Second Hand (Tucker Springs) Read Online Free PDF

school, and everything went downhill from that point on.” Looking back, I wondered if she’d decided right then that I’d never be good enough. Maybe she hadn’t even quite been aware of it herself, but I was pretty sure she’d never felt the same about me after that.
    “She’s one of those people who grew up playing tennis, you know? And golf at the country club. And she wants that life, but she wants to be an artist too, which means she has to marry well. And I no longer qualify. So now I’m stuck here, with eighteen months left on a lease in a house where I can’t have pets. Every credit card I have is maxed out because she had to have every damn thing she ever saw. I still have student loans to pay back, which I can’t help but think would be less or already taken care of if we hadn’t been so busy paying for everything she wanted. And for some goddamn stupid reason I can’t even explain to myself, I still want her back.”
    I tipped my drink back and gulped it all down. I didn’t look at him. I set the glass on the table and stared at it rather than face whatever might be in his eyes. “That’s why I bought the necklace.”
    He was quiet, but after a few seconds of contemplative silence, he took his foot off the table. For one second, I thought he was going to stand up, but he didn’t. He crushed his cigarette butt out in the ashtray between us, then leaned his elbows on the table to stare at me. “You know what the root of all evil is?”
    I blinked at him, trying to figure out where he was going with the question. “Money?”
    “No, man. It’s stuff . Possessions. Things . All that crap money buys. All the shit we tell ourselves we need. You have any idea how many people come into my shop every week and they got to trade in some gadget so they can pay the rent? The thing is, you ask them, ‘Did you know rent was due?’ Of course they did. ‘Did you realize you didn’t have another payday between now and then?’ Yeah, they knew that too. ‘So why’d you decide to drop five hundred on an iPad?’ And they don’t got an answer, and if they do, it’s something ridiculous. It’s new. It’s hip. It’s shiny. It’s loud. Their neighbor has one, or their sister, or their boss, and they can’t stand to let others have things they don’t. They’re so afraid of what others might think. Their kid is sitting there in a dirty diaper and a T-shirt two sizes too small. Thirty degrees outside and they didn’t bother to put pants on the poor kid, let alone socks and a jacket, but they drove right down to Best Buy the minute it opened to buy the newest Xbox, and now they’re scratching their heads wondering why they can’t pay for heat.
    “You fell into it, Paul. Into the mindset. Into the lie. But it’s not just you. Not just Stacey, either. It’s almost every other red-blooded American out there. Now you’re at the end of it, and you can’t beat yourself up. There’s no point in punishing yourself, because it’s over. The thing is, now you know the way out.”
    “I do?” I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or him that had me confused.
    “Yeah.”
    I sat there, stunned, baffled, a bit amused. I had several questions I wanted to ask, not the least of which was, What the hell are you talking about? What I ended up saying was, “Why are you doing this?”
    “Doing what?”
    “Hanging out with me. Buying me drinks.”
    “Is it that much of a mystery?”
    “Kind of, yeah.”
    A ghost of a smile played over his full lips. He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re not worried about the fact that I brought you to a gay bar?”
    Alarm bells went off in my head, but I chastised myself. Surely he was just teasing me. “Should I be?”
    This time he really did smile, a mischievous one that caused butterflies to take flight in my chest. When was the last time somebody had bothered to flirt with me? Even as a joke?
    Emanuel slid one of his two untouched beers my way. “Here,” he said as he