Let Your Heart Drive (10 page)

She always enjoyed teaching others something new, helping people discover something exhilarating about themselves. I flounce off the bed and over to the dresser, but once I rifle through a few things, old books, journals and a moth-eaten scarf, I yank out the biggest pair of granny panties. They’re as white as the four walls and lack sexiness to the extreme. I lift them up higher and try to imagine someone like my sister wearing these monstrous things.

“Oh my God, Sin! Give me those!”

“Oh! Chelsea…are these
your
granny panties?” I razz dodging her as she lunges to grab them. She comes up behind me swiping madly at the unsightly undies in my tight grasp, she’s a fraction taller than I am, but I manage to avert her and spring toward the bed. She lands on top of me one breath later, I make my next move trying to stuff them in-between the mattresses. My hold falters when Brett barges through the door.

“What in the world is going on in here?” he asks bugged eyes and clutching the door knob. His expression is worth a king’s ransom. Did he fall asleep while reading to Garrett? He certainly looks somnolent, but his wide blood-shot eyes dart around the room like he’s looking for a drunken burglar, someone who caused all the ruckus and then he drops his glower to us when he realizes it’s just us. “Well?”

I cram the monsters farther in the mattress and explain calmly, “Chelsea’s teaching me how to meditate, that’s all.”

He doesn’t believe me for one second, his lips form a content smile before he says, “Uh huh…
right
.” It’s the only thing he states as he gently shuts the bedroom door. I crane my head back and catch Chelsea’s lopsided grin, two seconds later we both bust out laughing just like we used to when we were little. 

“I’m a hopeless romantic. It’s disgusting. It really is. I’ve seen ‘While You Were Sleeping’, like, twenty times, and I still believe in the whole Prince Charming thing.”

–Jennifer Love Hewitt

Later in the
night my cell phone lights up the eclipsed room. I fumble across the mounds of ruffled pillows and snag it from its retro pink charging dock. It’s a text from Trey.

You do know that there’s more than one Trey in the world, but I’m taking it as a compliment that you think it was me. –Trey

He’s talking about the pic I sent him at Cadillac Ranch, I’d almost forgotten about it. I sit up, shoving pillows behind me and text him back.

Don’t lie, admit it, you’re an underground paint-slinger.

I’m not Shepard Fairey. Hey, are you gonna be up for another five minutes? –Trey

I check the time, seven minutes till ten and instantly I feel a swirl of jittery butterflies rush to my stomach.

Yeah, you wanna call me?

That’s the plan. –Trey

The frazzled butterflies start to explode and I quickly reach under the bed and flip open my laptop. I type in Shepard Fairey just to see who he’s talking about. He’s an American street artist and the guy that designed the iconic
Hope
poster for Barack Obama in 2008. I search through some of his other work and he’s so much more than just some mere street painter. I chew on my lip timidly when I feel my phone vibrate beside me, he wasn’t kidding when he said he’s planning on calling me.

“Hey,” he says gravelly.

“Hey,” I respond with heat flushing over my face. Why does he have this crazy effect on me? All it takes is just one word from his lips and I’m putty in his hands.

“I saw that you’re supposed to turn in your rental tomorrow.”

I fidget with a thread from the sheet and stifle my nervous voice down. “Yeah, I made it to my destination.” I twirl the thread around my finger and throw in, “Finally.”

Will this end our conversation? I mean there’s really no other reason for him to call me or vice versa, it’s how this whole connection thing between us started. My heart clenches painfully at the thought, the idea of not hearing his voice again.

“
So…
I guess you’ve been pretty busy, huh?” I pry trying to find out a little more about him.

“Yeah, we’ve been pretty swamped here at work, everyone’s taking summer vacations all at once. Kinda like someone I know…” he teases and I smile.

I scooch up farther against the headboard and press my cell closer to my ear, listening to him, he pauses and I can clearly hear an audible flustered chuckle resonate between us. Is he lost for words? Am I making him just as nervous as he makes me? Or is it something else?

