Some Day One Day

39

On our way to the apartment, even as tired as I was, I made light conversation with Shawn, asking him what he'd been up to because I was truly curious. He told me that after leaving the office earlier than usual that day since he'd gotten all his work done, he'd been to see Gerald for a little bit since he hadn't seen him for a while. He asked me conversationally about work and I answered with brevity, not because I didn't want to but because I was consumed fully by exhaustion
When we got to my apartment, there was a cluster of cop cars sprawled all over the parking lot. Their lights were swiveling with madness to let everyone know their presence was near.
"Damn...what the fuck..." Shawn murmured exactly what was running through my mind.
Moving slowly because our eyes were pasted onto what was going on, both Shawn and I got out of his car. I'm not sure why he got out since he didn't live here but I guess he just wanted to speculate the scenery just like all the bystanders around here were doing.
As we got out, I couldn't help but wonder why such situations always rendered people awestruck and speechless.
None of this was surprising, especially not in these parts. People should have been accustomed to it. I tried to be, and I tried to accept it as a part of my life in hopes that I'd get stronger but it still always had this ferocious power to leave me antsy, uncertain and insecure about my surroundings with hopes to find a better one some day.
An ambulance was somewhere close by and in a stretcher was a man who was blanketed by a white sheet from head to toe.
Another homicide had taken place. The last one had happened a few days ago.
The graphic stains of blood leaking and spreading onto the sidewalk made my own blood gushing through my veins run cold with fear and repugnance. I couldn't believe I had to sleep in a place like this where someone had probably been shot dead for yet another night.
Acting on instinct and without much of my doing, I stayed close to Shawn because being in close radius with him made me feel safe...and that even if anything should happen, at least I'd be by his side. Shawn assessed the scenery with a deep concentration etching his features. I remember when he used to tell me seeing things like these were what continuously heightened his ambition to work himself out of this place even though it killed him.
"What happened?" Shawn asked an old, bedraggled, homeless man who was standing beside him. I saw the man all the time on my way to work. Whenever I had a penny I'd drop it into his bestfriend of a cup. His clothes were binding and wretched, suffused with all the dirt in the world enough to make ants have a party. His teeth were yellow, the few that he had, and his stench was a punishment to one's nasal cavity. He talked too much. At first it used to give me the creeps but I realized he did it only because he was lonely and after that realization I let him be because he never did anything to harm people. In fact, he helped whenever he could. Although his mental state wasn't completely right, he was a good man. Despite all his misfortunes, he'd always been very kind to me.
All of us stood behind the cautionary yellow stripe that run along the left wing of the apartment building. Just watching the realness of the situation before my eyes made me dread staying here but knew I had no choice unless I sucked it up and trekked back to my parent's home and slept there which would be unpleasant nonetheless since the house was in muddled from my inability to care for it.
"Some youngin's got to fightin' ova dese white powder."
Shawn turned only his face to the haggard-looking man and summed up his words in one word, "Drugs?"
I'd never felt so insecure and shamed in my life as I did then when Shawn said those words. I remember the days when someone would say that word and I wouldn't feel a thing because the word held no relevance to me. It had been a stranger. Now when I heard that word, I felt ashamed and somehow exposed...even if it was just a word.
"That's right. It's killin' our community I tell ya. It's a shame. I seen these young boys grow'd up, they was friends...and now look, they killin' each other ova a green piece of paper. It's what makes the world go round dese days it seems."
Swallowing hard, I took a deep breath and walked behind Shawn and passed both him and the old man in hopes to make my way to my apartment somehow. I no longer wanted to be around anyone.
"Hey," I felt a halting hand clasp around my arm to stop me and turned around to look find it was Shawn like I'd anticipated but the confused expression on his face wasn't one I'd expected, "Where you goin'?"
"Home." I told him strangely.
With a reluctance that shocked me, Shawn let me go slowly, shoving his hand into his pocket again, "Iight."
"Well, thanks for the ride. Goodnight." I told him quickly, spun around and when I started to walk again I recognized that my feet were teetering from their unsteadiness and that my heart was pelting heavily from my unsteady breathing as I made my way through the small crowd to get to my door. I didn't want to go to my home. Not that night. Not only because staying with Shawn had spoiled me, but I just hated to be here when things like this happened.
"Wait," I heard a halting voice and looked over my shoulder to find Shawn weaving through the crowd to get to me, his hands stashed in his pockets, "I'll come with you."
