HEATED NOSTALGIA
ALM No.91, July 2026
SHORT STORIES
This’s the type of heat that would make anyone act like a fool. It was midday summer within the city. BO hung in the air like the humidity. I thought I was smart when I got on the bus, but it seems like everyone and their mama had the same idea. The bus was filled with sweaty heated bodies. I was lucky enough to find an empty seat towards the back.
I pushed and waved my way through people. I needed to sit down. My feet hurt so badly in my ebony heels.
My behind soon found the seat, and I took time to unbutton the first two buttons of my white blouse — I wanted to look proper, but I had no idea that dressing up would cost me all my bodily fluids.
“Well, as I live and breathe, Jones, is that you?” said an all too familiar voice.
It was the kind of voice I thought I had long forgotten. Her tone brought back bittersweet memories of four years ago.
“Jackie?” I asked, turning my head to the right.
“Been a while, Jones,” she said with ruby lips that curved into a crooked smile.
“It certainly has. How have you been?” I asked.
“Oh, so now you care about me?” she asked with one trimmed eyebrow raised.
Jackie’s smile was still there but her eyes — those hazel eyes — held an emotion that caused the air around us to get even hotter. The air grew thick as I asked, “I see that you’re still mad, huh?”
“Y’damn right I am,” Jackie said. “We grew up together. We were like sisters and then suddenly, ya left — for four years, not a letter or any contact.”
“I was —"
“Yeah, in college, I know. Had to find out from grandma — God, rest her soul.”
“I was given an opportunity,” I said. “And you know what they say about opportunity, it only knocks once.”
“Were you that desperate to run away?” Jackie asked, she turned her head away from me to look out the window — her long braids swung as she did, “Was what we had that bad?”
“We were hoodlums, Jackie!” I spoke. “A good day for us was when we got away, scot-free, from shoplifting at the corner store. A good day for us back then was when we mugged one of them rich kids from up town.” I huffed and tried to calm my rising ire. “We had broken homes, we had nothing, Jackie.”
“We had each other,” she said, keeping her gaze out the window.
Was she crying?
“Yeah, we did.” I spoke. “But how long would it have been before the streets takes one of us. Jackie, how things were going, one of us would have ended up dead.”
“That’s bull! Who brain washed ya to believe that? Huh?” asked Jackie. “Who told you that, when it was the streets that raised us!”
“Jackie, please —”
“Was it grandma? Was it one of them police officers?” said Jackie, turning her sharp gaze to me.
“I just wanted a better future.”
“Was it that old crotchy man, Mr. Philips?”
“Hey, you leave him out of this!” I finally snapped at her. “He’s a very kind man who lost a lot.”
“So, it was him,” Jackie said, kissing her teeth. “You were always a dreamer, always so easy to get them fool ideas in ya head, that old man saw that and took advantage of that.”
“He saw the potential I have in photography!” I said, “When he caught me red handed with the camera you pinched from him, he didn’t call the police, he saw those photos I took and wanted to help me.”
“What he did was saw how giddy you get over your pictures and used it to worm his way into getting something outta ya. He ain’t nothing more than a sugar daddy and he made you his sugar baby,” Jackie’s eyes glance up and down my person. “And look at ya, came back home looking like some office tart, I bet ya came back to pay him back. Carful he doesn’t die during the se —”
The sound of my hand going across her cheek made everything within the bus go silent, I still felt the heat of the day but the fire that roared inside me burned hotter. Jackie sat there, shocked that the quite meek little girl that used to follow her everywhere now bulked up and hit her.
She was silent as her hand reached up and tenderly touched the now redden cheek.
“I hoped and prayed every day when I was there that maybe one day I would see you there too!” I said, “you have talent too, I seen what you draw. We could’ve have escaped together!”
The bus slowed down, it was coming to a stop — good, I can’t be on here any longer, not with her.
I gather myself the best I could. I could feel my cheeks becoming wet. “You were right about me getting fool ideas in my head.”
I didn’t give Jackie a chance to speak. I quickly got to my feet and made my way off the bus. As I stood there on the sidewalk, wiping my cheeks, I saw a pair of hazel eyes glaring at me from within the bus. They were heated, more searing than the sun that’s beating down on me. I just wanted to visit Mr. Philps, show him that little girl he saved, is alive and doing well. I didn’t think it would become this hot mess between me and my ex-homegirl. I watched as the bus pulled off, wondering if it was the heat that made us act like that or was it just life.
Jessica Merritt studies Creative Writing at Full Sails. Jessica hails from North Carolina, when she’s not writing, she is working on her webcomics and playing video games.
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