Crazy For You II

Redwas inside me, and my new eyes looked upon her as I slowly continued to circled.Shadows began appearing everywhere in the vacant parking lot, and a bar grunt who had viewed the last chapter of the udder charade could be heard laughing quietly as the bar door slammed shut.Hot blood boiled inside.

Cars hummed by the two lane road behind the alley.I staggered deliberately around to the passenger side door, and could see the tiny imperfections.Maybe she didn’t notice these small neglects. She certainly didn’t seem to notice anything as I stared apathetically out the passenger window.Still she noticed nothing wrong as we returned to my hollow house of solitude without another word spoken during the entire five minute car ride.This Connecticut girl seated next to me was more appropriately caught up in cliche mainstream rapseeping out of the speakers.

The car finallyarrived justoutside my house.

“We need to talk,” my stern voice stated as her car came to a halt.

“I need to come inside right now so that we can talk for a minute.”

A forced smile momentarily eased the troubled emotions that were beginning to get the best of me.

“Okay,” her soft feminine voice responded reluctantly.

She viewed me sideways with a pause before turning off the engine.The front door to my small one story house awaited with two college teammates somewhere inside.As I made my way through our bachelor pad I passed the living room equipped with two TV’s, then noticed a closed bedroom door.A girl’s laughter could be heard inside.This heightened laughter was myroommate’s girlfriend, andnot the other girl he had played matress sports with just thenight before.His voice rumbled again, causing more laughter to spill out.

Healed footstepsechoed behind me on hard wood floors. We entered the room and I closed the door behind her.

This clean, utter place which I had spent almost the entirety of the past month was now transformed along with everything else around me.This angel before me found herself standing across from me with a confused expression on her face.

Making my way to my bed, I suggestively pointed for her to join me.

“Why don’t you take a seat and we can talk for a little while?”Methodically, and true to instruction, she grabbed the furthest resting chair and placed it across from me.A comfortable safe distance was established.

Her tall stature awaited me with crossed legs. Her hair made her head appear slightly lopsided.Her body eased back into the chair comfortably, like a Labrador settling into the family’s sofa.She knows just what I had been through.

“I… I want you to know that I’m really not good at this type of thing,” my voice began as she listened intently. My conflicted heart began to take over the conversation.

From out of the core of me, my battered heart would speak to her from a place that holds no time, from a parallel parking lot which still heldhope.For the first time I shared with another my true self, from out of the confounding images so many of us tend to show.

“I know it has been awhile since we spoke, but I just want you to know that I’m going through a very difficult time in my life right now.”The walls dizzied.

“I don’t,” she hesitated.Innocently she sought my direction.“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to say.I don’t know what to say right now…”

“It is okay,” I motioned."I’d really like to know... I really need to know right now…,” myvoice drew forward confidently.

My hand slowly began reaching out to her uncontrolled through the dim light of my room, open in an offering to her.

“Will you be my girlfriend?” was the words the heart had chosen.

The tormenting weights of pain collided inside me, and collectively joined with all the separate aspirations that I had left in this world.And unable to stop the inevitable force growing inside, and with everything that remained together, I offered to her this unique gift that I had not been offered to another before.For her, I gave a piece of myself.

Time passed.Then more time went by.She looked at me distantly.Her mind was tinkering for a moment and then she finally looked at me as though I were from Mars.Behind her I could see the crack in the wall; the shoddily patched hole that this innocent beauty did not pick up on.This was the very place that I had neatly put my nearly broken hand through on that night my mom’s shrilled voice informed me that my dad was gone.

Was it just one week ago?Was it two weeks?I looked upon my hand, but could feel no pain.Do not thinkshe notice the cuts on my hand either, but could be wrong.I looked down to my shoelaces.They did not seem real.Nothing was real.Why am I even wearing these shoes, anyway?My room, this hollow room… it was all some strange imagination within somebody else’s nightmare.Looking up, I could see her waiting for me to do something, to say something more.Maybe waiting for me to cry out loudly in the night.But there would be no tears shed as I waited a lifetime to hear her speak… for her to say something… anything at all.She would have to do something soon or my mind was going to simply fold.

