Trapped in Forever

50 ~ One Missed Call

“You want to dance?” he asked, bemused, as his eyes averted from mine briefly and into the living room, where the coffee table had been moved out onto the patio deck, with one of the Taste of Home magazines lying on the wooden planks beneath it, the cover vibrant with bright fruits fluttering in the breeze, and a wooden bowl of wax fruit was had overturned and a faux orange rolled across the ground, and where the throng of people grinded against each other, denim against denim, chest against chest, lips against exposed skin, composed mostly of seniors with hands that traveled beneath the fabric of shirts and up and down the chest and sides of each other. As he looked at them, at how they were so crammed together, their shins pressed against the material of the beige couches, a docked iPod resting on the mantel of a cobblestone fireplace, a glowing image of an album cover over the screen, I stepped closer to him, feeling the click in my heels as I neared him, smelled that now faint scent of icing sugar, mostly concealed by what I realized was cologne. It smelled weird on him, like it was meant for someone older, someone who wanted to impress or to linger in the minds of others, not like someone who did “sound stuff” and just wanted to slink off into the background, like I was sure he wanted to. When a girl tried to move past him, clutching the fingers of a boy with his hair gleaming with gel and looked hard to the touch, and headed toward the stairwell, he murmured, “Excuse me” and stepped forward, away from them, and into me.

When he felt our bodies touching, my breasts brushing against the lower part of his chest, his thigh grazing against my hip, and I felt the warmth of his fingers instinctively on my upper arm, his middle and ring finger over top of the maroon fabric while his thumb and index finger rested against my bare sin, he looked down and for a moment, I saw that hazel pool in his eyes disappearing into the circular blackness of his pupil, and for a moment, I wondered if he could see down my shirt from his height. I tried to smile at him, even though the tingling warmth from his fingertips from his one hand, on my arm, and his other hand, which seemed to flutter everywhere, brushing against my skirt and then, after a few seconds, my stomach and he pulled his hand back just as his knuckles grazed against the skin, I felt that eruption of butterfly wings and I wonder if the reason he pulled his hand back so quickly was because he felt them.

“Wow, you’re—uh—we’re . . .” he said, and he promptly shoved his free hand into the pocket of his jeans, and then, hazel skipped from below my face—I wasn’t sure if he was looking at either my breasts brushing against him when either one of us breathed or at my neck, a platonic zone—to his hand on my arm, and he pulled that away too, but used his fingers to rake through the maze of blond hair on his head, and even those strands of gold looked frazzled and awkward.

I tried to smile at him again, tilting my chin up at him, inhaling that mingling scent of icing sugar, drifting in memories of idling in Mo’s kitchen with him and that scent the room harbored, and of the cologne that whiffed strong now, but I felt a familiar ache of disappointment as he stepped back, a rush of cool air flooding into the space between our bodies now, mine still tingling where his had grazed and brushed, and I stepped back too, hearing my words murmured those my head. Do you want to dance? I had asked him, and I wanted to shake my head at myself, to roll myself, to play the part of my mother or of Roxanne, who would flip her blond hair over her shoulder as she fiddled with the volume knob to her car stereo, Michael singing over her voice as she replied, briskly, that she told me so. That no one chooses Amanda, or even Mandy, over Roxanne, even if she was gone forever. My brazenness coasted away from me and I didn’t try to grasp it back, hold it close, and instead, I let it go, let it drift into that living room with scantily clad seniors and college freshmen and allowed them to have it.

Maybe brazenness was something only beautiful girls could own and be accepted for it, who could be desired for it, while everyone else—or, at least, me—began to realize that brazenness for us really just meant foolish wistfulness.