Crunchy TUNES

I get out of my car into the blistering cold of this particular January morning. I’ve been reading for about forty minutes and two cigarettes, and my breath fogs out in front of my face as I step towards the crosswalk. I wonder if there’s a bathroom around my class, I dont really need to use it but theres still some time before I need to be in class and i dont feel like sitting next to a bunch of strangers outside a classroom, the level of apathy in that situation is almost laughably unbearable. I dont have enough time anyways. Walking on the sidewalk in between the tall stone buildings and the trees with the leaves still half dead and clinging on, I see a girl’s face beaming at me from twenty feet away, Michelle. Beautiful. She’s mexican, but if you didn’t know any better you might think she was asian. She walks towards you and wraps her arms around your torso, the way that smaller girls always do, and I ask in my deep adult voice, if she just got done, with class that is. She smiles and says yes, and talks to me about trivialities until I look her in the eyes and tell her I should get going. She hugs me again and before she lets go and walks away she says take care of yourself nick. Maybe she smelled the smoke, maybe she could tell i haven’t eaten much lately, or maybe its just one of those things people say. Without looking back i laugh my deep chested laugh, almost like a cough but it feels like the kind of laugh I did when I was thirteen and didn’t really understand what was funny in the first place. I tell her I’ll try. I don’t tell her about the girl who was crying on my shoulder in a bed in a cabin at shaver lake with all my friends just beyond the door drinking whiskey in excess. That was a month ago, when that girl was telling me she knew she wanted me because i was humming christmas carols as we climbed up the stairs slick with ice and entered the cabin. It’s a month later now, and she’s been so quiet. First she won’t shut the fuck up, now i can’t get a word out of her to save my life. I told her I didn’t want to be another mistake of hers, in my head it sounds cold and calculating because it is. The way I say it to her sounds warm and caring and affectionate. The funny thing is, I’m just making conversation. I tell her I’m genuinely surprised for a multitude of reasons because I am. In my head it sounds harsh because it is, so I laugh as i say it and she laughs too and she’s comfortable. She really doesn’t get it, if I weren’t so heavily involved in the matter it would be hilarious but bad situations are only funny in the third person.