There usually isn't anyone in the back of the K-Mart storage room, so that's where I go to fool around with my manager Jake whenever we are scheduled to work together. He is comforting; the way his mouth moves is soft and slow like how an ice cream cone feels in July. He is not particularly good looking and I am not particularly dissatisfied with my boyfriend -- sometimes these things just happen, although my sister insists that they just usually happen to me.

Its cold down there, and there are towering piles of merchandise stacked on the shelves. The last time I met him down there I waited by the hair dye. It was a long time before he finally came down and I was half way pissed. It's not like I wanted to spend my whole break on him.

“Hanna, I think we should reconsider,” he said and scratched at the scar on his chin. It's a wide arcing line of white cutting into the stubble. It's surprising how many people fall on their chins as children.

I had been expecting this from him for a while, for him to end it. He wouldn't look at me; he just kept staring at the dirty concrete floor. I wondered if he thought I'd be upset. Before I could say anything the light overhead flicked and went out. It was so dark I couldn't see him anymore.

“Damn it, I don't even know where the bulbs are,” he said. I felt his fingers lightly touching my arm as he moved in the darkness. “Reconsider what?” I asked and grabbed onto his hand. I could feel that his palm was wet. I let go and wiped my hand on his sleeve.

“We'll talk when I get the light back on, I can't think right now.” We held onto each other until we found a flashlight. I helped him find the bulbs and held the ladder as he changed the light. He seemed nervous.

“So as I was saying…’ he said and coughed.

“Don't worry about it. I don't mind at all that its over,” I said as he stepped off the ladder.

“Oh no you have the wrong idea. I mean we should reconsider meeting like this, maybe we could go out sometime,” he said and smiled. I didn't know what to say. I thought he knew about my boyfriend. This was the first time this had happened to me, that this sort of behavior led to anything.

“All right, let's go out Friday,” I said. He leaned over and kissed me. It felt different now that it was real, although not necessarily better.

“I like you a lot,” he whispered. I knew then I could fall in love with him. “Call me later.”

After work my sister Una picked me up in her old blue Saab. My car was in the shop again and I hadn't figured out yet how to get enough money to get it back. I got in her car and took off my red work vest and threw it in the back-seat. I noticed a purple streak in her hair. When I was her age I had one too but I don't think she remembers.

“Una baby, you have to hear what happened,” I said and turned the radio down.

She smiled and flicked her cigarette out the window. Her lips were chapped.

“You finally quit?” she asked sarcastically

“No, I'm going on a date with my manager. He said he ‘likes me a lot.’ Isn't that funny? Watch it!” I said as she ran the red light.

“It was yellow,” she said. “Well, do you like him?”

“I don't know. I think he's my age, he's in grad school.”

Una seemed unmoved by the information so I stopped talking. She had on her black rimmed feminist glasses and our father's old corduroy jacket he left behind. She doesn't tell me much about her life.

The storefronts blurred into one another as we drove and I shut my eyes wishing I were somewhere else. I wondered if my sister thinks of me as a failure. When I was young I had such hope for the imminent success of the people I knew; who suspects at seventeen how easy it is for people to slip into the rhythm of the life they always feared?

At home we made some pasta and ate it with half a bottle of red wine.

“Do you ever think of him?” I said pointing to a postcard on the table from our father who was now somewhere in Mexico.

“All the time. No, seriously, I think about him once in a while. I used to think I would try to find him when I turned eighteen. I am not sure what for though,” she said and shoved the last of the spaghetti in her mouth.

Una used to follow him around and help him fix things. After he left us, she stole his clothes out of the garbage can and made me promise not to tell our mother. He haunted her, as if he was another version of her, like she had to try him on, to figure him out somehow. Maybe that is love; I don't know.

I thought about my manager Jake as I washed the dishes. It was nice to think about the beginning of a relationship, when nothing has gone wrong yet. It's like when I paint and it seems perfect, the lines of the figure are just right, the colors bounce off one another and then I just ruin it. I go too far, I don't know when to stop. In the end it is just blurred mush and I gesso the canvas and start over again.

After rinsing out the spaghetti pot I decided to call my boyfriend. His mother answered the phone. It's kind of strange that he still lives with her and yet I have never met her. I don't ask questions. At night I would sneak down the hall with him, careful not to make the boards of the hard wood floor squeak. Her door was usually open and I could hear her sleeping. Her short heavy breathing, the sound of her turning over filtered into the hallway. I looked in once and saw her lying in bed. Her body was small and the sheets were tight around her. She was awake this time and looked me right in the eye, but then she snored and I realized she had just opened her eyes for a moment the way my sister sometimes does when she is asleep.

“Mom, hang up the phone, I got it,” Mark said, and I heard him yawn. “I said I got it, shit! Hey Hanna, what's up?”