“Um,” she let out.“I…” her composure wavered at the sight my desperate impatience.“It has been such a long time,” she explained.“It has been so long.”Slowly she continued, forcing her hand up to comfort the air between us, but the utterly insincere gesture mocked my trembling heart.She had not even contemplated this possibility, even as she had let me come so close, with a million outs for her to take on the way.“I want…” she continued, gaining her composure.“I want to be your friend,” her thin voice quietly spoke with an all too familiar smile.My ears hearing only an incoherent foreign language of her want, not comprehending how she could conveniently transform me into the friendguy… after knowing all I had been through.

Wanted to laugh.Wanted to cry.Wanted to disappear from her mindless words, so cruel.Finally wanted her to disappear from my humiliation in the dead night without a trace. With unafraid eyes now with nothing to lose, looked upon her from complicated layers of an ever changing reality.

Mind stretched down to the dark abyss of knowledge, shifting forcefully to adjust to the mental lights that suddenly shuddered on from an uncompromised darkness. Mine was the black edge of reason fading into the dark blue depths ofatortured soul.Her forced wavering hand stirred my pain now growing uncontrollably through the night and I looked up to see her pale green eyes once again.Hers was a soft orange in the shallow depths of a long game, unwilling to advance out of a limited comfort.Her face now reflected as if I was looking at her like she was the one from Mars.And when I spoke again, I languished over each word, andpowerfully directed them into her toiled thoughts so there would be no mistake.

“The reason that you have not seen me in a long time is because you never called me back,” it coldly shot.

Her emotionless eyes stirred, sensing something awry for the first time.

“From the last time that we talked, you never called me back,” the voice shamelessly powered on, unleashing a zig-zagging tremor that would wreak havoc on any nonsense standing in its way.

Was this voice trying to wave me down over the past hours, the past weeks? Maybe it was trying to reach me my whole life.

Caught in a whirlwind her motionless hands now rested down insecurely against her knees; her body still as a mouse.“Do you know the last time I called you?” I asked inquisitively.”I paused momentarily, taking all the time I would need. “Do you?”

Her head slowly motioned ‘no.’ and her smile transgressed.

Intensity grew to each corner of my room as the practical voice inside calmly disbursed the next words.“I called you two weeks ago.It was a Tuesday night.Do you know what night that was?”

She offered no answer.

“That was the night before my father passed away.I felt on that night that something was just not right.Something was definitely wrong.You know, it is very difficult to describe.But I had called you that night and you weren’t around.You just simply weren’t there.”Paused again and gathered myself. “I had left a message with your roommate for you to call me back as soon as you could because it was important.But you never called me.”

“In fact, you never called me back before that, from the times I had called you before," I suddenly realized.

“I… I never got your message,” she said defensively.

Let her speak now.

“I…” she continued, her words now lost on me, butwaitingpatiently for anexplanation that would somehow give reason to all of this.

“I didn’t know,” she insisted.

And in my insane room with walls beginning to budge, the chaos nearly brought me to my feet with levered pain pouring.From under all of it, a strong voice rose up inside to get me through.It clearly called me to remember just what this innocent beauty said the last time we were together.It was one month ago almost to the day.Had it truly been that long?Yes, it had been an entire month.She lay half naked in my bed, her eyes intently locked on mine.“I am crazy for you,” I had declared into hers, my fingers caressing her face. Her fingles tinglingsoftly against my spine.Full round naked breasts pressed against my skin and I kissed her on the forehead signifying the trust I felt in the moment

“That is sweat,” she had said in the moment said smiling.Her toes gently caressed against mine.

“You should stay with me tonight,” I had told her.I caressed her nipple, and worked my hands down her tightly contoured body.Mischievously my fingers pressed between her legs, and her hand gently lead it upwards.

“Let’s talk,” her voice enthusiastically interrupted.Sat up, now putting on her shirt, and fully exposed like a reversed wet T-Shirt contest.

“I should go.I can come back later this week and stay with you.Once I have my things… my makeup…I promise.”At my front doorher finger pressed against my body and she whispered teasingly, ‘you have a hot body.’

