Your Shoes (fiction)

Tony wanted to climb the hill and I just wasn’t feeling up to it. He looked down at my shoes, then at his sandals, and finally up to me. Without him even saying anything I took off my shoes and individually kicked them over to him. I didn’t act overly dramatic like maybe I would have a year ago. I just played it blank like the solid sea foam green walls of my mother’s living room staring at him without the inkling of any reaction. He put them on quickly and with the shame that made him look as if he was stealing them off of a dead man. I imagined him putting each one on as if his feet had fallen off and he was connecting them back to the bone. As he took off up the hill he looked younger and I thought of him now weaving the muscle back together from his foot to his leg like braiding a little girls hair.

Reaching the top he cried out, “You should really come up here the view is remarkable.”

Who said words like remarkable anyway?

“Well I would, but you have my shoes.”

“Oh yeah, Right!”

And with the word right acting as the gunshot to a race he bounced down the hill with all the gravity I could handle. Taking off my shoes and putting them in front of me he stood like a proud infant that had just shit his pants.

“Well are you going up?”

As I put on my shoes they felt heavy with mud and I tried to think of any legitimate reason why I shouldn’t, but nothing was catching.

“Of course I am,” I said reluctantly taking the first step into the thickened summer grass. Half way up I was already out of breath as I grabbed onto branches and roots pulling myself towards the top like a rusted link in a bicycle chain hooking into the next point of the gear. And at the top the view was at least notable. The town below seemed more planned out then it looked up close and I wiggled my toes inside my shoes with difficulty. They were different then they were before. The arch of his foot or maybe the way he placed his weight on his toes had slightly reshaped the shoe’s insides. I sincerely wondered how this could have happened so fast and then I…….just……..stopped……………. wondering……………………...