231FADE INTO YOU
Chapter Two:
A Declined Invitation
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
― Robert Frost
I was dripping with sweat, lying shirtless on my sheets with the blanket kicked to the ground. It was 9:00PM, and still hot enough to make me consider suicide. Plus my shitty air conditioner was useless. I rose from bed and waved my hand over the vent. Faintly, I felt a cool stream of air. When I couldn't take it anymore, I decided to go outside and smoke.
It was still 93 degrees, even with the sun down. The black t-shirt I threw on quickly became soaked through with sweat and I did my best to ignore the beads of sweat forming on my brow. The hallway was empty, except for someone across the hall. It was an older woman and she was sweeping her porch.
When she saw me, she smiled and waved. When I waved back, she took it as permission and waddled over to me. She had blond hair with evident gray seeping through the long, thin strands. Her face carried most of the evidence of her age, however, with wrinkles and dark spots beneath her chocolate-colored eyes.
"Hello there, neighbor. How do you like our little community so far?"
"Uh…" I put out my cigarette, not wanting to blow smoke in her face. "I think my AC is broken." I cast a quick glance at the door next to mine, where my freak neighbor Ruben lived. "Other than that, yeah, it's livable."
"I've lived here for twenty years. Let me talk to Rodney about that air conditioner." She patted my arm reassuringly. "Do you have another cigarette?" Her brows arched and I laughed.
"Of course." I drew one from my pocket and handed it to her. "Who's Rodney?"
"The owner. His manager is lazy, but Rodney's a good man. He'll come down and fix it himself, if needed. As old as this building is, though, it might just be that your neighbor has turned the air down. You should talk to him first."
"Which neighbor?" I inquired as I lit both of our cigarettes.
"The only one you have beside you, dear." She blew out a lung full of smoke and set her broom against the wall. "Apartment 9, Ruben Hayse. He's a nice man." She sighed while I repressed the desire to throw myself down the stairs. "By the way, what's your name, son?"
"Dillon. Um, Dillon Corvin, that is."
"Dillon, I'm Ericka Schuld. Very nice to meet you. You should come by sometime and I'll make a pie." She smiled at me before taking up her broom and walking away. As she reached her porch, the door to apartment nine opened. Ruben popped his head into the hall and his eyes fell to me.
"Oh, hello Ruben! We were just talking about you." Ericka smiled at him and then went into her apartment, having laid my trap. Smiling, Ruben stepped out into the hall and toward me.
"You were talking about me?"
"In passing," I sighed. "If you'll excuse me…"
"But you haven't finished your cigarette. "
"I'm done. Goodnight, Ruben." Before I could smash the cigarette against the concrete, he plucked it from my hand and posed it between his lips. Smirking, he walked away.
"Sleep well, Dillon," he tossed back to me as he walked away. Pursing my lips, I sensed the sarcasm in his voice.
Stepping back into my apartment was like stepping into a sauna. I threw my shirt onto the floor and made sure that every fan in the house was blowing at full speed. I had plans to unpack my shit, after four days of living amongst unpacked boxes, but it was too hot. So I just took a sleeping pill and nodded off early.
Through the haze of a medicine-induced sleep, I felt like I was being ushered back into the world by an annoyance that gently tugged at my mind. It was a trumpet, growing louder and louder until I was fully awake, dumbfounded and completely lost.
It was 2:30AM. Well, fuck. The music reverberated through my entire apartment. I clambered to my feet, wiping a fresh sheen of sweat from my face, and had the brilliant idea to grab a shirt before I went next door.
By the time I had wrestled my way into a green undershirt, I was pounding on Ruben's door. The air in the hall was humid, and when he opened the door to his apartment it was just as hot. He wore a white undershirt, which showed evidence that he'd been sweating, and a pair of boxers. His hair was shoved around at odd angles and seemed damp – with sweat, no doubt.
"I don't want to call the police on you," I snapped over the music that pulsed from his apartment.
