Giddy

Problem #4 - Cologne

On a Thursday, I wore a long-sleeved shirt that clearly wasn't enough to keep the cold air from hitting my skin.

After a long couple weeks, I finally sat with this one group of friends I hadn't sat with in a while, but it was only because my other friends went to some club that I didn't really want to go to.

So there I was, feeling awkward around them after being gone for so long. They sat in a circle in the grass of our school's quad. I decided to fill in a huge gap that was left open after someone moved to sit in the middle of the circle.

Again, just for the extra emphasis, I felt really awkward.

"Hi Josh." I started as he suddenly took a place on my right. "How are you?"

He proceeded to tell me he was bored.

I tried my best not to freak out so much internally: about how close he sat next to me, or just the simple fact that he sat next to me.

He normally went to bother this other girl that we all assumed he liked. Looking in her direction, I noticed how she didn't even look up from her device, as per usual. I never expected him to come by me. So I averted my gaze to glance at Josh, trying hard not to reveal my disbelief.

He was being pulled back and forth between his other friends and my side. They would call for him and at first ignore them. When they called him again, he would turn and quickly be up on his feet to go to them. On one occasion when he returned, he was carried over by maybe around three or four guys and laid onto the grass, face down, by my side.

"What do you think of my friends?" He asked, straightening himself up in a sitting position.

I told him that what they did was mean.

"I don't care." He responded.

For some reason, I felt a pang in my chest, like some strange force had just struck my heart. I did not like hearing those words.

"I'm not allowed to have a Snapchat but I have one anyways. I don't care." He continued a conversation with Katie who was also a part of the circle.

Again, another pang.

I so badly wanted to tell him to say otherwise. I wanted to change that mentality in him. But I was defeated.

He asked me if I was cold. I fibbed and told him I would be fine, but he insisted that he would give me his flannel. I eventually succumbed to the cold and asked him to go grab it. He told me he'd be right back and was going off to his locker.

For the short time he was gone, which felt like ages, my thoughts were flooded from the problem I wrote of before this. How did he recognize that I was cold? I was actually trying my best to suppress that fact. However, he was somehow able to catch on to my stiffened and tight shoulders as I rubbed my wrists together; the only one who had ever offered me warmth was him. My heart continued to flutter in his absence and as best as I could I tried to listen in on someone's, anyone's conversation. Then I met the gaze of Katie beside me and I saw the confusion and speculation in her eye.

Then he returned with the plaid fabric in hand that would soon come to be in my possession. I thanked him as I put it on. The fabric was exquisitely soft and I knew my obsession with the flannel would begin.

My fingers undid the buttons, and I fumbled a bit since they were on the opposite side of women's button ups. Opening it and draping it around my shoulders, I attempted to slip my arm into a sleeve. Instead, I got my fingers caught in my hair as I did, which was extremely embarrassing for me. I was even putting it on slowly, with great caution, because I didn't want to ruin it in any way. Of course he wouldn't care, but it mattered just that much to me.

But I was so distracted;

I was distracted by our knees touching.

I was disrtracred by the cologne, his cologne, on the collar.

That is the story, and thus was born my poems Cologne and You Should Care.

That's problem number four.