I could've argued with him if I didn't feel so jittery and strange inside. The relief that his words brought flooded into me with so much potency that all I wanted to truly do was throw my arms around him and thank him but managed to keep my distance and not let emotion get the best of me. My relief was short lived because I realized that when I tried to open the door, my fingers that held my keys were yet to stop the quivering that the homicidal scene had caused.
Upon my mortification, I felt a pair of hands close over mine warmly, making me suck in a quick surprised breath. Electric sparks zipped up my hand throughout the rest of my body, making me shiver as the pinpricks sparked inside of me. The larger hand took the bunch of keys from my hand effortlessly and opened stuck it into the keyhole.
"Are you sure you wanna stay here today?" I heard the deep voice ask from behind me and tilted my head to look at Shawn who tore his eyes away from the doorknob to me after he'd opened the door.
Of course I didn't want to stay here after witnessing a dead man being carried lifelessly away on his stretcher.
"Where else can I stay Shawn? This is where I live." I told him in a soft voice as I entered my apartment, feeling the same way I felt every time I stepped into it-detached. I heard Shawn following close behind, shutting the door behind him with a soft thud.
"Let's see if anything's broken around here." Shawn said in that brave tone that always made me feel at ease as he stepped in further before me, looking around with searching eyes.
Timidly, I followed him, knowing deep down inside that I felt safer knowing that he was here with me. Quietly I watched as he checked my living room window for any damage. I was just as quiet and following just as close when he walked into my room, flipping the light on as I'd done in the livingroom.
Shawn walked with unhurried strides into the room and when he paused suddenly, I followed his gaze and froze just as he'd done and zeroed in on what had him so rigidly stricken.
For a long time I stared at the five or so holes engraved into the wall right beside my lackluster bed. Though the wall wasn't much to look at and the holes didn't do much to mar its original appearance, the fact that they didn't belong there was running rampantly through my mind. Blinking in shock and surprise, I turned to the opposite wall to find the same holes in matching areas.
My mouth fell open, but I said nothing. I spent ninety-nine point give percent of my time in my room, seated or lying on my bed-either position would've found me meeting whatever reamed through those walls nonetheless. The mere thought reminded me that had I been there, my fate would've only belonged to the 'what ifs' column of life.
I wasn't so sure what I felt at that moment, but I didn't like the feeling at all.
"Wow, these walls..." I laughed uneasily before gulping hard, clutching onto my bug tightly, "I guess secrets aren't the only things that can go through them huh."
Looking over at Shawn, I found him paled by not only shock but a tint of aversion too as he tore his eyes from the wall and glanced at me with a deep frown that he didn't even try to conceal this time.
Sighing heavily, I dreaded Shawn's soon departure and my having to sleep here by myself no matter what I feared and loathed.
It was something I had to face on my own. I tried as best as humanly possible to maintain a calm so that panic wouldn't consume me.
"Grab some clothes so that we can get out of here." Shawn said with an injunction that said there would be no fighting my way out of this decision.
I looked at him and saw the dismal look on his face as he valuated the room.
Too copiously afraid and extremely exhausted to argue, I grabbed what I could only find which was a paperbag and placed some overnight clothes in it and something for the next day since I wouldn't be going to work but working through my financial compunctions. All the while Shawn stood grounded to the floor patiently. For the first time I wasn't even bothered and nervous that he was watching my every move. Feeling his eyes on me gave me a great sense of safety and ease.
In no time Shawn was guiding me out of my place, I was locking it with a temporary relief knowing that I had to go back, and we were heading to his car past the watchful crowd.
We drove out of my apartment complex in silence because his radio was turned off as usual. My arms were folded tightly around my mid section and my fingers were clutching onto my shirt to keep them from trembling. Even if I'd gone to see Marissa, I usually left before it got way too late. Last night was the only night where I overstayed my visit. Just the mere thought of being caught in crossfire made me grimace. My entire body was taut because I was trying desperately not to shake. My teeth were clenched tightly to prevent chattering. Heavy bags sagged beneath my eyes. My shoulders ached in much need of massaging, and my back and feet felt like they'd been run over like they always did after a long day of work. Eventually trying to keep my restive body relaxed caused me more energy and I got more and more exhausted by the minute. I thought of that as a good thing because I could sleep through the trauma that I felt myself in.
