It's amazing the way time marches onward. You wake up in one reality, looking outside a window and wish for green grass you see on the other side, moist with the dew of a new morning. Before the end of the day, you find yourself walking out the door, looking back at that window into your former world, with the brown grass tickling your ankles, and the thunderheads forming. Indeed, time marched in regular time. I found myself grimy to the heels, stacking boxes of records into the back of a U-Haul truck. It was thanksgiving eve, and my turkey was waiting for me in the promised land. A place, known to most, as the "city beautiful".
I don't know what sparks the urge of wanderlust in me. I had been fighting those urges for the greater part of the past 2 years. I was young, green, and square. I had been around the world and back already, and still didn't know too much about it. Even still, you couldn't tell me that. I'm the great daydreamer, chasing those fancy thoughts until the day I stumble in my run and end up in the cold dead earth. For me, the beginning of everything wonderful was in that Orlando toy box, with the large buildings looking like the playthings of some wayward giant's toddler.
I was still dreaming about the great times ahead when a small grey Hyundai pulled up in the driveway. I saw the car door open, and the skinny legs that disappeared into a short skirt swiveled out to meet the pavement. She was obviously trying to maintain her composure, now wanting to appear too rattled by the sight she saw, but yet wanting to sprint to me and demand I undo the labor of the past 4 hours and load everything back into the house. I never claim to be psychic; I cant read minds, be it a bitch or a billionaire. My thoughts, however, are always crystal clear, and the coin was tossed in my head at that very moment: heads and someone was getting smacked down, tails and someone was getting a chewing out on top of a cold pimp's hand.
She got to me before the coin hit the marble tiles in the palace of my mind. "Sekay, what are you doing? You're not really going through with this are you? Why are you leaving everything here, everything you and Mike and everybody had worked so hard to build?"
What exactly had we built? We were like common street ballers with hoop dreams for the NBA. We were no different then any other group of friends in any other small town across the world, dreaming of something bigger then themselves. Unfortunately, the NBA doesn't have a team in Pensacola. Was I the only person who saw that? I couldn't be the only joker in this town to realize that, If you're going work a track, then you've got to go where the greyhounds play?
The open hatch of the U-Haul truck faced the eastern bushes on the edge of the Oaktree's grounds. You couldn't see into the cargo area from either the street or the house. Mike was away at mama duke's; Otto was inside, probably shirtless and rubbing the hairs on his oversized gut while watching Seinfeld reruns from that cursed la-z-boy that didn't match a damn thing in the rest of the house décor.
I wasn't mad at her; I wasn't really mad at anything, not even Otto, who had directly had an influence on the way I had increased the rate of my departure. I couldn't match words to my voice to answer any of her questions. I didn't even want to look into her eyes. I stood there and stared at that flake of lipstick on her front tooth. By this time I was wondering If that flake was permanent. She climbed into the back of the truck, never missing a beat as she pleaded with me over subjects that seemed to be a part of that room I was standing in only yesterday, with my eyes on the grass. She confessed that she believed that she had made a terrible mistake. She believed that Oats wasn't proactive enough in his approach on life to match her outlook. She felt that she had lost me by her own hand, and that fact was ripping her to shreds.
I didn't realize it at first, when my hands went out to her arms and grabbed her roughly. I was looking out of that window again, at myself as I pulled her close to me and began to kiss her. She didn't put up any kind of fight; maybe this unfolding event was the point of her entire visit here. She hadn't called, came out to party, or even visited the Oaktree in the past 2 months. I figured that her and oatmeal were probably happily married, maybe with a little crème pie baby on the way. Honestly, who cares? The kiss was the same as I remembered in the bathroom that one day, only this time I didn't want to kill her. I didn't really want to kiss her either; perhaps this was my way of getting revenge.
She gyrated her body on mine and started to gasp a little bit as my hands, which had still been holding her arms, started to wander over her pale back and small bottom. Her shirt was a size too big; the spaghetti straps fell down around her upper arms, where I could still see the pale impressions that my fingers had left in her skin. She wasn't wearing any sort of support to think of. Her small breasts were starting to make their way out of her shirt as well. I still didn't know if I was dreaming. To take it a step further, I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue dreaming if it was the case.
"Sekay, you don't have to leave, do you? Why don't you stay here with all of us. I can be a part of your future"
