Trapped in Forever

23 ~ The Bitter Taste of Wordlessness

A/N: Hi, lovelies! I just have a little question for you all. Do you prefer night updates or day updates? Okay, that's it! Enjoy! :)

Maybe the beige, wicker basket in the backseat of his station wagon, resting overtop of the empty, black and red seatbelt buckles and the gray seats where old, gleaming strips of thick duct tape was placed over the holes in the fabric where I knew yellow form would seep out of and sneak into the crevices of the seats where crumbs also laid from the various burgers, fries, and candy bars that had been eaten during the long road trips over highways I imagined he took, with a Buffalo Bills hoodie draped over the back of the seats, bright blue and yellow, filled with polychrome articles of clothing should’ve been a tip-off as to where we were going but when he pulled into the local Laundromat, greenish lighting flickering onto the dark pavement surrounding the building, I was surprised.

“Come on,” he said, gripping the gearshift and cranking it toward and resting it at P for Parked, and then he twisted the key in the ignition until the gentle hum of the engine died away,  fading into the cold air, and he slipped the key ring into the pocket of his jacket. His fingers grasped around the door handle and he pushed it open, swinging the door open until it tittered to a stop, and he climbed out. A second later, as I pressed my thumb down on the red buckle of my seatbelt, he opened the backseat and reached for the wicker basket. My cheeks reddened, although luckily this was hidden by the dark, black sky and the strands of brunette hair that fell out from behind my ears and lingered around my cheeks, as I caught a glimpse of his black and gray Calvin Klein’s tossed carelessly in the basket.

The local Laundromat was a small building with a large, paved, and black parking lot it shared with The Iceberg, usually packed in the summer evenings with softball teams, clad in neon jerseys and beige hats with sweaty strands of hair poking out through the rim, teenagers in undersized denim shorts with the white pockets slipping out from the hem of the shorts on the butt, gathered together in one of the white tables either up on the porch of The Iceberg or down on the ground a couple feet away from the shared parking lot, the girls giggling as they liked their non-fat ice cream and the guys releasing deep chuckles as they devoured the cone, and women in their fifties, wearing long, gray cardigans, stopping to do their laundry with ratty magazines tucked under their arms as they dragged their baskets into the mat with grim expressions on their faces.

Flickering, green tinted light shone through the rectangular lighting fixtures attached to the gray ceiling tiles above the faded white washing machines that aligned the wall on one side of the dark green walls and the drying machines on the other side, and fell through the window panes on either side of the door with a neon OPEN sign hanging over the pane smudged with fingerprints, with the letter N at the end of the word broken and dull, a stark contrast from the brightening, red letters before it. Inside, as I could see through the window, there were orange chairs lining the back of the Laundromat, with discarded purses, jackets, magazines, and text books lying in the seats, with a lone woman sitting there on the second to last chair, her pajama clad legs crossed with a pair of UGG knockoffs adoring her feet, and she was knitting what looked like a scarf, dangling beside her thigh, and she looped the yellow yarn through her long needles, before glancing at the washing machine a few feet away from her, and then turned back to her yarn.

The muffled sounds of the soles of our shoes hitting against the faded gray pavement, bright yellow streaking straight lines down the coarse concrete to form the vacant parking spaces, with a couple of handicap signs stabbed into the ground in front of the building, light spilling out onto the bright strips to create space between the handicap space and the regular, narrower parking spaces, were the only sounds I could hear, sans the distant honking of horns and the rumble of semis, as we walked across the pavement, my hands shoved into my pockets and his gripping the sides of his wicker basket, accidentally dropping a sock onto one of the yellow parking lines. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled when he saw me reach down and grasp it by the hem, wondering just how dirty it was, and I felt a smile coil around my lips in return as I picked it up.