She never came back for you.

Attempting to shake this from my head, the strong voice was going to get me through all of this.

“Well, knewthat my father had cancer from the very beginning,”the voicefired through. A Friday night at the crowded bar, I had told her.Now to think about it, she didn’t seem all too interested in that whole subject.

“My friends were there for me the night my dad died,” the voice coldly fired.

Waited again for her to say something, to say anything… This layered voice of reason began losing its battle as a stronger voice rumbled below with the weight of a thousand lost souls falling to an infinite void somewhere just below my sinking feet.You know what you are to her now. Then just what is she to you?She is not going to help you.She did not even try. During this entire time, she did nothing.

I did not want tosee it.Her frivolously chapped lips came alive in my altered vision.Had she really been seeing another man this entire time?

If your dad had not been terminally sick, she would be your girlfriend right now.Laughter almost poured out of me with this absurd notion.And to realize that in the time I had not seen her, I had patiently waited around on a speculationthat her empty promisewould be fulfilled.She was going to come back to me, after all.You see, I waited a week when she was sick… and then lost another after she informed me that she hit herself in the nose with her own tennis racquet the day she wanted to learn tennis.This contrasted pretty sharply with my two a day training sessions, while pounding through a brutal finance major. What could I have done?I had patiently waited through that test for her, but she would not wait for me while my father was dying.

“I didn’t know,” she blindly stated again.Guess I hadn’t spoke in awhile and the tiny mouse was going to be queen of the snake pit.Her voice was reeking of the stability that my soul longed for.

This last summer, that was it.That would be the last fishing trip that I would go on with my father.We had flown all the way out to the Yukon.What were the last words that I even said to him?I honestly can’t even remember. I had called him at the hospital to deliver that unbelievable news that we somehow won the last tournament to get into the finals.In that tournament dedicated to him, I salvaged inspired games out of our struggling team, willing narrow victories.A few days later, the doctors let him go home from the hospital, and everything turned miraculously. He was going to beat this thing.

The following week, his body was in a casket.Back home, my childhood community came together to share one last celebration of his life. His lifeless body rested before me in that dark wooden casket, but I found a sense of peace knowing his soul had long been passed onto a better place.If anything was left, it was only a resonance.He would be turned to ash.

Bottled emotions inside grew.You know, she was probably with her new boy on that night you had thought about her back at home.That day before the funeral, you were alone in your mother’s guest room.My motherwas trying to carry on, sleeping all alone for the first time in so many years.You thought about this little angel from that other world, dreaming of just how it would be if she was there for you. Seemed so impossibly far away.Tell me, was she with him as you waited on the other end of that phone, hearing it ringing away again, again, again… Reality now striking from all angles… I haven’tmade it to mycorporate finance class in over a month.If I don’t see that teacher tomorrow before I leave for that tournament… will I even graduate next semester?She was with you so casually, I wonder… has this other boy, has he fucked her yet?My mind reeling; twisting away; not able to deny it any longer.As soon as things started to get difficult, she was gone..

“I didn’t know…” she asserted again uselessly wasting the space in front of me. Why isthis about her right now?

Then I knew what I was going to do… what I had to do, because the strong voice wasn’t going to allow her to carry on this charade any longer.A last curious thought popped in my head, a minor distraction, one that only a man can understand.Whether you do it or not, it has absolutely no bearing on whether you would be able to sleep with any of her friends.

“I didn’t know…” the child’s voice whined out again.This voice echoed through hollow walls in the lost night.It urged me to leave her be.I have never given up on anyone in my life.Not anyone.Look, in another month is winter break.So, add another month and half after returning and she may drop you another call. Realistically she will be busy on the weekend, but will schedule you in to meet her for a Tuesday sushi lunch date.Now as her friend, she will be complaining to you about her new boyfriend.‘Why can’t he be nice, like you?’ she may ask.

Her voice? That voice strongly whined, asserting her innocence andauthority… and almost underneath the voice, something tantalizingly familiar.A hidden little gem.A distinct after-texture resonating from a glass of red wine.