“Did you just get off work?” I ask, fishing for an answer, trusting this isn’t our last phone call.

“Yeah, I just did a double shift. Some guy called in sick at the last moment and they’re sort of shorthanded today.”

“Well that sucks.”

“Yeah well, you know what they say, it pays the bills,” he laughs and I begin to imagine him massaging the back of his neck like he’s stressed out. I wonder if he’s sitting on some chair or pacing the floor, but either way I’m acutely aware of his tone. As strange as it sounds I can hear the weight of his words when he mentions bills. I decide to flip the mood around and curl into a pillow.

“Hey Trey?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me. What’s the most bizarre call you’ve ever had working roadside?”

He guffaws, “God…Sin. One thing, huh?
Okay…
”

I cradle my phone with zeal, ready to catch all of Trey’s favorite moments and I quiet my own breathing to listen.

“I had this call the other night, I had to notify the local police because this guy couldn’t get out his car. At first I thought he’d accidently locked the keys inside, but as I was talking to him I found out that he really was literally locked in. Every time he tried to manually unlock a door it would automatically relock, and it wouldn’t let him out no matter what he did. The police contacted me back once they arrived and said they were going to break a window to get him out. They smashed in the passenger’s side window and assisted him safely, unharmed out of the car.”

“So how did he lock himself
inside
the car?”

“We still haven’t figured that out.”

“You know what it makes me think of?”

“What?”

“Maximum Overdrive by Stephen King.”

“Or Christine with the song You keep a
Knocking—
”

“
But You Can’t Come In…
” I blurt without a thought and we die laughing. “I know it’s not funny, the guy was probably freaked out.”

“Yeah and probably embarrassed that the cops had to let him out.”

“So… what else?”

He snickers through the phone dubiously. “You wanna hear more?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well I had another call, it’s been awhile, there’s a guy in Florida driving through Alligator Alley. He’d rented a car from us. He called me and said he hit something, something big, and started cussing at everything in sight. I couldn’t understand a word he said because he was so pissed off. Finally, I’m able to ask him if he can still drive the car, but he shouts back, “Hell no!” So, I calmly ask him to slowly get out of the rental and check the car.”

I’m sitting ramrod straight in bed, clinging to my cell. “What did he hit?”

“Well, he steps out and hollers just on the verge of a high-pitched scream, “I hit a gator and it’s still alive!” I was completely unprepared when he said that. I could hear a loud racket and the slam of a door and then he said, “I am
not
getting out of this car!” I didn’t ask how he ran over a twenty-foot alligator, but I did tell him to call 911, so they could send someone out to help him.”

“Poor alligator, so did the guy relax once everything settled down?”

“I guess, would you ever settle down if you just smacked into an alligator?” he quips indifferently and continues, “Besides I think the guy ended up riding with the tow truck guy.”

“I don’t blame him. Well, at least I didn’t travel through alligator territory, armadillo terrain was enough for me.”

We talk the rest of the night about the perils of roadside, the half loaded gun tucked haphazardly between a seat in a minivan to a woman who locked her child inside a car—
who refused to contact the local authorities
, mainly because she was parked in front of a crack house on the bad side of town. I’m kinda shocked at some of the things Trey tells me, some of the things people would say to him, but never once did anyone ever reverse his ritualistic greeting. The one where he says, “Thanks for calling…”

He cared about people on some level, why else would he do what he does? And that I find almost,
almost
more attractive than his dreamy voice. I glance at the time, it’s a quarter after four in the morning and I know at some point we both need to get some rest. He worked a double shift and I just journeyed through five states, one of us will be comatose within the next hour.

I wake up the next morning to Trey’s hushed voice whispering in my ear. I breathe in long and languidly and remember his laugh, the way he would drop his tenor to mimic the guy from Florida yelling about the alligator under his car. And then my blood runs ice cold when I hear… “Sinead? Are you awake?”

Holy Mother of God, he’s still on the phone!

“Trey?” I squeak out, embarrassed beyond reason. I fell asleep on him.

