he texts to say he’s arrived, and I clatter down the stairs, weighed down by the picnic I stayed up until midnight assembling (I needed a distraction, there was no way I could sleep). I look up and down the street, but there’s no sign of him, until he unfolds himself from a tiny yellow vehicle that looks more like a gob of phlegm than a car. “Don’t say it,” he says, smiling ruefully. “You try hiring a car at six o’clock on a Friday.” Some part of him must have fought tooth and nail to escape from this. “It’s very—colorful. Who’d you rent it from, Ronald McDonald?” He’s wearing jeans, actual jeans, and his face is covered by a light peppering of stubble, which seems to somehow smooth out that rigidity that often imprisons his features. He’s wearing a green sweater over the jeans, which brings out the hazel flecks in his deep-set eyes—at the very second I notice them, I remind myself who most likely picked it, think of her rifling through my student wardrobe, the “chuck”
What do You think about The Last Time I Saw You (2014)?
