The heart wants what it wants, and unfortunately mine was bent on her. A touch of lust, a taste of chapstick and an itch worth scratching.

When you’re young you’re blind enough, stupid enough, to make bad decisions even if you see the consequences coming. Because you also see that you have plenty of time to roll with the punches.

She made me wait. Every time I met her, and I didn’t mind. Hell, I appreciated it. I wanted to wait for her. She was the kind of girl who made you want to wait.

Smoke rose from the puckered mouth of a woman draped in a summer shawl out my window. Her hair shifted and shuddered in the same breeze that swept that smoke away. Traffic ran, busses horned their way into the intersection, and I watched a couple of bums scutter around on their wheel chairs. I had nothing better to do. I had nothing better to do in the whole world than wait for this pretty girl and watch the lives pass by on the other side of the glass.

A twinge of guilt at being caught staring at the man who held a sign that read “Jesus is Weed” forced me face first back into my orange juice. Bitter concentrate that always makes me wince, but it cools my hot face. Cools my hot neck. And burns my stomach.
I left the coffee house to wait for her outside under the shade of the surrounding buildings, glass and cement behemoths that overshadowed the cranes that built them just a few years back. A couple of kids almost ran me over on their bikes and another came up to ask for drug money. Not an insinuation, he flat out told me he needed money for drugs. I let him talk to himself, turned him a deaf ear.

I felt out of place, out of my element. I’m a small town kid, grew up on an island. I wasn’t meant for crowds or towers. I was meant for mountains and blue water.

And when she came up the street to meet me, I forgot all that. I forgot the pain in my throat from drinking citrus, I forgot the sunburn on my face. Instead I set my mind to believing how good she looked in that red sweater.