well it certainly has been a while.
i'm rusty, i know. :\
-x-x-x-x-x-xx-x-
Her not quite new, most definitely not old BMW sits in the parking lot next to my rotting Chevrolet pickup truck from sometime when disco balls and big, ugly hair was very very in and her Coach purse sits on the nightstand I bought at a tag sale. She's as beautiful as she ever was, and then some. Her hair is perfect, her skin is flawless, and she commands the attention of everyone present when she walks into the room.
And myself? I'm still here. I can't say much has changed since I was eighteen. I still drive the same car, still clock in 50 hours a week at the Dunkin Donuts two towns over from my pathetic little home, and it's fair to say I haven't found what I'm looking for. Still.
I think my biggest problem is I'm horrified of changing things for myself, but I want everything to be different.
We smoke cigarettes together, making a half effort to blow the smoke out the window. It's raining, but not the way it used to the nights we spent like this in Seattle. Nothing is ever quite the same as it was in Seattle.
Her knee brushes up against mine, and I think I feel her flinch. For a moment, for a handful of moments, and then slowly she relaxes, and I watch, almost in awe but not quite at the way her shoulders fall back, and then her arms uncross and the hunch in her back straightens.
I wish I knew if she was scared, if she was nervous or if she was really just wondering why she came at all. If only I could read minds. If only I knew how to read people, a social skill, among many others, that I never quite mastered, or even grazed the surface of for that matter.
I wonder if she found what she was looking for.
I mean, she has the money. She has all the money she could ever need, I'm sure. For a twenty three year old, she's doing beyond fantastic for herself. I'm sure people said the same thing about me when I was eighteen and making $500 a week, but that doesn't really mean much once rent and car insurance and food come into the picture. That actually means ramen noodles for breakfast and lunch and spaghetti o's for a gourmet dinner.
She looks so fucking beautiful.
"So do you have like, a boyfriend?"
I try my hardest not to laugh. I barely have the energy to do my laundry. I tried to keep a pet cactus, or whatever you refer to your plants as, a few months ago. It died because I didn't water it. Me, in a relationship. With another human being. That's pretty fucking funny.
"I mean, I have boys. Who are friends. Which results in occasional sloppy drunk benefits. And the crazy cat man with liver spots gave me roses last week, does that count?"
I'm not funny. I'm pathetic.
Wait, nevermind, she smiled. I think. I think that might have been a hint of a smile.
"Do you do anything besides making budget lattes and overpriced frozen breakfast sandwiches?"
"I feed stray cats and read lots of obscure books and download music that isn't on Youtube that nobody else I've ever met listens to," It's the best I can come up with.
She lights another menthol 100 cigarette and smiles, for real this time though.
"That's my Sammy, deranged as you ever were,"
That gives me warm tingles in my stomach, and I think I'm smiling but I can't exactly tell because there isn't a mirror in front of me and I'm not forcing it.
I follow her lead and light another Marlboro.
"How's work?" I ask, suddenly remembering how to start a conversation.
"It's good. It's great, actually," She tells me, taking a particularly long drag of her cigarette before she blurts out, "I absolutely fucking hate it, honestly, and I don't know how much longer I can deal with drug addicts calling me at three in the morning with their brilliant plan to get out of their possession charge,"
This reminds me of the spanish lady who opens the store I manage and calls at 4 in the morning screaming broken English at me about how there aren't any bagels thawed and she wants to be paid more. I don't tell her that though.
"I'm sorry," Is the best I can offer.
She shrugs. "It's money, I guess. It's a career,"
I can understand that too. Sort of.
"I didn't know what I was getting myself into, that's all," She finishes, and the look on her face says enough for me to know that she expects, hopes, prays, that things are going to change. Maybe I'm not completely hopeless after all.
I absolutely understand that.
Carly and I didn't end on bad terms. Not at all. The end was something that was clearly illustrated in both our heads throughout the whole strange not quite relationship and definitely not just friends phase we went through. The word phase doesn't do it justice, but neither does fling, and romance just sounds too cheesy. Relationship.. no. We were never girlfriends, there was always a space between the words, but we said we loved each other a handful of times. The kisses, the cutesy dinner dates, the sex..
Nevermind, I'm not going through this. Saying it still hurts isn't right, because she never hurt me, not the way girls hurt each other, and saying I'm still sad isn't right either because this isn't something that passes through my mind on a daily or even weekly basis, but whenever it does, it just.. gets me down, I guess.
I still firmly believe that if circumstances has allowed Carly and Sam could've worked. She had a future to chase, and I had misery to wallow in.
Circumstances just didn't allow it.
We were teenagers in love is the best I can do. We were stupid kids in love and eight months was all eternity and a big bang and another fifteen hundred years.
She stubs her cigarette out on the windowsill before she throws it down to the sidewalk, always conscious of burning forest fires or burning somebody's hair off. She pulls her hair out of it's ponytail, and she leans against my shoulder. The little baby hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
"I miss you so much,"
I didn't think about it, I don't know where it came from but all of a sudden it was out there, five stupid words I've been dying to say for so long but never had the courage to spit out, just hanging in the air like any other effortless small talk.
She doesn't say anything, not right away at least, but she doesn't shift from her position against me either.
Where did that come from.
She curls my ever unruly hair between hair fingers and I'm hyperaware of her breath against my throat, against my collarbone and my shoulders and my skin and I feel so vulnerable.
"I miss Seattle," Carly says softly, and the part of me that still hasn't learned better wonders if there's a second meaning there or not.
It's one thirty in the morning. I have to wake up for work in three and a half hours.
I fucking hate my life.
"You're always gonna be my best friend, always, always, no matter what," I tell her, and I'm more sure of this than I am of anything. "I swear,"
For a moment, she just sits there and keeps breathing on my neck and my stomach ties itself in anxious knots, but then she kisses my cheek and whispers that we should go to bed.
I'm torn, but I pull myself up from the floor, tie my hair back, wrestle my socks off with my feet, and start to mumble something about the couch having a pullout bed and the sheets in the closet, but before I finish she's curled up on my bed with me, her arm around my stomach.
She gives me kisses, up my shoulder, my neck, across my collarbones, along my cheeks until finally, one single, soft, gentle kiss on my lips and not a single thing has changed.
She settles herself back into the crook of my neck, her breathing all over me again, the knots in my stomach untie but the little hairs all over my body are still standing rigid at attention and I know better than to question this.
She's so much more beautiful than she ever was before, and I wish more than anything that she could've taken me with her. I wish she would've taken me with her. Because quite frankly, Carly Shay, sweetheart, you'll always be my only one. Always, always, no matter what, I swear.