Trapped in Forever

39 ~ The Broken Rules and Hearts

 “Watch her head.” I found myself murmuring this as I watched, my arms crossed over my chest as I stood behind the propped open door of his green station wagon, the faded moss colored paint chipping around the metal door handles, with faint rust gathering around the lock, while Orion doubled over just as he stepped off of the sidewalk, with Mikayla laying bridal style in his arms, one of her own arms dangling in the air over his forearm and the other curled on her chest, and her toes grazed against the hood of his car as he tried to ease her into the passenger seat, glancing up as he heard me speak.

A wisp of dark hair blew away from her face as he crouched down, bending his black Nike shoes at the toe, and that lock of hair briefly fluttered against his lips, sticking to his tongue as he told me, “I am.” His shoulders rolled forward, crinkling the fabric of his T-shirt, as he extended his arms, Mikayla’s body angling slightly away from him, her head wobbling away from the crook of his shoulder and to the crease of his elbow, hair tousled and dull, and gently slid her into the passenger seat, his back brushing against the side of the passenger door, rattling a few coins in the plastic pocket of the door, beside the lock and the window adjuster. Her body tilted toward the console, where three CDs in plain, orange cases sat, overlapping, the masking tape wearing and peeling off of the covers, and a half empty water bottle was wedged between the window and the dashboard, beside at least a dozen more CDs, and an ice scraper for the windshields in the winter. “There,” he breathed, leaning away from her body, his T-shirt rumpled into faint creases over the chest where she had been propped against, and he reached one of his hands back into the car to grasp the seatbelt, a yanking sound ringing over the mild traffic to my right, glints of paint catching my eye occasionally. I heard a click. “See. I told you it would be easy.”

He smiled then, as he stood up, brushing the surface of his palms against his knees, where a few pebbles of gravel had buried into the black denim, and he wrapped his fingers around the window of the passenger door, quietly, closing it with a muffled click. His eyes wandered away from me for a moment just as the azure hue of a painted school bus rumbled past us, catching the profiles of the Hispanic farmers inside through the rolled windows, one hand with uneven and dirty fingernails dangling out through the midway crack, a cigarette poised between his index finger and thumb. When I turned away from the rumbling of the old school bus, most likely on its way to Wal-Mart after a week of planting, the blue tint over the pavement disappearing, and faced him again, his arms were crossed over his chest, faintly rising the fabric of his shirt, and his lips were parting, his head tilted the side.

“Amanda,” he said, and there’s a tone of finality in his voice, an edge, one that hints of determination, and whatever the authority in his voice doesn’t say, his eyes do, because swirled into the pool of hazel hues is fortitude, like the green flecks buried beneath the shade of his iris have morphed into it. Decided on something, something probably about me. He took a step forward, gravel crunching beneath the rubber soles of his Nikes, and his arms loosened around his chest, but I’m already taking a step away from him, my foot landing on that yellow side separating the road and the sidewalk, and I’m feeling my hand around the pocket of my jeans for my keys, because whatever he has to say, I’ve already heard without the sound of his voice. Things . . . just can’t happen, and now they can’t go back either. But I felt the warmth of his palm flattening against my forearm, and his fingers coiling around the flesh, squeezing faintly, like he did with Mikayla to keep her away from the street. “Will you just . . .” His voice was laced with frustration as he gripped onto my arm, tugging me away from the direction of my Smart Car, the gleam of the tires staring longingly at me. “Stop deciding on my opinion for me, okay?”

The sole of my sneaker scraped against the pavement, little pebbles of gravel creating faint bumps beneath the heel of my foot through the sole, and I’m turned to face him, the warmness of his fingers around my bare arm slowly transforming into a tingling sensation that spread from his hand down to the tips of my fingers, where they linger in the space between us, a bitter chill numbing them. I could tell by the way he angled his face, tilting his neck toward his right shoulder, the blurred orbs of his eyes holding a pleading glint to them, as if they were begging, hoping, that I would turn my own eyes away from the vague reflection of ourselves against the gleaming paint covering the small driver door of my Smart Car, two slender, darkened figures standing there, with his arm extended between them like a bridge, and finally face him, his eyes, and his unspoken words I swore I had heard before.