when you were young

 

My boyfriend and I bonded over the fact that we are both insomniacs. In fact, he finds that one of my more endearing qualities – the fact that no matter the hour, chances are that I am awake and more than willing to take his call. We both grew up in homes where we were expected to work, and we both used that as an excuse to stay up late – taking third-shift jobs that paid us a little less but gave us the chance to greet the morning everyday productively. While those jobs have faded into the tapestry of our lives, the hours they inspired are still there. And even though he has a job now that requires he gets up at 7:30 every morning, he still manages to talk me to sleep every night. Our conversations are varied and most of the time they circle around to the topic of us; what we are doing, how fast we are moving, and where this could possibly go with me living in Providence and him working in South Carolina. I am the only one that ever brings this up.

 

Last night he called me around 5am, and I settled into my bed, ready for the melodic tenor of his voice to eventually lull me into a drowsy haze. “Get up, get dressed, I am coming to get you in about an hour and I want you to be ready.” I tried my best to get out of it, claiming that I was too tired, and when that didn’t work that I was afraid my mother wouldn’t let me. “Sneak out of the house, I’ll cut the lights so they won’t shine into her bedroom.” Eventually, he reminded me of the deadline that I had imposed for this relationship. This gave him until the time I left for school to start, a maximum of eleven days, to win my heart, and he was demanding everyday thus far. I didn’t know what we were doing, and more importantly, as the only places I knew he loved were the gym and the rapids on a river at the North Carolina/Virginia border, I didn’t know what to wear. So I tried to dress as comfortably as possible, expecting a bit of exercise to be involved. I woke my sister up and told her what was happening, and to cover for me if my mother woke up. I smoked a cigarette on the front porch and waited for him to pull into my driveway.

 

He arrived five minutes earlier than I expected, and I climbed into the passenger side of his truck as quickly as I could. It was raining harder than it was an hour ago, and he looked worried as he surveyed the skies. When we had cleared my neighborhood he asked me to press play on the CD that he had left in the changer. I couldn’t help but smile, as he had taken all the songs from my blog and put them on a mixed CD for me. He held my hand the entire way, as we drove further and further from the part of Greenville that I knew. At red lights he would steal kisses from me that lasted long enough for us to have to hurry in order to not get caught at another – the black asphalt reflecting and distorting the reds, yellows, and greens from the lights. Eventually he turned onto a road even more abandoned than the empty streets we had driven before. As the road got steeper, and the forests on either side seemed to close in towards the truck, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander. So this was it. This was how I was going to die. He was going to kill me and bury me in the woods. Even worse, I was going to be found wearing gym clothes for God sakes. He held my hand as we turned onto a small trail that led to clearing.

 

The rain still hadn’t stopped, and he didn’t make any moves to get out, so we simply sat in the car listening to music. He pulled me closer to him, and I laid my head on his chest and felt his chest rise and fall with every deep breath that he took. I had to fight the urge to light a cigarette, knowing how he only tepidly allowed my habit when we were outside together – and knowing his reaction should I strike one up in his immaculate truck. Almost as if it had been planned, the CD ran out of tracks and the rain stopped and the beating of his heart got faster as he kissed the top of my head and steadied himself to get out of the truck. I opened my door and waited as he grabbed two blankets from underneath his seat and walked around to the bed of his truck.

 

He laid them out in the back of his truck and helped me climb in with him. Now that the rain had stopped, I was finally able to take in the view, and my gasp was audible. I could see the entirety of Greenville City. I could see the buildings in downtown, the highways on the outskirts, and the residential streets that were still tinged in the orange glow that fell from the lamps above. I laid my head on his chest and we watched as the sun crept over my city. Our city. It was perhaps the coolest thing that anyone has ever done for me. Eventually he lifted my head off of his chest and he looked at me.

 

“I really like you,” he said. “I think that I am falling in love with you. And I know you don’t feel the same way yet, but I am going to do everything in my power to get you there.”

 

It took me a moment to register his words. No one had ever said that to me unprompted. Usually I was the one standing in front of the boy putting my heart on my sleeve. I stared at his face, tracing with my eyes the lines that smiles had made on his face, the light scar on his chin he got while rock climbing, and the way his left ear was a little longer than the right. And I wished, for the first time in my life, that my scars were on the outside too. “I don’t know if I am there yet, but I really do like you.” He smiled at me – bringing the lines around his mouth into prominence – and he said something that is keeping me up tonight. He said, “In all relationships there is always one person who cares about the other person more – and I am fine being that person for you.” I put my head back on his chest and he kissed the top of my head and we watched as the sun continued its slow trek across the morning sky. If the rain hadn’t started again, I am sure that we would have laid there for hours.

 

He helped me jump down from the bed of his truck, and he gathered up the blankets and folded them into perfect squares before placing them neatly underneath his seat. I got into the car and watched as he took the CD out of the changer, put it into a case, and gave it to me. He started the car and said, still staring straight ahead, “You can light a cigarette if you want, I know that it’s probably been a while since you’ve had one.” While I fumbled with my lighter, he put another CD into the charger and began to pull back onto the trail. “This is your favorite song, right?” I looked up quickly, and when the words clicked in my head I nearly dropped the lit cigarette in the process:

 

You sit there in your heartache

Waiting on some beautiful boy to

Save you from your old ways

You play forgiveness
Watch it now, here he comes!

He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus
But he talks like a gentleman
Like you imagined when you were young

 

I sat quietly in the cab while we made our way back to the city – with one hand interlocked with his, and the other situated out the window – letting the gusts strip the ashes from my cigarette.

 

S/Alexander