Hopeless Desires

I followed the crowd of people exiting the terminal, rubbing my eyes. I had fallen asleep an hour into the flight and somehow slept the following seven hours until we landed. I adjusted the straps of my backpack until they rested more comfortably on my shoulders. It was warm, not as hot as California, but hot enough that I was thankful I had decided to wear shorts. I took my phone out of my back pocket, sending Amber a text to tell her that I was here and looking for her.

I stopped walking, looking around all the bodies moving around me. Finally I spotted a familiar face, not that she was hard to miss. Amber was standing on one of the blue, plastic airport chairs, holding a sign that read “CHESNA FOX: I WANT YOU”. I chuckled to myself as I began strolling toward her. It wasn’t long before she noticed me heading her way and she let out an excited squeal, dropping the sign and rushing towards me, repeating my name over and over as she fast-walked towards me. People stared at her, some giving her dirty looks as she shoved past them.

When she finally got to me, she practically jumped on top of me, tightly wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug. I giggled as she babbled and jumped around.

“I missed you so much!” She squealed.

“There won’t be anything left to miss if you don’t let me breathe,” I laughed.

She pulled away quickly, a bright smile on her face.

“Oh my god! You look freaking amazing! Did you get highlights? And look at your tan! I missed you so much!” She rushed out in one breath, bringing me in for another suffocating hug.

“I missed you too!” I laughed, hugging her equally as tight. People were grumbling as they were forced walked around us, but neither of us paid any mind to them.

Eventually we separated and she looked around me, a confused look taking over her face.

“Where’s Carter? Is he getting your bags?”

“No, actually, Carter couldn’t come. He’s really sick right now; bad flu.”

“That sucks! Is he going to fly down later? When he gets better? I mean you are here for an entire month. I find it hard to believe he’ll be sick that long.” We walked back to her sign, which was now covered in footprints, and Amber picked it up off the floor. “People are so rude. They can’t walk around my sign that I worked so hard on,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Maybe he will, if he’s feeling up to it. And people could care less about your little card board sign.”

“Hopefully he will. And they should. It’s fucking amazing!”

I chuckled at her and we walked over to baggage claim, waiting for my bag to roll around the conveyer belt. I spotted my black suitcases with the glitter ribbons tied around their handles and pointed them out to Amber, each of us grabbing one. We walked out to her car that was parked out front, the site of it stopping me in my tracks.

“You still have this car?” I asked her incredulously. “I cannot believe it still runs.”

“Hey! You know he has a name!” She said, unlocking the trunk and putting my suitcases in and then slamming it closed.

“Mercury; how could I forget,” I laughed, climbing into the passenger seat.

“You can’t, not after all the memories we’ve had in this baby,” she said, starting the car and putting on her seatbelt.

Amber’s car is a 1964 Chevrolet Corvair Convertible. It was her dad’s car when he was young before he passed it on to Amber. As timeless as it was, this car is the cause of some miserable days. The air conditioner hasn’t worked since Amber’s dad owned it, and the black paint and red leather seats absorb heat like no other, leaving your legs sticking to the seat like old classroom chairs. The radio only gets three stations, the glove compartment constantly falls off, and the doors sometimes squeak when you open and close them. The gas meter is broken from when Amber crashed the car. Luckily though that was the only lasting, unfixable damage inflicted. But because of that she never knew when she needed to get gas. I lost count of how many times we had to push this car down the highway or walk to the nearest gas station because we’d run out of gas without even knowing the tank was low.

We took hundreds of road trips to the beach, the Valley, and up to Ontario, Canada, most of which our parents didn’t find out about until they woke up in the morning and found the notes we left them using this car. Lucky for us, we both have easy going parents who knew that even though we were teenagers, we were responsible, not to say that we didn’t break the law a time or two. This car alone has probably brought some of mine and Amber’s greatest memories as best friends.

Amber began fiddling with the radio, moving the knob left and right until she finally landed on a station playing old rock songs from the 80s. As she drove to her house, we talked about how crazy both of our families have been going over the barbeque coming up. It’s a tradition for our moms to plan everything out, dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘T’.

“Did you know my dad’s trying to convince my mom to let him get fireworks?”

“I’m hoping your mom convinces him otherwise. Don’t you remember in 8th grade when he practically burned his eyebrows off trying to light the grill?” I laughed, the memory playing over in my head.

“Oh, I remember. It’s happened again four more times since. You’d think he’d learn, but no. He’s convinced the grill is either defective or out to get him.”

We continued talking about old memories from when we were younger and where people we used to know are now. Soon enough we pulled into her neighborhood, the large, assembly-line type houses all looking the same as they did two years ago. I recognized most of the neighbors hanging outside of their houses, their children playing with each other and running from yard to yard. Amber grew up in a very family conscious neighborhood. Everyone was friendly to each other and everyone’s kids played together. It was the type of neighborhood anybody would want to grow up in, which is why I spent more time at her house than I did my own, not that my neighborhood was bad; just not as good.

“Prepare to be bombarded by my family,” Amber smirked, pulling her keys out of the ignition. We grabbed my things from her trunk and headed up the short walkway, climbing the two white porch steps and up to the glass front door, stepping inside. “I’m back!” Amber yelled, kicking off her white vans. “And I’ve brought a souvenir!”

