that darn smile in 2014

10:32pm

Well, here we go again. Cover your ears [or eyes? whatever..] because guess who wandered back into my life today?

I had that thought about CK at the end of last night’s entry and then a moment of “why do I suck so much at making friends?!?” before I finally fell asleep after 1:30am. Mostly I was surprised at how little I’d been thinking about him lately. How the days were getting easier without the near constant thoughts. I mean it’s only been a few months and it takes me longer than that to break real crushes on people. heh. So I thought the way things were progressing were pretty decent.

Plus, I totally understood the fact that I was the one that said I wanted to cut ties with him. I’m the one that didn’t respond to that last text and I kinda brought this whole thing on myself. It was tiring trying to be friends with someone who doesn’t seem to understand how this stuff works.

Anyway, that whole thing happened last night. I fell asleep and woke up late this morning [still can’t get that bedtime worked out]. No one was home so I hung out for a while and after breakfast Mom wanted me to wash the car. She went outside while I changed into real clothes and poured myself an extra cup of coffee. I had actually put some [minimal] thought into my clothing choice and tried to toss my hair back in a way that wasn’t too atrocious. My neighbor has had some guy with a pretty rugged beard working on her house next door so I didn’t want to run into him and look like a complete slob. You never know, right?

So after my hair fixing I picked up my coffee mug and headed out the front door. I was debating what I wanted to sarcastically say to my mother who’d mentioned she didn’t want to get dirty [that was her excuse for having me wash the car] but was using the vacuum on the trunk. I made it half-way across our newly finished courtyard when I looked up to see CK waltzing up to my mother and saying something about the blood in the car she was trying to get rid of.

I’ll admit it, my heart did that flutter thing and I had a slight moment of panic. I would have turned around and ran back inside, but he caught me on the other side of the screen before I even had time to consider my escape. I had no other choice but to open the door and go outside. It would have been weird, and rude, and too avoidy to take off in any other direction.

Mom was already in the process of stopping the vacuum and so I attempted to nonchalantly sip my coffee as we said hi to each other for the first time in months. And I tried not to freak out about the way I looked during this impromptu meeting.

It was a bunch of the usual how you been’s and what’s new. Mom asked him if he’d gone on his trip yet and apparently he had. He only made it as far as Washington and was there for like 10 days. He asked about us being back from our road trip and I said we’d been home for a while. So he asked about the states we visited and if we made a loop or went straight out and back. I acted as if I hadn’t been talking to him at all during that tipsy night in Vegas or the roadside stop in Utah. My mother doesn’t need to know everything, right? And he didn’t give anything away either.

I ended up bringing him into the courtyard so he could check out the furniture I picked up. He seemed relatively impressed, but he’s hard to read. We stood in there talking for a long while. About the trip. About elephants. About his Washington experience. About restaurants, and food, and dying brain cells, and fishing [I had to bring up my little fishing trip in WA earlier this summer], and the new courtyard. hah. There were all kinds of conversation topics going on.

It always surprises me the way we have random things in common. Like he was excited about the fact that they have wild berries all over WA that you can just roam around and pick. That happens to be one of my absolute favorite things about the state. I’m always bugging my brother to pull over the car so I can grab a handful to eat on the road. haha. And he talked about eating hamburgers and made mention of how it was hard for him to not eat an entire plate of fries, which are my favorite food! It’s all these random little things that seem to catch me off guard whenever we have a decent conversation.

And of course I know this isn’t that exciting to everyone else. I kinda just want to retell the whole thing, and every word of our conversation, because I want to remember it for the future. I like remembering.

There were times when he’d bring something up that he remembered about the inside of our house. Or stuff I might have casually mentioned months ago. I didn’t think he was really the type to pay attention and remember things like that. He always seems so aloof and distracted. [Mom, being the wonderful lady she is, made a joke about how he must be distracted by all the girls in his life. He said he was lucky not to have that problem and his brain space is almost maxed out. I guess it’s lucky to be drama free?..] But today was totally different. He seemed genuinely interested to be hanging out here and talking to us. I mean it was just about everything.

He did that thing where he would say he was going to leave us alone and head out, but then he’d stop and continue the conversation. It wasn’t even me trying to drag him back in. After the courtyard convo we went back out front. Something came up about our cars, and old cars, and I remembered that he’d never seen the ‘67!

