The Little Things That Count

                                    The Little Things That Count

         As we stepped into the house, I knew that we were going to head into the basement of her parent’s home which served temporarily, or so she liked to tell herself, as her apartment.  My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the unadulterated darkness that engulfed her living room, so my best friend held my hand as she led the way through the equally as dark kitchen and to the top of the stairway on our right.  Her eyes hadn’t adjusted yet either, but she had lived in this house with parents who never rearranged the furniture for all of her twenty years; obviously, knew the layout well.
         “We’re at the stairs,” she warned me in her sweet voice, “so be careful.” 
         “Well, yes, ma’am,” I taunted.  Though I acted like I didn’t need her, I did need her; and I always loved it when she showed that she cared for me.  I cared for her as well but with intensity which she could never be allowed to realize.
         I was relieved when she finally flicked on the light over the stairs because, though the light burned my eyes, I was no longer disallowed the sight of her.  Not being able to see her was making me feel anxious; so much so that I was like a trying-to-quit smoker with withdrawal symptoms.  I was addicted to her.  When I looked at her I wasn’t surprised that even after a day that started at eight o’clock in the morning and didn’t end until three o’clock the next, she looked as gorgeous as usual.  I thought that I might be one of the elite few that knew that her natural hair color was an almost-white blonde; and for the last couple of months it had been black.  I was happy to see that she had it back to nearly her natural color; it had more blonde in it now though.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to think of another short-haired girl whom I’d thought was as beautiful as the girl who I admired most.  Her striking eyes were a bright shade of blue comparable to sapphires. Her bright eyes were striking; and they were accented when she batted them at me.  Like sapphires, they were precious.  Her smooth, fair skin and her dark mascera only enhanced the extremity of the color in the eyes which always left me speechless. 
         After some time she quickly turned from me, her cheeks beginning to blush, and ambled down the narrow stairway in her usual manner, leaving me there to wonder if she had been thinking loving thoughts about me as I had been about her.  As I watched her walk away I noticed, as I always did, how slender she was.  When I had taken her to the doctor earlier that week she had weighed in at ninety-eight pounds; I guessed that her weight would make plenty of other women jealous.  Though the weight seemed dangerously low, it was perfect for her body; she was sexy.
         I started down the staircase which seemed even narrower with my body in it.  The coffee colored carpet on the stairs was exceptionally soft and sank under my weight.  My footprints stayed in the carpet for a few seconds before the fabric rebounded to where it originated.  I noted the deep scuffs all the way down wooden paneling on the left wall; it took a few seconds before I remembered that I had inflicted the aforementioned damage on the wall while moving a couch into the basement for her.  That had been only a few days after she'd returned from her one-year-school.  I had been so happy to have her back.
    That stairway was narrower than I thought; it was obviously narrower than the standard-sized couch.  I looked to the right wall, and saw that I hadn’t so much as scraped off the Spanish lacing on the drywall.  I remembered that the cushion side of the couch had come down on that side.  I knew that I would later be helping her dad to put new paneling on the left wall.
         When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I couldn’t find the beautiful girl who had sauntered down the stairs ahead of me. 
         “Where are you?”  I whispered, trying to keep from waking the other members of the house at this late hour.
         “In the bathroom.  I’m coming out, I promise.”  She was always teasing me and I loved it.  “What?  Do you miss me or something?”  Her voice was always so sweet.
         “More than you realize,” I muttered as I aimed myself toward her futon and strolled over the carpet that was equally as soft as that covering the stairs.  Under close examination though, the carpet in the basement was a color only describable as “used-to-be-white.”  It had once been an off-white color when I had helped her dad lay it, but since then my good friend had put the carpet through its paces.  Not all of the blemishes on the floor covering were her fault.  The ketchup spot in the corner was Duncan’s fault; the unknown blue stain beside the table was Matt’s.  I knew that I must have been the one responsible for the Mountain Dew colored stain that I noticed just beside the futon. 
         “Note to self,” I thought, “never, under any circumstances, put white carpet in your home.” 
         Trying to divert my attention from the mangled floor, I stared at the TV.  Since it was blank and I was too lazy to hunt down her always-lost remote, I looked elsewhere on the tattered wooden stand upon which the TV rested.  She owned a ton of movies; most of which we’d watched together at one time or another.  They were nicely organized in their proper section of the entertainment center.  There were pictures in frames scattered here and there on the stand.  A majority of them were of the two of us.  We had been great friends for quite some time after all.  Her favorite was of us sitting on a bench across from her house with the river behind us; I had my arm around her in that picture.  My favorite, of course, was the one of her kissing my cheek in a photo booth.  She’d had that one “blown up” to fit in the frame in which it was now displayed.
         She had quite a collection of plastic horses which she had begun when she was very small.  They were worth a good chunk of change now.  She had always been extremely proud of her herd of plastic horses.  It had broken my heart to watch her sell one or two of them to help pay for one bill or another; I attempted to give her the money, but she wouldn’t accept it.  I had even tried putting the money in her purse; I didn’t think she’d think anything of it but she did.  But then again, she had always been far smarter than I.  I would have to remember to find a way to buy back the ones she’d been forced to sell.
         She came out of the bathroom and shot me a big, beautiful smile.  I loved her smile; it was contagious and when I saw her flash her perfect teeth at me, I couldn’t help but smile and sometimes laugh a little.  She made me so happy.
         “Just let me put on some pajamas,” she said as she stepped out of the bathroom and into her bedroom.  She flicked the light off in the room in which I was sitting as she moved from room to room.  Her playful teasing left me blind again.
         “You’re a girl!  Putting on P.J.’s is a one hour ordeal!” I quietly hollered through the darkness.
         “Oh, shut up.  Don’t be such a turd,” she was teasing me again.  “Hey, come in here.” 
         I stepped across the room, past the herd which I could no longer see, and peeked into her bedroom.  It was darker inside her room than it was in the room in which I stood.  Even through the darkness I could see that she was flashing that gorgeous, contagious smile at me again.
          “Do you need something?” I asked her.
         “No.”
         “Ok, well I better go home and get some sleep.” 
         “Don’t leave,” she said rather abruptly.  “I want you to stay here tonight.  Nothing weird, just to cuddle with me and sleep.  I want to wake up next to you.”
         I was blown away by her request, but I was so elated I could have blasted off through her roof and into the sky.  The next thing I knew she had me by the hand and was leading me across her completely dark bedroom toward her bed.  As we slid underneath the covers I thought I’d never been as happy as I was at that very moment.  But, as she glided between my right arm and my torso, resting her head in the place where my shoulder meets me chest, I realized that as of this moment I had never been so perfectly content or exactly complete in my entire life.

                                                          "30"