Trapped in Forever

49 ~ Someone Out There Wanted You

Inside that crowded living room, with the musty scent of sweat and perfume mingling together like a cheap cologne a beautiful blond would spritz on you in the mall, saying that it would be perfect for the man in your life, as long as the man in your life liked beer pong and grinding against the barely concealed, gleaming rears of girls in front of them, swaying against his pelvis, and hair whipping and grazing against the bare arms of everyone around her, casting her momentarily annoyed looks before turning away and belting out the incorrect lyrics to the sound that pulsated through the flooring and vibrated like your own heartbeat, it all felt like a secret world and someone was now just showing me the key, where the lock was, and how to push open the door and reveal all of this, the musty scents and grinding bodies. Blue plastic cups were clutched in their hands, sloshing their bronze hued beer over the rim and onto the hardwood floors, overrun by dozens of pairs of strappy, black heels and high-top sneakers.

Strands of hair that flew away from the heads of girls who danced, who sang, who grinned alluringly at the guys who stood near to their mostly exposed bodies, who smiled back at their suggestive smirks and glanced down at their manicured fingers as they ran down their bare arms, were either twirled into perfected spirals or straightened so thinly that it would make a pin look heavy. Their faces gleamed slightly from the warmth radiating in the room, threatening to run their mascara or dislodge their foundation, and their lipstick was slowly beginning to fade with each sip of beer and every grin directed toward a lone boy, just waiting for that invitation of a smile to beckon him across the room and place his hands on the revealed hips of a girl who drew near to him and whispered words into his pierced ears. Whatever they said, it always made the guy smile, draw back, and tug the girl’s hips closer to his, denim shorts colliding with the beige pair of cargo shorts.

But, as I watched while the beer jumped over the white interior rims of the blue plastic cups and landed onto the floor in crooked puddles that gleamed with the minimal light emitting from the ceiling overtop of their tossing heads, and as teenage girls swiveled in the barstools in front of the island in the kitchen a few feet away from the living room, the gleaming marble of the island littered with half emptied plastic cups, greasy paper plates, and a couple of coats draped across the end, I began to realize that even though I was standing in the doorway, leaning against it, away from the center of the living room and mingling scents of perfume and sweat, with a faint hint of cigarettes and beer, that I looked like them anyway. That the maroon top that exposed the lower half of my stomach, revealing the crevice of my belly button and the beige mole beside it, and the skirt that constricted my thighs together but inched dangerously close to my hips when I sat down, and the knee-high black boots that clicked against the hardwood floors, crunched the gravel in the road, and creaked with the faux leather in quiet rooms, and the dark red lipstick that was smoothed out over my lips—it all made me look like one of them, one of the girls who beckoned guys with a smirk.

The night before, after Kara had smiled at me once last time, that same glint swirling in her cobalt irises as she stepped backward, her sandals slapping against her heel—thwack, thwack—and her hair flew in front of her, giving her an air of fearlessness, of freedom, as the sun glimmered over the horizon of the diminutive buildings across the street, barely occupied by speeding shades of vehicles coming and going, and she told me that she’d see me tomorrow, a laugh infiltrating her voice, and then she skipped away, the beige soles of her sandals lifting off of the crackled pavement as she ambled her way back into the parking lot, and then I slowly pulled away from where I stood in the alleyway, watching as she disappeared, maneuvering her way through the silver glinting bumpers of cars, and I slipped back into the kitchen. There it was warm, smelled sweetly, and Orion was scrolling down the screen of his iPhone with his thumb, glancing up when he heard the loud creaks of the rusty hinges. When he asked if I was already to go, I nodded and walked past him, catching the faint scent of icing drifting from him as I passed, the sounds of my Converses brushing against the tiles beneath our feet echoing in my eardrums as the scent slowly faded away from my nose as I entered the dark, rust aromatic locker room, the abandoned, multicolored faces of lock dials hooked around the metallic, magnet clad lockers watching me as I softly closed the doom and clicked it shut.