“Yeah,” he chuckles quietly. “I didn’t want to hang up on you.”

I rub a hand over my face ashamed, god, did he hear me snore? Do I talk in my sleep? Do I make weird, creepy noises? I drag Chelsea’s white table top clock across the nightstand and gape at it. It’s 10:05 a.m. I let it go, allowing it to tumble off the bed with a boisterous clank from the metal bells on either side of it.

“I’m so sorry,
Trey—
” I start to apologize tasting the impending dryness vacuuming up every ounce of saliva from my mouth.

He jumps in before I can gather enough courage or spit to finish. “You’re fine, at least I know what you dream about now.”

“What?!” I blurt out with my eyes as big as the moon I’m sure. Heat simmers through every vein in my mortified body. 

“Hey,
ah…before I go
, because I really need to crash, but what’s a Yazzie?”

-

We are given a choice every day to live, to fight for what we believe in or let the war of worry wash us away. I have that choice, me. I repeat my mantra while I clean the fogged up mirror with a washcloth. I rub in a detangling serum through my wet tousled hair and comb it and repeat the mantra again. It’s been a few days since I heard from Trey, but he had said it wasn’t my snoring that’s keeping him away.

My dad on the other hand calls every day, we had a major glitch with Garrett’s birthday present. He bought it and mailed it a month early, so now I’m stashing a sixteen inch red and white BMX bike and a giant stuffed moose inside the guest bedroom closet, which is at the moment
my closet
.

As the summer swelters the first weeks of August I put in some time working for Chelsea at the fitness club. I reminisce, thinking about Trey and our late night talks and wonder what’s changed. His voice certainly hasn’t changed, but his flirty behavior has sobered up, I’ve never ask what’s up, nor do I act offended. But then again, the text messages are shorter and so detached that it’s making me realize that maybe it’s for the best anyway. There’s no reason for a girl like me to get hung up on some guy, especially a guy that I have no earthly idea what he looks like. God that sounded so vain.

I roughly cram another yoga mat inside a bin. For an employee, I am not emitting a very positive, peaceful persona, not at all. And I’m in the nature studio for heaven’s sake, if there’s one place where I shouldn’t be a wad of emotions, it’s here. The floors are a natural beautiful wooden surface with a thatched palm roof, and the tall bamboo plants frame the outside of the room like you’re really in Bali or India. The entire 1,200 square foot open space screams sereneness. I swipe a zafu from another bin and plunk down on it, I know my feet aren’t crossed appropriately, my hands dangle from my knees sloppily and I hear her before she even enters the room.

“You know, it’s all about posture,” Chelsea comments like a true guru.

I wince as I tug my right foot higher on my thigh and tilt my head side to side. The strain on my leg makes my toes curl and my breathing palpable. “You’re forcing it, Sin,” she remarks and runs her fingertips along my spine. “Stack your spinal cord up and down like a column.” 

“Maybe I should stack a pile of books on top of my head to get the perfect posture?”

“Okay, that’s a great idea, Sinead. Hang on and I’ll go grab some books,” she sasses back. She bumps my shoulder with hers and passes a small smile, a perceptive smile. “What’s going on, Sin?”

I shrug and close my eyes pretending I’m focusing on meditating.

“Nothing.”

“Wow…
nothing
sure is something, I mean look at you…you look like this is painful and that’s not what this is about.”

I nip at the corner of my lower lip and refuse to open my eyes. I switch my hands around and place the right into my left with my palms facing upward. “I think I’m just lacking the blazing inner fire.” I peek one eye open at her and ask, “Know what I mean?”

She nods knowingly situated in the picture-perfect Lotus position beside me. Without a glance or a regard my way she replies, “You just need to get laid.”

My eyes bug out and I crane my head at her. “What?”

“You said you’re lacking that inner fire…
right
?”

“Yeah, I said that, but I’m talking about mediation,” I retort and point at my midsection just below the naval. “You know the energy thingy right here?”