"I knew it would get you over here," he replied with a slight smirk.
"Please, Ruben, just turn it down."
"Only if you come inside and consider my offer, just for a moment."
"It's too late for that, Ruben." I groaned and dropped my head against the wall outside his apartment. "Is your air conditioner broken, too?"
"I turned it off."
My eyes must've bulged out of my head. "It's 105 in the daytime."
"Our apartments used to be one very large apartment. The device that controls the temperature is in my apartment." He smiled. "I wanted to smoke you out."
"You're an asshole." I couldn't believe my situation.
"I'll turn it back on if you will just come inside and listen to my idea."
"NO, Ruben, I told you, I'm not interested."
"Is it your sexual orientation in general?" Ruben's head cocked to the side and his gray eyes gleamed at me. "I've been able to satisfy several straight men, in my day."
I blushed furiously but, thanks to the heat, it was hidden. "It's not about that…"
With satisfaction, Ruben smiled. "You're not straight. So what, exactly, is prohibiting you?"
The truth was: 1. I was completely weirded out by him. 2. I was a relationship type of guy. Since I started dating, when I was sixteen, I had two long, very serious relationships. Casual sex, to me, was an oxymoron. It was too intimate to avoid becoming involved. And I definitely didn't want to become involved with anyone. I was trying to move past my last fatal relationship by distancing myself from romance for a while.
A long-fucking-while, after the way Tatum wrecked me.
I wasn't about to let Ruben in on all that, though, and settled for a dark scowl instead. "It's a ridiculous idea, and you're weird. Just turn your music down before I call the cops. And I'll be contacting the manager, to get this sorted out with the air conditioner." With that, I turned to leave.
"Goodnight, Dillon," he bid softly and then closed his door.
By the time I was flat on my bed, the music was off. A few moments later, freezing cold air poured through the vents. Sighing, I curled up on my bed and went to sleep.
The next day was a Saturday, and even Silvia Rookstool didn't work on Saturday. With a cold apartment to draw me in, I decided to finally unpack all of my junk. The boxes were piled into every spare corner. I started with my clothes, shoving them into the limited drawer space I had. By noon, I was exhausted and most of my stuff was unpacked. That's about when a knock disrupted my silence.
"Hold on," I called out and kicked an empty box out of the way. I threw open the door and there was a boy. He looked about sixteen, with tousled brown hair and timid brown eyes. He held a giant bouquet of flowers and a box with red ribbon roped around it.
"Can I help you?"
"Dillon? Dillon Corvin?" When I nodded, the lad jerked the contents of his arms toward me. I took them and the boy turned to leave.
"Whoa, wait, where did these come from?" The boy only shrugged and dashed down the stairs. I shut out the afternoon heat and dropped the items to my glass tabletop. The box contained strawberries, dipped in chocolate. The bouquet consisted of brilliant orange and yellow roses. Attached to it was a card. Written in ridiculously elegant script, it read,
Dillon,
Café Bella, 7:00PM
~Ruben
I dropped the card to the kitchen countertop and examined the flowers. A shudder sprinted up my spine. If that creep thought I would meet him, he was seriously delusional. If I wouldn't agree to talk to him in the hall, I definitely wouldn't want to meet him at Café Bella – an intimate restaurant that specialized in alcoholic cappuccinos and lattes.
And what kind of guy sends anotherguy flowers?
Creeped out, I dumped the flowers into the garbage but decided to eat the strawberries. I tucked my legs beneath my body on the sofa and looked around. The walls were still barren. I decided to go out and find something to decorate with, since I already needed to pick up groceries.
It was hot as hell outside my apartment. With a sigh, I jogged down the stairs and out into the oppressive summer heat. The parking lot to our building was small, considering the fact that there were only three floors with four apartments on each floor. It was a small community, with an even smaller parking lot, and some douche bag was parked behind me. It was a silver car that looked new and very expensive.
I decided to figure out whose car it was. Otherwise, I couldn't leave.
