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My fingers are crossed but you can’t see them...
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I guess it all started a week ago. And I guess that maybe the word ‘it’ doesn’t help me much, so I’m going to review my situation in my head.
There’s this guy who lives across the street from me. He’s an even-tempered brunette who, I think, is my age, with a nice tan and a penchant for running. I know this because I see him every day–although I only really noticed him a week ago. Which was when this all started.
I cast a look at my clock; four-sixteen, and I know what’ll happen like clockwork in three minutes.
Every day he jogs down his driveway and across the street to get the mail from his mailbox. He takes these long strides, his hair sometimes pulled back in a rubber-band ponytail at the base of his neck even though it’s not really that long, and looks both ways before he crosses the road. Lately, since seven days ago, I’ve fallen into this routine with him, going outside to get my mail from his side of the road.
It doesn’t make any sense that our mailboxes are on the opposite sides of the road, but I suppose there’s some reason behind it. Like making it difficult for me to get the mail without making some sort of contact with him.
I look up again and it’s four-eighteen, one minute left, so I get up off the floor and leave my algebra homework on the carpet to hopefully burn up by the time I get back. I go to the door, looking down at my feet and I’m barefoot but it just turned four-nineteen and I go outside.
My pace is steady, and I pick up my feet carefully to make sure I don’t stub my toes when my feet touch go from my grassy lawn to the concrete of my driveway because mine is longer than his, probably, so I cut a tad bit off my route to make sure we reach the mailbox at the same time.
Funny how I’ve never thought how much I plan this daily almost-meeting out.
He steps onto the road at the same time I do, and we cross it in the same amount of steps and stop to open our mailboxes and take the letters out. I stop to read them, not walking back just yet, but I know he goes right back inside instead of reading his mail out here under this gray-blue sky.
Oddly enough, though, he stops in front of me and that makes me look up. Today he’s dressed in a dark blue hoodie and black shorts, the kind that brush your knees and would make any girl say ‘those aren’t shorts, those are almost capris’ and I don’t know why I notice this but I could tell you that he cycles regularly through clothing colors–tomorrow he’d be outside in a lovely shade of indigo, because yesterday was green. It kind of sets off the high-and-low-lights in his hair and that makes me look at his face instead of his torso and he’s raising his eyebrow at me.
“You should really wear shoes outside,” he says softly, giving me what could be a smile in a few moments. I glance down at my feet, knowing perfectly well that I’m barefoot but deciding to play stupid anyway because hey, I do it well.
“You’re not wearing shoes either,” I point out, raising an eyebrow just for fun at his feet. He’s actually barefoot, which is purely coincidental because I had no idea if he was really wearing shoes or not. I tend to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind when people talk to me, no matter how irrelevant or odd it is.
“Oh?” He looks down at his feet too, seriously confused, and flushes just a little bit when he sees that he really is going foot-commando. “Damn.”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling at him, and he flashes a weak half-smile at me and we cross the road with unspoken timing.
“I’ll remember them next time if you will,” I call over my shoulder, because this silence isn’t necessarily awkward but I don’t like long moments of quiet.
“Then you’d better remember yours,” he replies, and I do a mental victory dance as I break into a jog back up my driveway and across my lawn because he didn’t ignore me or call me a stalker for saying ‘next time’.
I practically hear the slam of his door as I shut mine, and I glance over at the clock. It’s four-twenty-nine, and I almost gape because we’ve never spent that much time getting mail. Usually it’s four-twenty-three when we go back inside, but usually we never talk.
I grin and go back to my spot on the floor, where my homework has unfortunately not burned to ashes in my absence. But I’m okay, I think, even if I don’t remember how to solve for x and I end up just circling the letter and writing ‘x marks the spot’ where my answer should be. And I remember something else now, something I didn’t know about the guy who lives across the street from me.
His eyes are blue.
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