Coat Shopping
#8 of Love Letters - The Whole Story
It was a nice, cool afternoon, and I had allowed myself the extraordinary luxury of going shopping...so that is why I was to be found on that somewhat nicer-end store, browsing through the racks of coats with interest as I tried to imagine how I'd look on each of them and how Daniel would maybe like me wearing each of them...
...it was that when it happened.
"Hi!"
I glanced up from the row of suede jackets in front of me, and my eyes met the brown pair looking back at me, complete with cute tuffs of brows over them, as was characteristic of...Matt...the wolf looking smart as ever, round-faced, bespectacled...the image of a guy who had quit college to run some kind of an IT business from his dad's garage...kinda.
Well, I'm not saying he looked like Bill Gates or Steven Jobs or anything like that but...guy can have thought, yeah?
He also didn't look at all like a nurse, considering the lack of scrubs, white clog-like shoes, stethoscopes, name tags, ID cards and most importantly, of course, the personal dosimeter always tucked into his chest pocket to signify his role as the radiology nurse. Now he was wearing quite regular late winter clothes, and perhaps he, like I, was looking for something that'd be more suitable as early-spring-maybe-late-spring kind of apparel, before the warmth of summer, and you no longer didn't eel like wearing a coat. He used to wear leather, didn't he? I could remember the smell of a leather jacket...or was that just the fact that about four dozen of them were in the immediate vicinity of my nose?
My ears jumped a little, floppy as they were, and I felt my tail tuck itself between my legs as I suddenly stood face to face with my ex, less than a yard between our respective muzzles, and his resounding, pleasant "Hi!" still ringing.
"Hello," I felt my whiskers shake a little as I smiled, "Hi, Matt."
"Hello, Speckle," the wolf said.
We stood quietly there for a beat before he, ail wagging busily as ever, rounded the coat rack and then stood on the aisle, now with leather jackets and coats on either side of him as he stood there. He was wearing a scarf with his smart brown, tan-hided coat, and had his paws in his pockets. I remembered that habit, too. He was looking at me curiously.
"Hello," I repeated again, feeling awkward.
"Looking for anything special?" he sounded casual.
"Oh, no," I shook my head," just browsing, mostly...uh..."
I rubbed my neck.
"Maybe, if something looks especially nice..."
"Of course," Matt said.
Another smile. His teeth were still kinda yellow. He did a lot of nights, at least used to. So much coffee down his maw that his teeth could not take that kind of treatment forever.
"So you...?"
"Looking for some gloves, actually!" Matt pulled out of his paws from his pockets and flexed his slightly fluffy digits for me to admire. "My old ones are a bit rubbish so I thought, what the hell..."
"Got a day off?" I suggested.
"How'd you guess?" he flicked one of those tall, agile ears.
"Call it a hunch," I said.
He snapped his fingers.
"You're free as well!"
"Two whole days," I boasted, "I slept after my shift and now I'm just enjoying a whole day off...and tomorrow...though I have to do Friday-Saturday night but..."
"Still working at County?"
"The ER, ever since I left Hope," I said.
He nodded.
"Still enjoying it?"
"A lot, yeah," I rubbed my neck, "more than ICU, I think."
"That's good."
I could sense that we were slipping into the uncomfortable silence territory, slowly but surely. We'd only seen each other a couple of times since we broke up...this wasn't becoming any better than those previous times. Nothing dramatic but...the kind of...awkwardness you felt with someone who'd seen you naked, and you'd seen them naked, and you no longer...decided to see each other naked on a regular basis.
"So you're till working radiology at Hope?"
"Got a sweet new CT scanner there, down in the basement," he said, "I'm running one team."
"Heheh," I smiled widely. "Going up the ranks, then."
"It's new, it's okay," he shrugged, his bespectacled muzzle nodding a little, "lots of strokes."
Those were always the worst...you never knew how they'd turn out, once you wheeled them off the ED. Some of them walked out, perfectly fine again...others coded...and those in-between...various grades of miserable were to be had. Matt's voice echoed of the kind of professional distance one had to maintain while mentioning the topic of cerebrovascular incidents after seeing a few thousand of them between us.
"I'm not surprised," I said, hence.
More silence.
"Well...did you see anything you liked yet?"
"Not really," I shrugged. "Not really sure what I'm looking for...something nice..."
"That's nice," he said.
"How about you?"
"Well I just came here so..."
"Oh, of course..."
"Maybe I'll look around some more then, heheh."
Sure!"
"Well, nice talking to you, Matt."
"We should grab some coffee sometime," he said.
"Maybe we could, yeah," I smiled.
Can my new wonderful boyfriend come?
"Well, until that," he tucked his paws into his pockets.
"Yeah."
He wandered away. As soon as he was out of sight, I slipped out of the shop.