His Lip-Ring Smile

This floor is a comfort zone. This wall is an embrace. This void is external. A pair of Chuck Taylor’s touches the ground. They’re busted. Ripped and dirty. I try my best to remain indifferent, and succeed. I always do. A body slumps down next to me. I turn my head. Indifference sucks. I don’t want to miss out.

More bodies. They surround me, but I’m not among them. Him, next to me, glancing upwards to his girlfriend. She’s our classmate, and they exchange a to me foreign smile. I look away, but the image does not leave my mind. This is how I live. This is my class-to-class life.
And we leave for the next class, and the next class. I don’t know him, but I want him… All the more for that.

He acknowledges me. I don’t acknowledge him. He laughs. I don’t. He picks at his painted nails and bites at his lip-ring, and I stare. That’s how it goes.

Maybe if I just…? No.
But what if I…? No.
Screw it.

And the morning comes.

I pick at my face. I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. But somehow it feels like I should. Like it’s such a sin to dig your nails into healing pimple and rip the scab off. I make it bleed, but it stops. I take notes. The teacher makes jokes. Someone laughs and nudges me softly in the side. My eyes dart to his lip-ring smile, and I smile back. What else am I supposed to do?

Smiles are warm. They’re kind, and don’t mean harm. Not if you interpret them correctly. When you receive a smile, you have no other choice than smiling back. A smile. Pulling the corners of your mouth from side to side in a horizontal half moon. I face many of them, every day. His smile means more than the others. His smile is brave. He’s sitting next to the loneliest kid in school and smiling at him. A lifetime later.

Next class starts in about an hour. My class-to-class life. And I’m sitting on my comfort zone, leaning onto my embrace. He’s back, on the opposite side of me.
He speaks. He tells me about his weekend plans and plays with the fringe of his hair that got caught in his eyelashes. I follow his hand movements as they go from scratching his neck, to putting the fringe behind his ear, to dropping peacefully in his lap. His lips are thin, and they leave a small opening as he speaks. He’s speaking the words in fast pace and they come out like a mumble if you don’t listen closely. I am not listening closely, but he usually tells me the same things anyway. It can’t be easy, talking to a wall.

Night comes.
Why am I so..?
How come it’s so hard to…
Screw it.

My expression is different. My eyes are tired. My reflection upsets me. And that’s how it is when you’re lonely. Me, me, me.
I cover my stomach with my knees, and I feel a strange security due to my compressed figure. He’s back. Frank. Frank with his lip-ring smile and short Mohawk-hair. His smile is silly. His expression is changed, too. The way he looks at me.. It’s determination, I decide.

“Hey, Way,” he says. I nod.

We sit like that for a while. Him, leaning towards the wall opposite from mine. His silence makes me uncomfortable. Yet he stares at me just as intently as if he were telling me a story. I don’t look away.

“Speak.”

It’s not a question. He demands. I shrug. I’m not mute. I’m decisive.

“Why do you hang out with me?” Frank asks.

His question kind of surprises me. I see it as the other way around, but I bet he gets that. I choose my words carefully. I don’t like to speak if I don’t have anything to say. I don’t want to say something I don’t mean.

“You amuse me.” Cue distorted facial expression from Frank.

But it doesn’t come. A silly giggle erupts from his throat.

“Perseverance,” I continue.

And his smile fades. He stands up, and I follow. He pulls the arm of my jacket to lead me, and we’re in safe haven behind a wall of lockers. He smiles. I don’t. He acknowledges me. I acknowledge the spark in his eyes. I hide behind the black curtain of hair covering my eyes, but he pulls it back behind my ears. His watery, hazel eyes leaves a trace, a vertical line from my eyes to my lips. Up and down, up and down. His eyes have left the hollows in his skull. They’re hanging in the air and they make me feel touched, somehow. His fingers are still hugging the arm of my black denim jacket. I exhale slowly. Apparently, I had a surprising amount of air trapped inside my lungs. I’d been holding my breath. And as each zip of air trespasses the windpipe in my throat and escapes my lips, a foreign feeling makes my shoulders slump, and my eyes tear. I look away, to hide behind my hair again. He wont let me. His eyes search for mine, and without asking his hands are on the sides of my face, caressing my ears, and he’s still searching. The touch… Passion.
I grab him by the collar of his shirt and our lips become a brick wall. They can’t be separated. I want this. I never knew. Our chests collide. He heard my thoughts, all this time. The thoughts I never listened to. His lips leave mine with a feeling of something missing, but as our eyes meet, I’m his again. He spontaneously puts my bottom lips between his teeth, and I smile. He creates a trail of butterfly kisses from my jaw to my collarbone, and I feel something else inside of me come to life.

If we were in a bathtub of balloons, they wouldn’t pop. That’s how careful he is. His hands, though, they hold me as if he thinks if he let go, I’d fly away. I’m smiling, and his laugh is cut off. We can’t do that here. No, that’s silly.

We sit down in our safe haven.

His smile is my comfort zone. His arms are my embrace. His eyes are less than hollow. We're touching the ground.

I open my mouth to tell him about my life.