Shawn had asked me if I was hungry. Mutely, I shook my head before leaning it against the window pane. Regardless, Shawn rolled through the drive-through to one of my favorite fastfood restaurants, one of the ones I wouldn't be caught dead in when I was younger in fear that I'd expand. Glancing up at the stars idly, I only heard Shawn as he placed an order of my favorite thing on the list. My eyes welled up when I realized he remembered what I still liked the most. Now at least I had a reason to keep myself from looking at him-I didn't want him to see that I was about to cry. As I gazed up at the sky, blinking away the sleep from my eyes, something fleeting, bright, and quick bolted across the nightsky, causing my heart to making my heart leap.
At that moment, I remembered the day Shawn and I had found ourselves seated at the entrance of the hospital steps, and it was sunrise...and he'd told me these very words...
Someday, one day...you'll see one and you'll make your wish.
"Oh god...Shawn!" I whispered after gasping sharply but lightly and blindly reached out until my hand clasped around his forearm where a muscle tensed beneath my touch, "...I saw it..."
"Saw what?" I heard Shawn say absently as he thanked the lady for his food.
"The star. The shooting star. I saw it." I said breathlessly.
To anyone else, I would've been a damned fool, but even though things weren't so great between us, I knew that Shawn knew what I was so awed by. Not to say that I didn't know how he would react, because lately his reactions came from so many angles I never truly knew what to expect.
Resting his head against the headrest the way he always did, Shawn stared at me with an amused glint in his eyes. That's when our eyes adhered to one another's and we stared at each other for a long time, the world around us a minuscule due to the intensity that kept on rebounding from me to him and vice versa.
God, I still loved this guy. As I stared into his eyes I knew that I would never love anyone the way I loved him. Even if I did by any slim chance let him out of my heart I would never be able to love someone with as much vigor and passion as I did him. What he'd had had been a once in a lifetime experience, it had been the highlight of our lives...my best years on this earth.
"Make a wish then." His voice was so quiet that the only way I knew what he was saying was reading his lips. Also the fact that all of this seemed so familiar, so familiar to the past-when we were seated on the steps of the hospital where Angie was bedridden, and he'd told me to look for the shooting star before it was too late but I didn't believe that shooting stars existed, and he'd told me that sunset and sunrise were his favorite time of the day and that I need not ask him why.
All of this just felt so familiar to the past that I felt I knew what he was going to say in the shortcoming future.
It was strange because I'd never felt that way with anyone else in my life.
As foolish as I felt, I shut out Shawn's beautifully dark eyes as they watched my every move and shut my eyes to make my wish.
I wished that...someday, one day, maybe, I wouldn't feel so alone and that I could hopefully find that person that person that had once taken my loneliness away again.
My eyes opened before I let the wish take form due to the realistic thought that some wishes, some hopes and some dreams were just too farfetched for them to happen on that one day people always thought was fated for them.
My day had come and passed and I'd ruined it.
My heart stopped when I opened my eyes and saw Shawn gazing at me through heavy lidded, smoky eyes. Then my heart spurred into action when Shawn spoke.
"What did you wish for Beyonce?" He'd asked me, his voice husky but quiet.
"Why are you always trying to get up in my business?" I told him words that drifted from the memory fraction of my brain. The faint smirk that lifted Shawn's lips said he knew exactly where I'd gotten those words from.
My heart distended and I suddenly had this pressing urge to cry.
"I," I swallowed the knot in my throat hard and looked down at my lap where my purse was, "I don't believe in wishes...anymore."
The car was quiet for a while.
"It's been a long time since we both agreed on the same thing huh."
Shawn's words brought my eyes up to his and I couldn't tell whether he was frowning since I'd revealed the glassiness of my eyes or frowning because of his own woes.
A sudden, horning blare jolted Shawn and I from our trance. Reflexively we both looked behind us to see that we'd been holding up a long line at the drive-through.
"Oh goodness. Shawn look at what you did!" I reproached playfully.
"Me?" Shawn scowled at me as he switched the car to drive, "You the one talkin' about make believe shooting stars and shit."
"Whatever." I laughed as my tired body would allow, "I saw that star. If you didn't stare at me as much as you did maybe you would've caught it." Again, I'd pulled a phrase from the past and at Shawn's smile, my heart warmed so much that I felt tears afflicting my eyes again but blinked them away.
"I don't stare at you ma. The fuck you talkin' about?"
"You stare at me all the time." I heckled despite the fact that whenever he stared at me I became nervous. Shawn scoffed.
"I think you on that hallucinatory shit." Shawn said with a small smile of his own as he drove us out into the main road.
