Orange juice. Those were the first two words you ever said to me. Isn't it funny how I can still hear it in my mind exactly the way you said it after all this time? Your voice proud and demanding, but still turning up softly at the end of your question like you weren't quite sure your request would be met. I can still picture you there in my kitchen, wearing a stained white t-shirt and dirt stained Levi's, looking like this was the last place in the world you expected to be and at the same time like you couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
Leaning stiffly against the towel rack, you looked as bored and unassuming and exhausted as any one person could ever look. I didn't know it was possible for someone with bloodshot eyes to look as in control as you did. It was three weeks after my twentieth birthday and I was still under the impression that I was in control of my world. My life. My destiny.
So when I saw you, I didn't stutter or blink my eyes stupidly, wondering how on earth Ebony or I could have left the door unlocked long enough for a homeless person to wander in. Instead, I took a deep breath and went with the flow, something that was quite uncharacteristic of me. I was a Journalism major at the time and I immediately had a strong hunch that I could get something newsworthy out of you. After all, my teachers had always taught me that the best stories, the best people, are the ones who find you.
I gestured for you to sit down at the table. You remember the one I'm talking about, right? It's got the blue chipped paint with the tiny flower that you drew on yourself months later. My back was turned to you as I quickly grabbed two glasses and the half empty carton of orange juice. For a second, I had a wave of regret and anxiety wash over me as I wondered if I had just made the single greatest mistake of my life in not throwing you out.
What do I say? I thought. My hands shook as turned around and walked back to the table. Should I ask him how he got in? Would that be rude? Am I being crazy right now? Should I just leave the room, lock myself in the closet , and call the police?
But there was something about you that made me pause. Your aura maybe. I didn't feel like I was in danger. There were a few warning bells going off in my head sure, but nothing in my gut was telling me to run. As you know, any good journalist has only one true thing they can rely on: their gut instinct. At that moment my gut was telling me two things: 1) that you must have a really crazy story for how you managed to find your way into my kitchen and 2) that you were not someone to be afraid of. My gut instinct is never wrong, and it was never wrong when it came to matters of you.
No, I thought shaking my head silently. You're just overreacting. It's just a boy. A boy...Oh!
And that's when it dawned on me. How I had not realized it sooner embarrasses me still to this day, but give me some credit it was quite early in the morning. Ebony. My lovely, overbearing roommate. You were hers. Not a homeless man, but one of Ebony's infatuations. Oddly, the latter felt worse to me than the former.
I silently handed over the carton of orange juice and watched in surprise, as with one big gulp you finished the entire thing. My mouth dropped open in shock. I couldn't believe the nerve you had. I would never have been able to be so brash in a stranger's house. Chugging it straight from the carton seemed almost barbaric. But somehow, it suited you.
You weren't exactly put together the first time I saw you, if you remember correctly. Not a very good first impression I might add. Besides the painfully obvious stained t-shirt, your shaggy shoulder-length brown hair was in complete disarray with parts sticking up every which way. And it looked to me like you were halfway to growing a beard.
I could see why Ebony had been drawn to you. She liked the hipster types. The twenty somethings with flannel shirts and RayBan sunglasses, who always felt like they had something to prove. I on the other hand liked the clean, tapered cut men of the world. The ones on Wall Street in exorbitantly priced Hugo Boss suits. The ones who made you feel important by just being in their proximity. I liked how powerful they were, and in return how powerful they made me feel. They had beaten the odds. They had fought the wars and won. They had achieved everything they had aspired to be, and I couldn't have been more enchanted by them.
You, on the other hand, were messy. One look at you, and the word 'broken' echoed over and over again in my mind. Your eyes as sad as they were blue. You were a mess. A lovely, beautiful mess. But a mess nonetheless. Tate, this is the story of how I came to love you and how I in turn became a mess too.