“Nothing, just doing the dishes. I wanted to tell you that we should really reconsider our relationship.”

“What do you mean, I thought things were fine. I thought we might be in love,” he whispered, probably so his mother wouldn't hear.

“I have never been in love.” I thought I heard him crying. “Are you okay? You can come over if you want,” I said and dried the pot.

I waited for him in the living room. I saw Una's pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. I picked at it until the tobacco fell out in brown swirls of dust onto the floor. I thought of calling my old best friend but she lives far away now and we haven't talked in months. Sometimes I go with Mark to the diner I used to hangout at in high school. It isn't the same, although our waiter still works there. He pretends like he doesn't know me, mostly because his wife is now the hostess. I go out to bars with the girls from work but we don't really talk. We get men to buy us drinks, we laugh and stay out until our make up is ruined.

When Mark showed up at the screen door, I brushed the tobacco off my jeans and offered him a beer.

“Got anything stronger?” he asked and sat down on the couch.

“How about some whiskey?” I pulled out a bottle of So Co and sat down next to him. I took a swig. It went down hard and I coughed. He took the bottle from me and chugged.

“So tell me why you want to breakup,” he said getting down to business. His eyes looked gray with his sweatshirt on. Sometimes they changed color, and this had always bothered me. I once had a friend who had one blue eye and one brown eye. It made her look confused, which she was.

“I met this guy. It's other things too. I hate listening to your mother sleep and you scrape your teeth on the fork when you eat.”

"I hate your hair,” he said and passed me the bottle.

“You hate my hair?” I touched my hair and looked at it. It was dark red and reached to the middle of my back. “I always sort of liked it,” I said and frowned.

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“No. I'm not like that. I would tell you.” I leaned into him. I liked the way he smelled. He took another shot of whiskey. He was getting drunk fast and I wondered if it was deliberate, so that he couldn't drive home.

He turned on the TV and we watched the news until I fell asleep. I woke up a little while later and the room was dark except for the television. I felt him leaning on top of me. One of his hands was under my shirt. It felt cold and foreign.

“Quit it!” I yelled and sat up. His face looked startled and guilty.

“Well, I just thought since you didn't tell me to go home, I don't know,” he said and started to zip up his pants.

“What's wrong with you, I was sleeping. That's sick.” I said and got up off the couch. “Just get out.”

It was then that he hit me. I was more surprised then hurt. He didn't do it hard; it was like he tried to take it back half way through.

“I didn't mean it, I'm sorry,” he said and looked at his hand.

I started laughing, I don't really know why. He looked like he wanted to throw up.

“I can't believe I thought I was in love with you,” he said and grabbed his car keys off the coffee table.

I saw Una at the top of the stairs. She stared at me with this look on her face, like this had happened to me before, like I was the kind of girl who got slapped around. It was the first time I ever hated her.

I watched him drive away, knocking over our garbage can. My cheek hardly felt anything at all anymore. It was like it never happened. I put the bottle away and went upstairs.

“Are you all right?” Una asked when I passed her room.

“Of course. I'm always all right.”

I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My face looked the same, only one cheek was a little pinker that the other. I opened the drawer and took out a pair of scissors. I grabbed a chunk of my hair and began to cut it off. It was hard sawing through the dry hair, but I felt satisfied as it fell into the sink. My face looked strange without long hair, more like Una's. I took the hair and threw it out. I ran my hands through the spiky remainder; it felt like boys hair. It reminded me of kissing, how I always touched the back of their heads and felt the soft hair poking through my fingers.

At work the next day I somehow found myself in the break room with the new stock boy named Greg. I don't know how these things happen. He tasted like gum and dipping tobacco. He was young and insistent; he bit my lip. Jake found out about it quick. I expected him not to say anything, to just ignore me; instead he came up to me on my lunch hour.

“I don't think you should work here anymore. Its not proper to use the break room like that,” he said, looking me in the eye.

“It was fine when it was you.”

“How's your boyfriend? I heard about him too.”

“He hit me, not all the time, just last night. It was sort of funny.”

“I'm sorry, are you okay?” he said and touched my shoulder. I wanted to say that I wasn't okay; that things haven't been okay for years.

“I like your hair, its different but it suits you,” he said and touched my chin.

“It looks like hell. I'm sorry about the stock boy. I can change,” I said. I didn't know if it was true, that I could change, but I figured it was worth a shot. Maybe this could work. I thought about Una. She had always said that one of us was bound to end up like our father, always leaving, always unsatisfied, but for the first time I didn't think it would be me.

§ § §

H. A. Fleming lives in NY and is working on a collection of short stories. She can be reached at ZimmyGrrlZ@aol.com

This piece was first published in INK POT #3 - 2004, a literary journal.