The first floor was easy – they were unoccupied. On the second floor, all four tenants answered but they didn't own the silver car. The third floor was my floor, and I knocked on Ericka's door first.
"Hey, Dillon, how are things?" She was carrying an infant who lay fast asleep in her arms. "This is my grandson, Russell." She smiled down at him before turning her attention back to me. "He's here for the weekend."
"He's very cute," I mentioned with a nervous laugh. "Ericka, do you have a silver car? It's pretty nice, I think a Toyota."
"Um, no, sorry but I drive an old truck." She stared away in thought. "But Ruben has a silver car, though. It's brand new, too. You should talk to him."
"Thanks, Ericka." I bid her farewell and then slapped my hand across my forehead. I didn't want to face Ruben, not since it was clear that he was trying to get me to talk to him. The bastard was persistent, I had to admit. It only took a few days for my life in a new city to become ridiculous, and I had to wonder if moving away from home was wise.
But then I remembered the way my small home town had turned me away, shut me out, and basically exiled me.
It was a perfect day for walking. OK, maybe not, but I had no other option. I needed groceries and talking to Ruben about moving his car was out of the question. He would inevitably ask if I were going to meet him at seven, and the awkward answer would be "hell no." So I set out walking along the strip of businesses, hoping to run across a grocery store.
Soaked in sweat, I soon realized that there were no nearby grocery stores, but there was a fully-stocked convenient store. I loaded up on microwave burritos and Gatorade and dumped my stuff onto the checkout counter. The cashier, a red-headed girl with glasses and glossed lips, peered at me in annoyance.
"This isn't Wal-Mart…" She scanned the items, stuffing each into a bag.
"Well, it's within walking distance of my apartment," I grumbled back at her. In my mind, I wanted to say, "Don't fuck with me lady. I've been sweating like a pig and dodging the advances of some creepy fuck that lives next door."
"20.40," she sighed, extending her hand toward me to accept the money. Once I paid, I emerged into the heat once more, this time with Gatorade.
Shopping for decorations was out of the question. I tugged my five bags of junk food up the stairs to the third floor and dropped them as I searched for my keys. Once I located them (in my back pocket), I fumbled to unlock the door.
"Did you receive my gifts?" I glanced up to see Ruben, leaning against his door with a glass of iced tea in his hand. I panted in exertion and tried harder to unlock the door. Why the hell do I have twenty keys to sort through? As my door fell open, I glanced up and saw that Ruben was no longer on his end of the hallway. He was standing right beside me.
"To be honest, Ruben, it was weird. Please, don't send me things." I began scooping my bags up and Ruben took three into his hands. Before I could stop him, he breezed by me into my apartment. Sighing, I followed him.
"Dull," he sighed, glancing around. He laid the bags on the kitchen counters and then leaned against one, watching me with cool gray eyes. "But you just moved in, so it's forgivable."
"Thanks for understanding," I snipped sarcastically and began piling burritos into the refrigerator.
"If you eat that way, you'll lose your slim figure." The cocky smirk on his face made me flush with heat, all the way up to my ears.
"If you don't mind, Ruben, I'd like to take a nap."
"Why were you walking?" he persisted, head cocking to the side innocently.
I scoffed. "You know why. You blocked me in."
"Did I?" His brows arched up and I felt like beating that look off his face. "I'll have to remedy that. You could've just told me."
"Goodbye, Ruben." I resulted to desperate measures and pushed him toward the door, placing my hands on his shoulders.
"I'll see you at the Café at 7:00," he managed to call out as I shut the door. I laughed bitterly.
Into my empty apartment, "Yeah, right."
I cracked open another container of Gatorade and dumped it down my throat. I fell onto my bed and allowed the cold air to wash over my sweat-covered body. It was my first Saturday in that apartment, and at the time it felt good to be so alone: to be utterly wrapped up in the silence, the solitude.
But, as they say, all good things must come to an end.
And very quickly, my life of luxurious solitude turned into sour loneliness.