Insomniac

Sam

☽s.11☾

unediteddd

For a boy who was as devestatingly attractive as Michael was, he sure was... introverted. But I think that's something that lurred me in even more. I was so used to loud obnoixious jeering boys-- because how could you call them men?-- but still tired of laconic cold emotionless boys. Michael struck the perfect inbetween. He was quiet and introspective yet stirring. At first glance he looked cold, but swimming just below the surface- in his eyes were so many emotions. Sometimes paired with how hot he was it was unbearable.

This was a feeling I was experiencing currently.

Tonight he had come in with damp hair fresh from the shower and a gray shirt that stretched over his broad shoulders. He was looking at me like that again. He had this-- look he gave me. It was a searching expression like he was perplexed by the plains of my face, awestruck by the slope of my nose, like he was trying to conjure up constellations in the faint freckles that were splattered across my left cheek and my nose. I called it "The Look" (so much for originality). The space between his wonderfully shaped eyebrows would crease one eyebrow turning up at the end, and he would work at chewing his bottom lip-- something I shouldn't have found so wildly attractive. But then he would lean back in his chair looking serene and keep watching me. As if he was looking for something he lost, or trying to crack a code.

I found that over the course of the past month I had allowed myself to slowly let Michael carve a place of his own in my life. And this scarred me as I looked at him looking at me from across the counter. He was something of a regular now, not just in the diner, but in my life, in my thoughts. He pervaded my mind. I would think about him more and more. Sometimes when I was cleaning down the counters as they gleamed it would remind me of the gleam of his teeth the rare times he gave me a full blown smile. I would shrug on a blue sweater and stop for a moment to think about the beryl color of his eyes.

I found myself falling in love not with him but with small things, like the way he hummed to himself while I made us coffee, or the small drawings and sketches he produced on the edges of napkins thinking I didn't see them. I fell in love with the inflections and nuances of his voice, and the charasmatic way he spoke. I found myself falling in love with all these things slowly, it was like slipping into quicksand-- I couldn't stop it-- but the difference is I don't think I would have wanted to, not then and not now.

"So how's the situation?" he asked seeming to blink out of his stupor.

We'd come to calling my hiatus with Jeff "The Situation", or he had-- personally I didn' like to talk about it, but he knew how to draw it out of me with that concerned face he made he'd get me talking and then sometimes I couldn't stop. And he'd just sit there patiently and listen quitely. He always knew the best time to stay silent, and the times to gently offer a word, but still he knew when to simply say, "Let's go beat him up."

I wiggled a little in my stool always reluctant, but then the flames from my previous fury reignited and I started telling him about how when we were at the lacrosse game the other night, I saw Jeff.

He was at the concession stand when I went to grab another drink for me and some of the guys there along with Michael (who prefers cherry coke). It was weird to see him, especially because there was a blond haired blue eyed girl sidled up right next to him, basically draping herself all over him, trying desperately to be interesting enough for the boy that busied himself with politics and the happenings of distant countries. I knew the feeling, not knowing how to possibly hold his attention, but wanting to be good enough, interesting enough-- so bad. Observing them felt something like an out of body experience. Is that what I always looked like? So sad and pathetic trying to keep his attention? I expected to be overwrought and completely strangled by fiery jealousy but oddly enough I felt only a small twinge. More angry than jealous and more sympathetic towards that girl than angry. Passive. I felt passive, I felt like I was watching two stranger because truthfully I knew a lot about Jeff (considering the whole charade of our relationship was centered around him, not heliocentric was my universe, Jeffiocentric it was) but it was only the obvious stuff. I knew he liked school. I knew his favorite color was chartreuse, and that he preferred formal wear instead of casual wear, but really were those the important things?