Yes, it is definitely there, and if I could bottle it and bring it on my plane tomorrow, I bet you 8 out of 10 teammates would confirm it was there.This includes at least four freshmen on the team who may as well be as clueless as this 22 year old child now seated before me.In the siren tone of her voice the sexual after-tone resonated distinctly.So undeniable soft, yet powerful in effect on her carried cries.A subconscious tool she used to skate through her whole life. How anciently, I wonder, could you trace it back through her bloodline?The tournament starts tomorrow and this little girl’s presence has somehow grown into an outrage before me. You wanted to fuck her, that is all.From the moment you had met her on your birthday.That is really all.

And this is how millionaires make their money.They see everything from the beginning and follow their untamed will all the way to the end without the distraction of consequences shaping their impervious thoughts.Because after all, the consequences don’t really matter when you’re the one who wins.And this is how prize fighters can end a defenseless wavering opponent in remorseless frenzy.And this is how the true surviving soul will always survive when the opportunities are within reach.But she is not going to get away with playing victim in my hollow house.Not tonight on this ghost night, as my lost soul does not bear to stand this wretched insincerity for one minute longer.Do it already.The words almost laughed out of me.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

The detached voice was without any hint of laughter.It summoned my body to slowly begin to stand.Heart pounded loudly and curiously I wondered if she would laugh at the command.

“Really,” her hurt sympathetic voice called back. An emotion I so strongly desired from her behind everything else.Her confused disappointed eyes moved down to the floor.As I looked numbly through her soul, the response still did not make me feel better.

And in my insane room with walls circling around walls, the body found itself forming its own useless circles.With my back turned to her, cold, all alone, my eyes understood they would never willingly look upon her again. Visions of classrooms and coffins flashed at the empty spaces of each wall, comforted in previously unnoticed holes, unknown marks on my crazy walls.“Get the fuck out of here,” was all the voice could say, growing through the darkness of night.And in the madness, the utter chaos, the unimagined restlessness of the voice was beginning to shout the only thing that meant anything to me anymore and I wanted to shatter each and every window within the prison walls and scream them to the sky. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.”

“I, I didn’t know,” she called back helplessly, trying to make it stop.

“Get the fuck out of here,” my wounded voice called out.

And out of the sheer chaos, quite footsteps could finally be heard tiptoeing around slowly, unsurely, to gather loose possessions.Do I have my purse, she may have thought, because whatever item remained would be forever lost behind to the vortex.Forcing out what may as well have been my last breathe, the fully detached voice called:“Get the fuck out of here, and don’t ever talk to me again.”

Quiet footsteps approached the cell door softly, readying for a final departure.“Get the fuck out of here,” echoed emptily, now weakly echoing.Near to silence, the doorknob could be heard twisted toward freedom.The door breathed open eerily, and neatly returned to its closed state in paused time.Would have sold my soul to properly fold the door neatly in half to send her properly on her way.Loose appendages finally ordered against the lost circles.Footsteps descended away from my door, down the hallway, and out my front door, as she slipped into the night unscathed.Finally transformed into a rumbling car engine; loose gravel turning in the driveway.

But she left me with it.With it, she left me into that dark sleepless night, with the lost tournament looming, numb to a near broken hand thatstupidly marked little on the verge of a final stand. But I would battle,and would battleit to the end.All alone, my heart toiled away sleepless in the barren void.Found a freedom of it all in the darkness of that night, heart recursively sinking away from the impossible lure of sleep.But in that night, that lost night of which I would never wish on even her, a fated vision matched the empty promises.In the tormenting madness, a separate verdict was reached by powers beyond my restless mind.

Forces dancing beyond the realm of human understanding swayed on and on.And as life passes these adversities from one to the next, infinitely all the way down the line, it makes me truly wonder.That when she meets her fated prince, will he more closely resemble her father than I?And when he takes her away to her rightful place, and after many years of peaceful breathing, I still can’t help but wonder if empty promises remain trapped on her soul, as a last leaf caught in untamed wind?I shudder to know that this weight remaining on my heart shall not go away. Even as one day as her prince may leave her far behind as she left me, the same way her father had left her mother. But still this will stay with me.