We cut through the garage and I pulled the cover off the car. It was a bit dusty but he wandered around it and looked at everything. He even got down on the ground to try to see underneath it when he saw the leaked fluid. We looked inside it and he took a look under the hood. I gave him a hard time about not being able to find the hood latch [I still find this completely funny] and how I thought he knew about cars. He said he only knew about trucks and then asked me where the carburetor was. I was kind of stunned to hear him ask that and paused before saying something about how it was right in front of him. He just laughed. Of course that lead to my making more witty comments about his claiming he knows a ton about cars. I said he must not know much at all and he said something like, “I could surprise you.” And honestly, it came off like it had total double meaning, but he was leaning into the car and I couldn’t see his face.

There was also this moment where he was talking about needing to finish fixing up the Dodge. I asked if he meant the blue and black one he’s got and he said yeah. He showed me some pictures of the roof he had recently cut into to fix a rust issue. So he was looking at the interior of the ‘67 and said something else about it and I said, “I like the two tone truck” and he looked up with the most earnest smile on his face and I kind of melted a little.

If you’d asked me, before today, if I could picture him smiling, I would have told you no. Because I know he’s smiled before. We’re joking all the time. But there isn’t any one moment that stands out in my brain. It’s always like a smirk or something that I don’t fully catch. So when he did that today, and it imprinted on my brain, it was kind of a big deal.

After we were done checking out the car, we walked back out front and stood around. He said several more times he was leaving but never made it very far. It was getting hot though and I had to wash the car. Mom was starting to get out the soap buckets and things so we made our way towards the end of the driveway. He suggested we do it in the evening but I said it was my aunt’s birthday and we were taking her out to happy hour. He seriously stared at me like he had no idea what happy hour was. I made a drinking motion with one hand and he finally picked up on what I meant. He can’t honestly be that sheltered though? I know he’s hung out with plenty of drinkers in his life. I’ve heard stories.

Something about the mail came up and I said that people need to write more letters or send post cards again. He said he liked to send them to the boys when he was out of town [I know this. He’s mentioned it before] and I said I wasn’t sure since we didn’t get a post card from WA. He looked around and said he didn’t know the street address. That I should text it to him. I pointed out the tiny sign out front with numbers and said we didn’t like to be bothered much. It was easier when people didn’t know how to locate us. I also said something about no one trying to sell us things and he asked if people still did that. haha. It’s just the religious people I told him. And he joked about how it was also impossible to get in the house once you do find us. So of course I pointed out the side door as if it were super obvious. This not being able to get inside the house has been a long running joke with him.

Mom had left at some point during this conversation and eventually I picked up the hose to start spraying down the car. He finally said he was going to head back over to the neighbors and sorta stalled and hesitated but eventually left.

A few minutes later the door opened again and the boys came running over to say hi. The little guy was trying to tell me about a calf that fell in a hole, but I kept hearing “cat.” haha. P ended up correcting him and telling me it was a “heifer.” So I was trying to have this somewhat confusing conversation with a two year old and his 5 yr old brother, when I looked up to see Ck sitting on the steps just smiling over at us. Whether he was laughing at my confusion, the fact that I was actually attempting this convo, or something else, I’m not sure. But it was that same damn smile.

They all, including Ck again, came over to talk for a bit but I was distracting myself with my car duties. I tried to get P to help me wash it but he said he was going home. When I offered to let him stay and do it for me, he got the biggest smile on his face and never responded. haha. It was super cute. They left a few minutes after that.

Now I’m stuck here replaying this entire stupid conversation in my head. It was one of the longest ones we’ve ever had and he honestly seemed different. I’ve never seen him stall so much or try to continue the talking like that. Maybe it was the fact that J and the boys were over at the neighbors? [That’s also the first time I’ve seen him come over with them in their truck.] Or maybe he was just bored. I really have no idea. Something was different though.

What I do know is that I’ve totally been sucked back in again. That stupid smile. And those damn green eyes. [do I even have to mention that red hair anymore?!] ugh. What am I supposed to do now?

This world has a funny way of listening to what I say and then throwing it back in my face. Like causing me to trip over a banana peel and then snickering in the background about it…

rose.
12:43am

Last updated September 02, 2014