Trapped in Forever

24 ~ Obstructed Heart-Lines

“Okay,” Orion said, craning his neck slightly in my direction as we sat in the front seats of his station wagon, parked in one of the empty parking spaces in front of a convenience store, the flickering, bright light filtering out through the windows and landing on the pavement beside our doors, and with empty, gooey ice creamer sandwich wrappers laid out on the console behind our sodas—a Sprite for him, and a Diet Coke for me—with the gray and green caps somewhere on the floor by our feet, and he reached his free hand forward and cranked up the volume, the composition increasing and pulsating against my shin through the speakers on either of the doors. “This is my favorite part.”

I nodded, taking another bite of my Tollhouse ice cream sandwich, feeling the trickle of the white, vanilla ice cream run down my hand and drip onto my jeans as I listened to what Orion proclaimed was the best Dark Knight score, ever, and insisted I listened to it, already popping open the unmarked CD casing and placing the bare, reflective disc inside. The sounds of the other instruments began to fade, abruptly disappearing from existence, and I imagined Hans Zimmer waving his baton and gesturing them silent, revealing the intense strum of the cellos, vibrating the speakers against my denim clad leg every other second, and I could hear the faint sound of a drum in the background accompanying the cellos, and I smiled. Out of the corner of my eye, bright teeth sunken into his half-eaten ice cream sandwich, I could see the grin blooming on his face.

“See,” he said, before I had a chance to say anything or to even do anything other than turn to him, smile a little wider, and swallow my ice, while he talked around his in his mouth, giving me unattractive glimpses of white ice cream piled on his pink tongue, and gestured to the radio below the digital clock, reading 3:36 a.m.. “I didn’t realize it until after I gave you that CD, but I’m not a Hero wasn’t on there, even though it’s the best score.”

I shrugged, halfheartedly, fighting the urge to smile that tugged on the muscles of my cheeks, as I licked the ice cream off of my sticky hand—after the last couple of vanilla dribbles down my fingers, I had lost all sense of politeness my mother had tried to install within me with stern glances and firm, short sentences and began to lick my hand instead of inquiring about a napkin, possibly crumbled up beneath piles of CDs in the glove compartment—when I saw his eyes widening slightly. “I don’t know,” I told him, watching as his blond brow furrowed while he chewed. “I really like Agent of Chaos.”

Orion scoffed, or he tried to anyway. He was still chewing and nearly sent his mouthful of crushed vanilla ice cream and chocolate chip cookie spewing out onto the steering wheel and dashboard, covering himself with a fake cough, bringing his bare arm up to his mouth and pressing it against his lips until he could recover, a faint blush creeping up on his neck. “Agent of Chaos,” he said, turning back to me and setting his hand back on the wheel, leaving it laying there limply, thumb running across the seam, “may be a good ’track but it’s no match for I’m not a Hero.”

“You’re wrong, Mathers,” I told him, feeling a sudden boost in confidence—one big enough to call him by his last name, anyway—and I attributed this to the intrepid, intense, and stagy music surrounding us and probably bursting our eardrums bit by bit.

He rolled his eyes at this. “Believe what you want, Rose,” he replied, the words rolling off his somewhat ice cream clad tongue with a teasing tone to them, a similar glint in his eyes as he took the last bite of his ice cream sandwich and then crumpled up the yellow, Tollhouse wrapper, and tossed it at his feet. He was still smiling, even though it was at his feet, and the pinkish blush to his neck had faded beneath his collar, and his fingers were drumming along to the beat against the material of the steering wheel where the colored had stonewashed away from his fingers’ grasp.