Nicole Cerniglia's 302

There was always something about the way he used to drive his car around like he didn’t anywhere else in the world to be. It was a blood red mustang convertible with leather interior. The passenger side seat was my seat, considering I had permanent shotgun in it. Everyone knew that they wouldn’t have a chance sitting there if I was around. In the summer, he would wear American Eagle tee shirts, usual bright colors like blue and green. Those shirts always brought out his eyes, a crystal green, however when I used to lie on his stomach and talked to him they I could see they were more then green. Closer to the pupil they became gray and around each pupil was a golden sun. When he glanced over at me from the driver side of that red horse and smiled, all that would show were those golden suns in his eye. It seems so long ago since I have seen that… probably because it will be a year this Valentines day.

I remember before he joined the army he used to have long enough hair where I could run my fingers through it as he weaved in and out of traffic. His hair was so soft, almost like a newborn baby’s but obviously thicker. When we would drive on roads where there were trees covering the road I remember how the light would play tricks on his hair. In the shadows it would be a mahogany brown but then there would be a patch were no leaves were blocking the sky and his hair would be a rusting gold. It was beautiful. Then the leaves would cover it in a split second and it would be back to the mahogany brown color.

I remember being forced to listen to what I used to think was terrible music, which over the years I grew to love. He loved to switch between rock to underground acoustic shit that I did not even know existed. He would drum his two pointer fingers on the steering wheel when we would hit a light, matching the beat of the drums in the song. He also would always mouth the lyrics very nonchalantly but NEVER sing. I remember one time I called him out on never singing. I started teasing him that maybe he had a terrible voice and that it would break the glass windshield. He proceeded to take the CD out of the player and throw it behind him into the street. We kept driving in silence. I never pried about why he never sang again.

During these summer car rides I remember driving to Wal-mart at least once a week for the deluxe bag of gummy bears. We would just drive around for hours on end chatting about the latest things in our lives or old stories that the other one had not heard, munching on gummy bears the whole time. My favorites were the red and orange ones so naturally I would leave him the rest. He used to bite the head off the bears first, and then proceed to pop the rest into his mouth, complaining the whole time that it wasn’t fair that I got the good ones. Then he would smile and stick his tongue out at me, which I would relay back to him.

I remember that at night, when he would drive me home, we would kiss at every red light we would stop at. He would just look at me and I would look at him and we would laugh and just start kissing. We were both children back then, what did we ever know of love?