Trapped in Forever

28 ~ You're a Guy and You're a Guy in My Room

“You so owe me.”

I wasn’t expecting to find Orion, Nike clad feet planted onto our greening lawn, with the blades of brightening grass curling around the white sides of his shoes, with his neck tilted upward in the direction of my ajar bedroom window, the culminations of my translucent, white curtains seeping through the gap and fluttering in the window outside, and hazel eyes squinted with a hand propped to the top of his forehead, lips parted and teeth gleaming slightly. And I definitely wasn’t expecting to hear the hum of my Smart Car come cascading down the paved street of the Cul-De-Sac, over the sounds of the birds chirping happily in the afternoon sun, bathing in their warm baths and fluttering their feathers, and distant giggles of young children running in their lawns and using rickety swing sets, or to see a hunched Orion curled behind the steering wheel as it pulled into the driveway.

I wasn’t expecting to see the door propping open, creaking as it did, and then a denim arrayed leg to extend, a black and worn Nike falling just beneath the hem of the denim with ratty and graying shoelaces tied in a lazy, lopsided bow that coiled over the side of his shoe, or his hand gripping the side of the car doorframe as he tried to pull himself up, the door knocking back as I heard him grunt and a crunch. When he extracted himself from my Smart Car, his fingers were cupping his knee and his back was hunched, eyes scanning my house, as if this was the first time he had ever been there, feet planted on the driveway, and close enough to spot the jagged, chipping ends of the pale green paint job on the house, or that there were bird seed shells gathered around in a somewhat circular shape at the bird feeder, or that rust was gathering on the tail pipe of my dad’s car—things he would have never seen parked a block away, eyes trained on his phone, with Roxanne saying that I’ll show, that my mother was just really protective, insert eye-roll.

“Orion?” I called down, feeling the space between my recently plucked eyebrows diminish as I frowned, watching as his head flew up, hair sliding across his forehead and gathering on both of his temples as he squinted at me, the sun glaring in his eyes. “What are you doing here?” I realized, a moment too late and after the words had fallen from my second story bedroom down to him, that since he was driving my Smart Car—which he had expressed his animosity towards on multiple occasions—that he was bringing it back, from when I drove to Mo’s last weekend.

He gestured to the Smart Car, hand slipping out from beneath his denim pocket and sliding it across the air until it pointed in the direction of my Smart Car, a faint smile budding on his face.   “You so owe me,” he told me, nearly shouting the words up to me, and I suddenly remembered my mother, downstairs, watching a taped episode of Spill the Beans, probably with a cracked magazine draped over her lap, as she folded pastel towels on the couch. “Not only did I have to basically crawl into your bumper car, or spend five minutes trying to adjust your seat so that I could actually see the windshield over my knees, or endure dozens of looks from other drivers, who I might add had actual cars, but I had to hardwire your car just to get it to start!” He exhaled, finally, and his shoulders slumped underneath the fabric of baby blue shirt. “You owe me,” he repeated.

“You hardwired my car?” I forgot, momentarily, about my mother, gazing upon her adopted children on the television screen, probably wondering if Ci Reynolds and Milo Dunkin will telecast their wedding or something, and I could feel my frown increase, creases burying into my forehead.

He nodded, tilting his gaze away from my window and allowing his pupils to dilate and expand against the circle of hazel surrounding them, and his hand fell from his forehead, a strand of blond hair glinting in the sunlight falling across his forehead and the end curled toward his blinking eyes, and he dropped it to his side. At this angle, it was impossible to tell, but I swore I saw a blush creeping athwart over the skin on his neck, extending from the collar of his shirt to his blond, tousled hairline. “Yeah,” he replied, his voice lowering but nonchalant, as if he weren’t talking about popping out some kind of panel behind my steering wheel and connecting random, many-hued wires to hear the engine roar. “I’m not a carjacker if that’s what you’re thinking. My cousin Georgia had a boyfriend who taught me how to do it.”