Pressure

“Yeah, my mom’s picking up today so it’ll be another fifteen minutes.” I brush Ellesse off with a wave of my hand, my eyes averted. My voice resonates, barely audible, and trembles taint the last few syllables. The sound comes out almost as hollow as the place in my chest where purpose should be. Ah, being melodramatic was a given once you turned 13, and it didn’t leave you until the second you turned 20. Cheers to the teenage years. It was one of those days, where your insides churn when someone says your name, where you flinch when someone brushes past you. The entire human race was a burden to your survival. The busses pull out in a single, yellow funeral March line and I can almost hear the desperation wafting out of the fogged windows. I inhale the sharp Fall air, and my conscious is swirling with the faint fondness that pumpkins and scarecrows bring on. I’d cry.

If only I could.

From a distance I see Ellesse, her shining blond hair covering her brilliantly intellectual mind and shading her dull gray eyes. Her head is turned as she jokes with her mother from the passenger seat. I can just imagine her high-pitched whinny, laughing at her mom’s lackluster quips and puns. It was pathetic, and it was perfect. It was everything I wanted at that moment. My shoulders weren’t shaking, but they were freezing themselves, waiting for someone’s arms to ensnare them. My lips weren’t blue yet they were shivering, wanting to feel the shock only some can bestow upon your flesh. My mind wasn’t broken down from hypothermia, but it was broken down, and it was done.
All but a few teachers and two intimidating clans of phonies loiter around the lot, and I feel like I’m drowing in the sea of yellow lines and waves of convulsing pavement. A limousine the color of the asphalt it flies on swerve in front of the flagpole, and I instinctively wrap my backpack tighter around my shoulder. The neglected edges of my textbooks dig into my back and I wince, but not caring enough to turn around and ease the load. I’m starting to think one of these princesses near by has a birthday and rented a limousine to come pick her up, when my entire world steps out of the vehicle.
His jagged locks, black as night, cut across his face, like puzzle pieces that haven’t yet found their matches. His cheekbones are parallel to the bridge of his nose, and when he grins in my direction they immediately lift up, bright and round. The skin in his cheeks gather when his brilliantly alabaster smile is unveiled, and his eyes squint together, ever so slightly. Unable to stop myself, and forgetting about the entire rest of the world behind me, I take a simple shuffle forward.
“Ricky…”
“Ricky Horror,” he corrects me, pressing a slender finger to my lips and igniting a flame that so gallantly dances across my lips. Most girls would peer inside the vehicle, looking for the other members. But not me. The overwhelming amount of alleviation I’m tided over with is enough to last me the rest of my life. Even more, especially if I’m with him. We both realize how absurd the entire situation is, and yet neither of ask questions. Neither of us have to. As quickly as he came, Ricky places a single hand behind my hipbone and pulls me into him, my hand becomes tangled within his and he moves his free hand up under my hair, pulling me not only upwards, but even closer to his lips. It all comes to me so naturally that I let his hand find the small of my back as I rise up on tiptoe, granting him more freedom. He withdraws, and laughs, a bellowing echo that fills the entire hole within me, patching it up by the seams. I laugh too, content and entranced by the memory of the glorious pressure of his lips with mine.