Trapped in Forever

14 ~ Just Listen for the Sounds of Someone Hurling into a Toliet

When I wake up the next morning—or should I say a few hours later after Orion turned to me, hands still clasped lightly together, with melting snowflakes wetting his disheveled blond hair and sticking to his eyelashes, and asked if I was cold—the strong scent of beer and pizza sauce attacked my nostrils and my eyelashes felt glued together. It took me a few moments as I tried to peel my eyelids open that I was still here, sprawled across the couch, barefoot, and with mascara pasting my eyelashes together. My head was resting against the arm of the couch, ruffling the once perfectly coiled locks of brunette hair, and the corset now smelled of cigarettes and there was a sauce stain on my chest, despite that I didn’t eat the pizza.

As my eyes adjusted to the sunlight streaming in through the parted curtains, adorned with stains as well, I took in the dozens of red, plastic cups laying around the polished hardwood floors, about a cup of beer pooling around the sideways rims, and the volume of the music had been greatly diminished with Maroon 5 softly crooning about payphones. And for every plastic cup, there was a shirtless freshman, with their forearm draped over their eyes, and their hairy or leopard bra clad chest rising slowly. A few girls had cuddled up with one of the freshmen, face nuzzled in their chest, and arms wrapped over his chest with his fingers brushing against her tousled hair with each breath he took.

As I swung my feet over the couch and onto the floor, landing my toes in between a puddle of beer and an upside down slice of pizza, I noticed that another girl was sleeping on the same couch as me, knees curled up to her chest with her heels in her lap, and a curtain of hair blocking her face. Resting on the arm of her side of the couch was a bottle of Bud Lite.

Oh, crap. The night slowly came back to me—catching Mikayla creeping out of her bedroom window and then her impromptu invitation to come with her; Kara, Reese, and Veronica and their widening, multicolored eyes when they landed on my tiger sweater and then them leading me up to Kara’s bedroom and dressing me in her Fat Clothes and sweeping black, white tipped brushes across my face; and then Orion. That bit was more of a blur than anything else, listening to The Police ringtone of his, following him out to the patio, watching his eyes fill, and then clasping my hands around his. I didn’t drink from any of the red cups but somehow, all of that just seemed so unreal, like a dream my mind thought up of while I slept beneath the safety of my navy comforter.

I swept my hair behind my ear and scanned the crowd of sleeping, shirtless, and soon-to-be hung-over freshmen for Mikayla, expecting to catch her with her back pressed against the wall, her top nowhere to be found, and a bottle or cigarette dangling faintly from her fingertips, crimped hair waving with her breathing. But then was no sign of her. Not a discarded headband drowning in a puddle of beer or one heel that my father dubbed a “pickle-stabber” as my mother frowned, deepening the creases already forming in her skin, and pressed her lips together before grumbling as she chopped vegetables.

As I hoisted myself up from the couch, the morning sun spilling over the horizon of bare tree branches with a blanket of glistening snow resting overtop of the crinkling bark, glinting in my eyes, and thought of maybe tiptoeing up to all of the topless girls and brushing their hair back with a fork or something from the utensil drawer in the kitchen, probably in the same state as the living room, until I found Mikayla, I heard faint footsteps falling on the staircase. I turned just in time to find Orion, water droplets dripping from his hair and onto a clean, unwrinkled, white T-shirt and the same pair of grass stained jeans, brushing his hair back with his hand, fingertips still pruned from showering, and as his sneakers padded down the granite staircase, his eyes met mine and he paused.

“Hey,” he whispered, glancing around the living room, eyeing each bare freshman slowly curiously, before jogging down the last three steps, kicking a slice of pizza aside and staining the side of his sneaker faintly, and sidestepped one of the sleeping drunks, holding a beer bottle against his stomach, and chin ducked as he snored, a streamer wrapped over his shoulders.