We headed up the flight of stairs and headed down the long, familiar hallway, the walls covered in hundreds of pictures. Some I recognized some had been put up in the time that I was gone, but for the most part, I knew almost every person in every picture.

Amber led me to the guest bedroom where I’ve spent so many nights in before and dropped my suit case on the bed. I followed suit and put my backpack on the desk chair, rolling my shoulders with relief. We left the room again and descended the stairs, heading towards the kitchen where we could hear voices flowing from. As we walked through the open doorway, Amber’s mom, Beth, and dad, George, stopped talking and turned their attention to us.

“Hi, guys,” I smiled, waving at them.

“Oh, Chesna Fox! It’s about time you got here!” Beth said happily, instantly wrapping me in a tight hug, much like Amber had. We stood in the kitchen for a good while with her arms tightly wrapped around me and her mouth moving a thousand miles a minute. I couldn’t understand a thing she was saying, but most people can’t. Beth is known to speak so fast that she herself has no idea what she’s saying. Eventually, Amber’s dad pulled her mom off me and gave me a small, simple hug.

“Good to have you back, Chesna,” he smiled, adjusting the round glasses on his face.

“Where’s Ben?” Amber asked, sitting down next to her dad at the kitchen island. I sat down next to her, looking around the familiar yellow kitchen.

“He’s playing soccer with some friends at the park around the corner. He should be home soon.”

Just as she finished speaking, the front door banged open and we all turned our attention to the kitchen doorway as Ben walked through, his soccer cleats hanging over his shoulder and his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. He was looking down, texting away on his phone and didn’t even notice all of us sitting in the kitchen, until Amber coughed obnoxiously and he looked up. His facial expression showed that he was ready to throw out a smart remark to Amber, but stopped when he noticed me sitting next to her.

“Chesna!” He exclaimed, a wide smile spreading across his face.

“Hey, budd,” I said, standing up and walking to him. “Look at you! You’re almost as tall as me!” He gave me tight hug, before quickly pulling away, running his hands through his brown hair.

“I hit my growth spurt. Can you tell my voice is deeper?” He asked with excitement and proudness lacing his voice.

“Oh yeah! Definitely a couple octaves deeper. Now all you have to do is grow a beard and you could pass for 20.”

“See mom! I told you girls like beards!” Ben said, turning his attention to his mom, who simply rolled her eyes, giving me a look that said I shouldn’t have brought up facial hair. “Feel my chin. There’s stubble!” He stretched his neck out and I raised my fingers to brush across his cheeks, where I indeed felt stubble.

“Look at you go! You’ll have a nice, full beard in no time,” I laughed.

“You will not be growing a beard any time soon. You are not even in high school yet.” His mom said, throwing her hands up.

“I’m in 8th grade! There are kids in my grade that already have mustaches!”

“You haven’t entered the 8th grade yet. It’s still summer and until school starts you are still a 7th grader. And besides, I don’t care about what the other kids have. I refused to raise a son who looks like a hobo.”

He turned to me with an annoyed sigh, rolling his eyes. “Will you please tell her it’s not a big deal for me to grow a mustache?”

My eyes flashed to Beth where she shook her head no, her eyes wide with warning. I looked back at Ben, “If I were you, I’d stay clean shaven.”

“But I’d look so much older with a mustache!”

“But most ladies prefer a smooth faced guy.”

“Really?” He asked, his eyes perking up.

“Oh, yeah. We don’t want to be kissing someone whose face feels like sand paper.”

“See? Your mother knows more than you think,” Beth said, pointing the scissors she was using to cut coupons towards Ben, who only rolled his eyes again, mimicking her. “Now go shower. You smell like a pile of dirty socks.”

He turned around and headed out of the kitchen, still mimicking his mother playfully. She grabbed one of the fake plastic oranges from the bowl on the island and chucked it at Ben, hitting him in the back. He gave her a dirty look over his shoulder.

“Real mature, mom.” He turned the corner and climbing the stairs two at a time. Amber, her dad and I all chuckled at his typical teenage attitude, while Beth only rolled her eyes.

“I swear that boy makes me want to pull my hair out some days,” Beth muttered, letting out a puff of air. “For the last 2 months, he’s done nothing but talk about growing a beard. A beard at 13!”

“At least he isn’t asking for condoms,” Amber shrugged, playing with a fake apple, rolling it back and forth.

“It will be your father’s job to deal with that,”

“Oh, I look forward to that conversation,” he joked, shaking his head.

“Start preparing, pops. He’s 13. The sex talk is approaching fast,”

“That boy better not be thinking about sex until he’s 45 and living on his own.”

“Right, just like Amber,” I snorted. Amber eyes went wide and she elbowed me hard in the ribs, causing me to let out a small yelp.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Beth asked, her eyes narrowing in on the two of us.

“Nothing,” we said at the same time, both trying to fight off smiles.

“I’m going to pretend that you weren’t insinuating anything and keep going about my days knowing that you two are perfect, virgin angels.”

Amber and I nodded our heads vigorously, giggling like two high school girls only after Beth turned her attention back to cutting her coupons. George peered over his sports magazine at us, one eye brow raised and a knowing look on his face. He shook his head at us, a smile playing on his lips. It was moments like these that I missed every day while in California