought strikes David with such overwhelming clarity that he can’t believe he was about to accept Linda’s offer.
“That can’t be safe for you.”
Linda’s face seems to flicker between surprise, sadness and something else he can’t quite place, but settles on a look of determination, eyebrows furrowed slightly. “David, don't you worry about me.” She says, it’s forceful in a way, not rude, just with a tone that implies there really isn’t any room to argue. “What do you need?” She says, softer.
So David tells her about the teddy bear, and the photo strip, blushing a little as he mentions the latter. Linda doesn’t tease him about it, thankfully.
She nods and tells him she’ll bring him his stuff within the next week if she can help it. Then asks if she can hug him goodbye. He lets her, on the condition that she doesn’t put her hands anywhere near his head, and is grateful when she doesn’t question it.
Then she’s gone, picking up her basket and heading for the checkout counter with a wave goodbye, and David is standing alone in the middle of the freezer aisle, trying very hard not to cry.