Nothing Left To Say

High Hopes

(Inspired by a story told to me last night. Even if you don't read, listen to the song.)

(Kodaline) High Hopes // In a Perfect World

“It almost looks like a football from up here, I think.”

I nod, fighting through the darkness to follow the path of his finger as he draws the city’s outline: the murky, burnt-orange outskirts, the swells of lights from big-box shopping centers, the red and yellow lines of the In n’ Out sign—perhaps the only restaurant still open in this sleepy, god-forsaken little town. Sitting on what feels like the top of a mountain, being able to see the beginning and the end of my hometown and watching the red and white headlights of cars cutting through it—all of it feels so bizarre.

If I spread my arms wide enough, I can envelope every nook and cranny of where I grew up: the soccer stadium, the trashy Kmart where I scampered around in ski masks and spelled dirty words with letter magnets, the bridges framed by overgrown trees above a river I hopped a fence to play by. 

‘I hope you’re okay with trespassing,’ he told me only a half hour or so earlier, his eyes catching mine in the dim light of his car, hand still hovering over the stick shift. I am okay with it, especially since our intentions are harmless and—aside from the whole trespassing thing—very much legal. But more likely than not, I would’ve said yes had I been scared half to death of meeting my doom at the hands of bored police officers with nothing better to do than patrol a privately owned hillside at 10pm. 

Now we’re sitting on a boulder overlooking what feels like the whole world, but what is really no more than a few square miles of a suburban town nestled in a lovely, cozy valley. We’re making occasional conversation: ‘I broke my arm falling out of a tree,’ ‘I got lost for four hours not far from here while drunk after swimming in a pool fully clothed,’ ‘The best part of college is that you get to eat whenever you want. Seriously.’ 

We’re jerking our heads behind us as the wind whistles between tree leaves and sticks crack and scuttle against the dirt, and we’re laughing as the newest wave of panic brought on by those ghostly noises washes away and falls down the cliff side. 

I’m staring at his shoes because for some ridiculous reason, the fact that he wears shoes I like is important. (Never mind that his whole damn outfit is perfect.) Sometimes I’ll let my eyes drift across his face, the full moon catching in the reflection of his glasses as I think for the tenth time tonight that this can’t possibly be happening. 

I exhale at the same time a shiver coasts down my spine, and so my breath catches in the cool air and he turns to me, asking if I’m cold. I say yes, but not uncomfortably so. In the back of my mind I add on that I’d be warmer if he’d put his arm around me, if he’d hold my hands, but I don’t know how to be forward, and I’m not sure if I want to be. More likely than not, the concept that there can be too much of a good thing has earned some merit. If he were to reach for my whitening fingertips, if he were to shift onto my half of the rock and let me put my head on his shoulder, if the scenery before us became romantic instead of serene, well, then it might be too hard to come back to earth.

It’s been almost five hours since he picked me up, since I pretended to be organizing CDs in my car because I didn’t feel like explaining to my parents why my little brother’s friend’s older sibling and I were suddenly hanging out. I didn’t want to tell them that after years of polite greetings and occasional sightings, one drunken encounter at a party had turned into drunken texting, which turned into a drunkenly scheduled dinner that had somehow broken through the next morning. I also didn’t want to invent a less incriminating story.