I
watched him quietly from my rooftop, my silence not so much from a tacit effort
to be discreet, as it was a product
of my wonderment. There was nothing spectacular about him. He was not unseen or
profoundly unique thus-far to my knowledge, yet there was something sexy
about his smile that I'd long ago deemed worthy of my legs carrying me a little
more slowly past his house when I went for my daily run.
He'd served in the military;
I was able to figure that much about him. He looked young, but old enough to
have done his 4 years already. What he did for a living now, I wasn't sure, but
he pulled his white pickup into the cactus-lined driveway backwards beside his
house 5 days a week at around 9:30 at night. He wrestled an old, holy backpack
from behind the seat before slamming the door. He'd walk up to the front steps
and drop it to the side before he went in his house and heated up dinner. This
ritual I'd watched him perform at least 10 times in the past 2 years. I
would've guessed him to be 23 or 24, and though at that time I was only 16, I
got a sort of strangely romantic flustering in my stomach just watching him.
I'd been noticing little things about him from the time I was 14, even though I
knew for anything to ever even resonate between us would be illegal, immoral,
indecent, and, worst of all, impossible.
So
for 2 years I'd sat on my roof some nights, watching him, knowing there was an
ineffable gap between the sweetness and purity you might see of a romance in a children's movie, or hear about in a song of young love,
and the strange yet undeniably enticing feelings that stirred within me.
By 10 he'd come
wandering back out of his house with a beer in hand, and usually a tray of
microwave dinner. He had a wooden rocking chair, and he sat in that, and he
would look out across the street, or down at his lawn which swept often dry and
unkempt, littered with potted cactus's that were the only well-cared-for part of his front-yard. When his gaze fell in my direction, my breath
would catch in my throat, and the only movement in my chest would be a heavying beat, and that too seemed to slow to an almost
unbearable rate. Had I moved, had I stretched, had I uttered a sigh, he would
not have noticed, for I was wrapped in the same blanket of darkness that sent
shivers up my arms, telling me it was time to go inside, that it was getting
cold and late, and that one young heart shouldn't long for another's in this
way.
It was
late June. He smoked, and I did too, but not because of him, rather than some
perhaps sick satisfaction I got out of further degrading my own youthful
innocence. I dreamt of a man 8 years older than myself, and rather
than get some sleep, I began floating on the hot, spiced smoldering of cheaply
sold substance which wafted into my nose and carried me through long hours of
the night. Tonight, with smoke curling before my eyes, I was only half seeing the faint glow of his
burning cigarette below me. My sight was set on a more mental vision that
seemed not quite lucid, despite it having taken place only some hours ago.
Saturday was meaningless as a day free of school worries, now that summer
vacation had started, but it still meant that both my neighbor and I were off
work; he was free to admire the developing tan on my legs and arms as I ran by
him, just as free as I was to enjoy and reciprocate that smile of his which
never ceased to tempt a shiver from my spine.
That day it'd been hot. He was out
on his front lawn, which was more like front dirt, for lack of living grass.
His head must've been elsewhere, because it wasn't until I ran right past his
back, sneakers slapping the hot pavement that he turned around, squeezing the
handle of his hose attachment in surprise. The loose, breezy white muscle shirt
that I'd been wearing for my run was instantly a soaked, see-through material, clinging desperately to every inch
of my body hips and up. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry..." he said my name
at the end of that, and that alone was almost enough to distract a smile from
my lips at the way his own made a comical "O" of surprise. Almost.
"I'll go get you an old spare t shirt or something" as he was turning
to dash inside his house, I gave a laugh that made him turn back to face me.
"I Live right down the street,
it's fine. Anyway, I'm sure someone around here
will enjoy the view." Even with that newfound sense of confidence I'd just
derived from seeing him scrabbling in embarrassment, I hadn't intended to say something so outright
ballsy. This time it was his turn to laugh. He didn't say anything, but he
smiled and just laughed, and he gave me this nod of something between approval
and appreciation. His eyes lingered a moment before I ran back to my house to
change.
2 years I'd been sitting on my roof,
asking myself an eternity of questions, and after 2 years I wondered if I was
willing to spend a lifetime on this roof, trying to find the answer to 1. Was
he interested in me at all? I hadn't gotten much from him earlier today. I had
gotten something, but not enough. Maybe I was young, or stupid, a little high
off herbal smoke, or maybe all of the above and then some. I climbed down off
my roof in a careful haste and brushed myself clean of bits of shingle grit
sticking to my jeans, which had tears I'd ripped into the knees even as brand-new.
It was well past 10, not that I, or anyone else cared. The glow of his
cigarette became less and less faint, until it painted more distinction to his
features in the dark. When the hand holding his cigarette fell to his side, I
knew he'd seen me, and that it was too late to turn and run home. Any lingering
sense of confidence from earlier that day had dissipated, but with bubbly
anxiousness I forced myself to feign a convincing coolness as I sauntered up
his front walk. He didn't say anything for a few long moments, but instead
treated me to a somehow sweet yet devilish smile that just barely managed to
tilt his lips. "Isn't it late?" This must've been some sort of test,
because when I gave him a quick and easy "Nope", he moved his
outstretched legs so that I could sit on the porch where his feet had just
been. I dropped lightly and easily, and relaxed my own legs in front of me so
that they nearly reached the top step.
"It'll be a hot summer" I
said. Bringing up the hose incident directly would let him know it was still on
my mind, but vaguely eluding to it might possibly be seen as more subtle and
sly.
"Yeah, well it won't be as bad
as Virginia."
"Virginia?"
"Yeah, I grew up there.
Beautiful state, even if it used to get hotter than hell all summer. You could
fry and egg on the sidewalk."
"Ah, well I've been in
California pretty much my whole life. I spent the better part of a year in New
Mexico though, and 2 or 3 solid in Oklahoma."
"Oklahoma's a nice state, just
too flat. I can't say I've been over to New Mexico."
"Oklahoma's definitely flat.
They have an old joke about how you can stand on one edge of the state and see
clear-across to the other edge."
I didn't have a watch to check time,
but it felt like we'd spent 10 minutes talking about everything under the moon.
If I'd had a thousand questions about him before, I'd gotten 501 of them
answered, just sitting on his porch. "It's getting late." He said in
a brief moment of silence. He stood up, and I saw from a digital clock in his living
room through the front screen door that it was well past midnight. I thought he
was going to take two steps and bid me goodnight before heading inside, but in
a swift motion he answered question one of a thousand, or one of a million; I
couldn't care which. He leaned down and wrapped one arm around my waist and
hooked the other under the crook of my legs which had been bent at the knees
side by side, and at the same time he sat back in his rocking chair, he scooped
me into his lap. He didn't start mauling me like an animal, or try to do
anything at all right then. He slid back in his chair and got
comfortable, so that I was snuggled against his
thighs, the entire rear of my body aligned
perfectly yet effortlessly with the front of him, the top of my head not quite
reaching beneath his chin this way. I could feel the gentle rise and fall of
his chest against my upper back, and I would've wondered if he'd somehow
drifted off to sleep, had it not been for the slightest feeling of one of his
fingers tracing the outline of a hole in the knee of my jeans. A small, pleasant
shiver ran from the top of my spine, down to my hips, as if someone had just
trickled electricity down the back of my shirt. I became aware of his chest pressing a little more firmly against my
back, and the warmth of his arms slipped around either side of my waist to form
a liberating lock. In the same moment his chest pressed deeper into me as he
took in a breath of my strawberry shampoo, and I felt the soft heat of his
breath as he let it out on my neck, whispering in my ear "this is better
than the roof."
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