Your love or my shoes - Camden

prompt: shoes

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Long time ago, his girlfriend got mad and threw his favorite pair of shoes over the telephone line outside their apartment. He had mourned profusely and broken up with her ten minutes later. It was just one of those things.

And it was a shame, because he actually really liked her and she was pregnant with his child, but he figured they’d never get anywhere, anyway, if she didn’t at least respect his stuff. He’d have rather had her punch him in the face then expose that pair of Nikes to the elements.

He didn’t feel guilty for breaking up with her for long, not when three more pairs of shoes joined the first pair on the day she moved out (surreptitiously, while he was at work.) He was an honest, hardworking man, and he wept like a child in the street, face tilted toward heaven, toward his beloved shoes. His boys stood around him, hands placed on his shoulders for moral support. They lost no respect for him. Those shoes were expensive.

And that was years ago. Now the streets were darker and the kids had gotten grey. The mayor boasted that they’d cleaned up the city, but none of the inhabitants in his part of town ever saw the city with the mayor’s privileged eyes. No sparkling buildings, just gum stained pavement and sickly trees that grew no leaves. It didn’t matter though; no one cared what the city looked like. He kept the same job, making pizzas for the same people. His boys stayed alive, the only family left to care about. He hadn’t thought about The Ex-Girlfriend in a while (there were many ex-girlfriends, but she was always The One) but the evening before they’d been rolling around, acting stupid in his neighborhood, when one of his boys jumped up from the roof of his car to grab a familiar-looking pair of shoes from the telephone wire.

“Hey man,” he said, “isn’t this yours?”

The kid was holding the last of the mighty pairs of shoes to survive. His former favorite pair, now beaten and torn. He felt proud as the shoes were dropped into his hands. They had withstood years of atmospheric abuse and were perhaps not so glamourous as before, but they were still intact. An utterly worthless pair of shoes really, but at least they had a story.

He thought disjointedly, back at the pizza shop, it’s kind of like my love, or perhaps my dignity. He shook his head to clear it of all the romantic bs and looked up when a woman, child in tow, entered the restaurant. She said, “hello,” in the way he always loved and he curls his toes under the edge of the counter, securing them to his feet.

He said, “hey,” and then with a smile, “what can I get for you?”