"Look who's always talkin' about fifty cent words. Hallucinatory?"
"Whateva yo." Shawn mumbled as he furled his lips trying to squelch his smile. No matter what he did I would always detect whenever he was blushing and he was doing it now.
"I guess you weren't lying when you said you'd seen one when we were on the hospital steps. Had you?" I asked him, readying myself to elaborate the distant memory because he might've not remembered.
"Yeah I saw one." Shawn clarified with a nod.
"What had you wished for?" I asked him curiously.
"Niggas don't make wishes."
"Whatever. What was it? You never told me."
"And I probably never will."
"You idiot," I fisted my hand over my mouth to close out a yawn, "You just admitted that you did make a wish. But you just wait Shawn. One day I'm gonna find out. Before I leave this earth you're going to tell me what you wished for."
"Is that what you wished for or something?"
"What?"
"That I tell you what I wished for?"
"Ugh. Stop it," I laughed softly, "You're going to make me hate that damn word."
"What word?" he asked confusedly.
"Wishe-ugh shut up." I swatted him for making me fall into the trap of saying the word that began to give me a headache.
As he rolled to a stop, Shawn smirked smugly at succeeding in confusing me and I trembled all over as wave after wave went cascaded through me. Damn, why was he the only guy with this kind of effect on me?
The car had grown quiet, but for the first time since four years ago, the silence was the most comforting silence I'd felt since.
Moistening my lips, I stared sightlessly out the window at the stars again.
"Shawn?" I called out to him softly, my eyes still latched to the sky.
"Sup?"
"That wish you made when we were younger...whatever it was...did it ever come true?"
The car was quiet, and it began to move again when the light changed, but I kept my eyes pinned to the nightsky nonetheless. I wasn't surprised that he hadn't answered me. Him answering would've been the surprise.
And he did in fact surprise me.
"Yeah." He said tersely, and my heart started to beat in anticipation because I didn't think he was done with everything he had to say.
"But it didn't last." he continued.
"What happened?" I'd asked after the steady sound of tires rolling over tarmac got too loud.
Shawn was quiet for a moment, and I knew it as a hesitant kind of quietude.
"Part of it left." Shawn said and pain returned to my heart from the anon vacation it had taken. I knew that this was one of the few times when he didn't want to intentionally hurt me. I wasn't even hurt by him.
I was hurt by life.
Uppermost in my mind though was the wonder of what he meant that part of 'it', whatever it was had left.
Had he kept it?
Thrown it away?
I was afraid to ask. Afraid that his answer would be the later.
"I guess it's cause nothing lasts forever..." I told him instead in a whisper.
Shawn didn't argue with my comment because, well, it was the truth.
I used to tell him that along when we were younger, when he would lose hope for having any future. I'd tell him that no situation lasts forever and that he'd one day no longer have to live the way he used to.
"Aye."
Shawn's voice brought my eyes to him. I sucked in my bottom lip and watched his handsome features shimmer as we drove through a tunnel foisted with red-orange lights.
"Why don't you believe in wishes anymore?"
His question had caught me so off guard that I didn't answer right away. He always, always did have a knack for remembering everything that I said and it always shocked the hell out of me.
When he turned towards me briefly for my answer, my cheeks flushed more than before and I dropped my eyes in embarrassment.
Wringing my hands together, I tried to decide whether to tell him or not.
I told him.
"Cause they'll never come true." I murmured quietly.
"Why do you say that?"
"None of them have." My remark made the car opt to some more silence. I began to feel pitiful, thinking dismally that Shawn probably thought I was still an attention seeker who wanted sympathy, but that wasn't the case.
I was about to tell him that when he beat me to it by speaking first.
"Aye quit sounding like an old ass woman. You still got time. Anything can happen, and it usually happens when you least expect it anyway. If you really want it badly-"
"You work hard for it." I dipped in just in time for us to say it synonymously. Although his face was plastered towards maneuvering through the traffic, I could see the startled expression on his face before he nodded faintly.
"Yeah...so never say never...just workhard for whatever you want and you got it."
My insides fluttered and I suddenly felt light inside, like a depressing, dark weight had been lifted. I hadn't felt that way in so long, even since before my parents past away.
I could've said that what he was saying were just tired clichés and hopeful words, but his words were very true and he was the perfect example to show for it.
His mother had once said that he would never amount to anything...
And turns out, he'd amounted to everything.
In my eyes at least.
I wasn't so sure he felt the same way about himself.
~0~0~