love, read, write

There was a cigarette in between his teeth—his perfectly aligned, white teeth.

It was summer. A starched, bleached, bland summer day. The heat was swaying the trees in a lazy rhythm. The sweat dragged down my sagged face languidly, like it still wanted to linger at home, on the couch under the heavenly fan whirring out the now-coveted cool, oh—cool breeze.

I wasn’t too sure he was there—then again I wasn’t too sure I was there. I could feel the sun’s teeth were sinking into my skin, mocking me as it slowly let my sanity ooze out of the scorching teeth marks. I wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody woke me up just then to tell me I had fainted on the way to Quick Check.

He was standing across the street. Was it a mirage? But mirages were the sorts that you saw or hallucinated because you wanted it—you desperately needed it. I did not need a boy.

It was appalling, almost, the way he dared to have white teeth with that ugly cigarette. Actually, he seemed to be mocking me—that was it. He was mocking me. He knew I was thinking exactly what I was thinking, and he was flashing those tantalizingly white teeth at me. Maybe the white teeth were a mirage. God knows I need white teeth.

Another wave of heat hit me then; the wind sort of sluggishly slopped around my face. I almost fell over from the stagnant current.

But he seemed completely unaffected by the heat, that boy, the way he was listlessly grinning. Heck, he was wearing jeans—in this weather? It was the hand-me-down sort. Folded at the cuffs. Nobody folded at the cuffs. Definitely hand-me-down.

His grin sort of reminded me of those southern boys—the sort you would never want to meddle with. But he had an uncannily handsome look about him that I couldn’t quite place; was it his eyes, or his nose, or his eyebrows? He wasn’t quite muscular or skinny or fat. He was avoiding any sort of conventional description, that sly boy.

The way he was grinning, though—it gave me no view into his personality. What was he? An arrogant rich kid? Well—definitely not rich. But what? I mean, each word was rolling through my head like some lethargic turtle on two hours of sleep. Words were not feeling invited to my brain that day.

He was looking at me, though; his eyes were definitely fixed upon me. What color were his eyes? Were they blue? Green? Brown? Hazel? Oh, I had a thing for hazel eyes—but I needed no boys. No boys.

What was it about him? Why did it strike me as oddly handsome, the way his folded-cuff hand-me-down jeans were drooping over his tennis sneakers stained brown, the way his hoodie said something that I obviously couldn’t read because of the sun and the scorching heat? (I hoped it wasn’t anything explicit; that would certainly lose my interest.)

(But I wasn’t interested in boys. No, I was not.)

I gave the crosswalk button a few more impatient punches before slowly turning to face the other side of the street.

A breeze reluctantly made its way up the scooped hill of the sizzling town, as if it were some sort of stroke of God. A breeze—warm, but at least not hot. It entered my left ear, whispering ice-cream before leaving through my right. Then it hit me.

By God, I realized, what a fool I am!

He was mocking me!

He knew I was not in need of any boys. So he had decided to be there.

Jesus Christ—that was it. He was mocking me. He knew I was avoiding any sort of emotional attachment.

Ice cream cravings perching its very heart at the freezer aisle of Quick Check soon dissolved away into the pollen decorating the next breeze. I needed not to cross this street. It was for another day. Ice cream cravings, I apologized, you’ll have to wait for later.

Just then the crosswalk sign turned the cordial white of a walking man.

So I walked right back home, leaving the cardboard cutout wavering in the breeze.