How A Heart Breaks

It was like the moment I had gotten off of that plane, I felt everything ten times more than I had when I actually left. Landing back down in my hometown, our hometown, I guess it set something off, something that I held down in the form of a lump in my throat as I found my mother amongst the people weaving through the place to reach their destination.

My mother, unlike me, had a smile adorning her face, and I could just picture her already, pinching my cheeks and telling me how much she missed her ‘baby boy’. She would talk about how long I was away from home, and she would ask about how I could stand it at all. And the truth is, it hadn’t even felt like I had left home, because I had my home with me each day I spent in that cramped up, smelly van. In fact, home right now doesn’t seem like home at all. He’s missing.

For my mothers’ sake, though, I grin at her, and wrap my arms around her in a tight hug. When I let go, her smile seems like it’s grown even more, which is somewhat hard to believe.

“Oh!” She grabs my face, “I missed you so much, sweetie!” My eyes want to roll in annoyance, but I hold them back. She hugs me again, tying my arms down to my sides as she holds me. “I don’t know how you spent so much time away from this place! I wouldn’t be able to. How could you stand living in that van?” I give her a shrug, because I just don’t feel like talking, because I’m busy remembering everything he and I did in this town, busy remembering the time I realized he was more than a friend in my eyes.

Like most go, I had found out I loved him more than I ever thought through a little monster called jealousy. And Jealousy had derived when I saw his hand laced with one Alyssa Richardson, someone who was actually just a fling more than anything. Even so, fling or not, she was the one at fault, for making me realize how I could be selfish when it came to him. I had loathed that girl and her pretty little face, perfect hair and (if we’re being honest), her lovely personality. I wished her nothing but tragedies.

Okay, perhaps I was on the immature side of the entire situation, acting as though I were a teenage girl. Either way, it had made no difference whatsoever- I was still very much taken with him, everything from his eyelashes to the very last flake of skin. While my mind draws up a mental image of him, my eyes seem to focus on the scenery flashing outside of the window, and then the car slows down, his image vanishes, and I am back home again. Well, at least, I’m back in the house again. Because like I said, home just isn’t home without him.

After about five days of walking the empty halls of my house, I realized that I really needed something to keep me occupied, because every corner, every tile had got a memory instilled in it, it seems, and that seems to be the thing which keeps me down. So, I printed out resumes, and handed them out in hopes to get a job as soon as possible, for one reason only: that I can save up enough money to rent an apartment.

As it goes, the only place that would take me was American Apparel, something I wasn’t too enthused about. Though the world ( including me) has fallen in love with their lovely plain zip-up sweaters, everything else in the store is over-priced and too odd to allow people of all body types to wear. Which, by the way, I found is a new pet peeve of mine. Probably because I’ve watched a girl or seven walk out of the store with this disappointed look on their faces, even heard a few complain to their parents about how nothing would look good on them.

And anyways, there’s this other boy who works on the same days I do, and he’s a little Asian boy with a perfectly carved face and a shaved head with tattoos all up his left arm and a chest piece. Just the other day, I witnessed him purchase a one-size-fits-all dress from this place, a bright red one. Initially, I thought it was for someone else, but when he squealed to me about how excited he was to wear it, my mind changed. Ever since then, we became lunch buddies.

Speaking of lunatics, here he comes now, rolling in with a ‘Grande’ size starbucks coffee, huge glasses, and I do believe I see a little bit of blush dusting his cheeks. The glasses give off that he’s tired, and that huge coffee definitely proves the fact to be true. He takes a large gulp of his coffee as he approaches the front counter and he practically slams it down- it’s completely finished, I notice. This boy should be three hundred pounds by now.

He grunts, a mere sign that he wants to be acknowledged. Although this boy is little and tiny and probably weighs about ninety pounds, he seems pretty lethal at the moment. So, instead of speaking, I simply look at him and furrow my eye brows.

“If our boss comes out and see’s that cup…” is all I can muster. He growls at me, and pushes it toward my chest.

“It’s there for you to throw away, you fucking butthead.” I nod quickly, picturing his glaring eyes from behind the glasses, and I grab the cup to throw in the trash hidden behind the front counter of the store. Directly after that, our manager walks in, and she’s a tight ass when it comes to shifts.

“Ryan, get those glasses off, it looks like you’ve been drinking and smoking pot.” She’s usually kind of ‘chill’, I guess- I mean, she’s young, but we’re not allowed to wear sunglasses, she thinks it looks too suspicious. Ryan rolls his eyes and slowly takes them off. I squint at his face, which is as flawless as usual, except for the little showing of a black eye.

“Whoa, what happened to you?” He hooks his sunglasses on the collar of his shirt and joins be behind the counter at the other cash register.

“I got jumped,” he grunted, putting his weight on one foot. And, just like that, my mind drifts off to the very first time I met Porter, and shit, the whole scene replays in my mind about a billion times, through out the entire day. And by the time I get home, I’m missing him so bad, that I pick up my cell phone, and instead of just searching his name and clicking ‘call’, I dial the number slowly.

And when I hear his voice at the other end, my body tenses- I suddenly realize how important he is to me.