Free Cage of Night by Ed Gorman

I was parked down the block.
    She went to the pharmacy first, and then to the library, and then to the mall.
    Then she went to the Arby's over on Foster Avenue, and that's where she found Myles.
    He was there waiting for her.
    I sat in the lot and watched them in the window.
    When she saw him, she gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and then sat down in his booth, across from him.
    I felt sick.
    I had quick, frantic dreams of going in there and hauling her out here. I'd make a strong case for myself, how I was good and true and sensitive and didn't that count for something in this world? And if she needed reminding, I'd remind her of all the terrible things Myles had done to her.
    I started feeling self-conscious, the way people checked me out as they went inside.
    They seemed to sense that I was a pretty sleazy character, following some poor girl around, unable to take my banishment like a mature adult.
    None of it made sense to me. For three or four nights there, we'd spent a lot of great hours together, her constantly telling me how happy she was to be with me instead of him... and then I felt her pulling back.
    But why?
    Sometimes I looked in the window where she sat and I hated her for what she'd done to me. I couldn't ever remember pain like this.
    Tonight, for example, I'd gone into my room and slid out my Penthouse from underneath my mattress where my Mom couldn't find it. Sometimes, just to cut tension (and to have as good a time as you can have alone), I masturbated. But not tonight. I looked at all the naked girls who usually aroused me, and felt nothing. Nothing. Then I'd gone into the basement where I have four small bookcases packed with science fiction paperbacks and magazines from high school. Sometimes, when I'm down, I can go down there and look at them and touch them and feel the kind of solace I used to, that even if I was a dweeb and isolated and scared, I could always hide between the covers of those books and magazines, that there was escape and mercy after all, if only you knew where to find it.
    They stayed in Arby's an hour.
    Some of the time, they looked to be having a very serious discussion. Other times, they laughed.
    When they came out into the warm mid-November night, her arm was around his middle and he was giving her a squeeze.
    They left her car there. She got in his.
    If he found out that I was following them, he'd beat me up even worse than he had before.
    But I didn't care. I followed them.
    She sat close to him in the front seat. A lot of people honked at them, and they honked back. King and queen. Royalty.
    The night didn't help. It was one of those smoky autumn nights that make you melancholy and restless without you knowing quite why.
    They stopped at a jock shop where he tried on a couple of letter jackets. Again, I saw them through the windows. My own little TV show.
    Maybe it would be better if he saw me and caught me, I thought. Then we could at least get this over with.
    When they came out of the jock shop, they stopped off at a convenience store where Myles bought a six-pack. He was underage but he was also Myles and they weren't going to refuse him, not in this town.
    Myles had parked on the dark side of the store. When he came out, he set the beer in the back seat and then they started making out.
    Right there.
    We'd kind of done that, too, our last night together, wanted to kiss so badly that we couldn't control ourselves, and made out just about every place we went.
    I felt sick again, wild with rage and embarrassment and self-pity.
    I was so fascinated and repelled by what I saw that I didn't even hear him sneak up on me.
    "You want to borrow my binoculars?" he said.
    "Hey. How you doing?"
    "Guess I should ask how you're doing?"
    "Oh, pretty good."
    "Right. That's why you're sitting here watching them make out."
    He really was a cop, Garrett. He'd easily figured out what I was doing here.
    "You must like punishment."
    "Yeah, I must."
    "Why don't you go have a beer?"
    I could