Trapped in Forever

40 ~ Clinging to the Hearts of Sailors

“Morning.”

Orion was in the process of running his hand through his golden tresses, tousled and blond locks on either side of his head are sticking up in points above his ears, and there are red sheet creases printed across his left cheek, and his eyes are still faintly squinted, dark lengthy eyelashes mere centimeters away from each other, and hazel blurred by blinking. His voice was hoarse, with an edge of gruffness, as he greeted me, his one hand wrapped around the doorknob, and the other grasping the handle of a dark emerald mug, steam and the heavy scent of coffee beans drifting from the rim, and he wore a lazy, sleepy smile on his lips. He was wearing a wrinkled, white T-shirt that fit snugly against his biceps and fluttered over his stomach with the breeze accompanied me through the opened door over, and a pair of navy, striped pajama bottoms that looked an inch or two too long, the hems of the stripped material beneath his bare heels. Behind him, I heard the muffled sounds of the gargling of a coffee machine and the faint strumming of guitars.

“Hi,” I said, feeling my the tips of my fingers tingling in the frosty May morning air as I subconsciously wiggled them in a slight wave beside the denim of my jeans over my thighs, and he smiled, tilting his mug of his coffee a little higher in the air, disrupting the pattern of coiled steam over the rim, like a coffee scented halo. He dropped his hand by his side, off of the doorknob, and then, as if it was a second thought, reached his hand out again, curling his fingers around the neck of the bronzed doorknob, and pulled it open further, the bottom of the door sweeping across the hardwood surface of the floor, beige patterns of shoeprints lingering on the dark surface. There was no Welcome mat. “I didn’t wake you up or anything, did I?”

He shrugged halfheartedly, the white fabric of his T-shirt rolling down his bicep as he leaned forward to shut the front door, his bare foot disrupting one of the shoeprint outlines formed in the dried, dusty dirt by the edge of the door. “If it wasn’t you,” he told me, his voice slowly morphing from hoarse and gruff to that normal, open tone I was used to hearing coming from his lips, as the door clicked shut, the handle jingling, “then it was going to be them.” He lifted his hand off of the round surface of the doorknob, curled his fingers into his palm, and pointed his thumb, jabbing it in the direction of the hallway, where the strumming of the guitar grew slowly louder, and a muffled voice accompanying it.

A low, husky voice traveled through the kitchen, with a white, grease stained pizza cardboard box resting haphazardly on the counter, the top askew, and a crumpled napkin rolled into a ball on top, and then drifted into the corridor where we stood, the damp scent of an early May morning lingering on our clothes, the strum of guitars chords following it, slow but reiterating, repeating the same melody over and over again. Orion smiled sheepishly as he saw my eyes traveling away from him, as he lifted his elbow in the air, the point tilted toward the ceiling, and ran his fingers through the golden hair on the back of his head, and toward the small visible part of the kitchen I could see through the door-less hallway opening, white counter tiles cluttered with different sets of keys, the jagged, copper teeth all pointing into different directions, and paper plates, with orange grease pooling around the rims, one with the beige crust still left on the surface. A jacket, with the corner of the Buffalo Bills logo, was draped across the end of the counter, a lighter rested on top.

“Do they do this every morning?” I asked, turning my gaze away from the Bic lighter overtop of the gleaming fabric, and toward him, his arm falling to his side and his feet shuffling against the hardwood flooring as he walked, the hem of his pants still curled beneath his heel.

He nodded, glancing over his shoulder as he continued to amble down the hallway, the striped pant legs of his pajamas fluttering as he walked, waving back and forth, like a hand saying goodbye, because your lips just couldn’t. “Yeah, pretty much,” he replied, as his foot landed off of the hardwood flooring and onto the kitchen tiling, checkered black and white tiles beneath our feet, running from the pale green walls of the kitchen until they stopped at the white cabinets below the countertop. He reached for the corner of the cardboard pizza box, the rolled napkin rolling across the lid and grazing against his thumb, and he began to stack the emptied, stained paper plates on the lid too, swiping them off of the counter, the orange grease tumbling. “Sorry, this place is such a mess,” he mumbled under his breath, nudging the cupboard door below the sink open with his toe, revealing a lengthy trash can with a transparent gray Wal-Mart bag rimming the edges, and stuffed the pizza box inside, and then slammed it shut with his heel.