Free Secret Confessions: Down & Dusty — Skye by Rhyll Biest

Episode 6—Skye
    ‘What did you expect, anyway, Skye? For Bret to jump nude out of an ice-cream cake to welcome you home?’ She muttered the words as she cycled the long, dusty driveway from her parents’ house to Bret’s place, each breath sticking to her nasal passages and filling her mouth with dust. That’s how dry it was, too dry to breathe, though it was only nine in the morning. And too dusty to be opening her mouth to talk to herself, which she did too much of anyway. Another sign she was doomed to perish a bat-shit crazy, cat-hoarding spinster.
    Yet the driest, dustiest thing of all was her heart and the parched feeling of being forgotten. So dry it made her feel like she might blow away with a strong gust of wind, just like the eroded topsoil stinging her eyes and clogging her nose.
    How could he have forgotten about today, when she’d drawn a big red felt-pen circle around the month of January, and the date, and that had been in June . And since then she’d spent every scrap of time not devoted to studying to imagining—like the overly-needy twit she was—their joyous reunion. It would be a slumber party for two on his verandah, where they’d scoff pizza and cake and guzzle soda until they burst while she spilled every last detail about the magic of learning to de-sex cats and suture puppy ears, and what it was like to master a syringe.
    And what really stung—no, hurt worse than a bite to the boob from a badly schooled pony—was that he’d always been the only one who never forgot about her, despite her near magnetic attraction to the peripheries of gatherings and red hot allergy to casual conversation.
    A hot wind tugged at the old Batik wrap-around skirt she’d donned, the worn cotton fabric flipping up at the front as she pedalled, revealing a good deal of thigh. A good thing there was no one around to see it. Though people tended to look right through her, forget she was there, so why would they notice her thighs?
    At the front garden she stopped and dismounted, left the bike on its side in the brittle grass fringing the square house on stumps with its cheery red corrugated roof. The long wood verandah welcomed her, an old friend that caught every breeze that stirred and made it a perfect place to sit after a long ride, as she used to with Bret.
    Mostly she’d read, or pretended to read, and let Bret talk. Of the two of them he was the chatty, outgoing one, while she was mostly happy just to absorb his words. As a kid she hadn’t opened her mouth much because of her snaggly teeth, but even now, as a fully-grown adult and orthodontic success story, she didn’t run her mouth overmuch, preferring to fade into the background and wait until she decided someone was okay before talking.
    A worn wood board creaked underfoot as she reached the top of the stairs. She paused, frowning at the drawn kitchen curtains. Why were they drawn? Was he away on business? Ill? Shacked up in town with some gal with great fetlocks that he planned to start a whole new type of breeding program with?
    Don’t be silly.
    Yet she hesitated before knocking on the door. What if there was someone in there with him? A female someone? Or more than one?
    This house was, after all, now a bachelor man-cave since Bret’s dad had retired to the coast. And she’d been away a long time, so it was entirely possible that Bret now aspired to frat-house levels of debauchery—though that big a change seemed wildly unlikely.
    But if he had changed, really, what business was it of hers if he did spend his free time jelly wrestling with every team of big-breasted strippers whose promotional bus crashed in Milpinyani Springs? Why should that matter to her as his good friend, his best buddy since they were both knee-high to a quarter horse? Hell, if she were any sort of real friend she would have brought him an extra stripper.
    And more jelly.
    Because he deserved all the big-boobed strippers in the galaxy just for being her friend. She