“Daydreamin', girl, like always!”
She rolled her eyes at me in that melodramatic manner that she is known—and loved—for. It’s really not a huge surprise to anyone who’s ever known her that she's majoring in drama. She'll land a part as soon as she graduates, I have no doubt.
I snapped myself out of the turmoil of thoughts and emotions crashing through my head and hurried over to help Leslie get the sofa off the truck.
“I’m coming. Don’t get too excited. Just hold on before you hurt yourself!”
I clambered up onto the tailgate of the truck and moved toward the cab, maneuvering around the 1970s iconic sofa. I squatted down low before I slid my hands into position and gripped the underside of the big piece of furniture. My dad’s voice played through my mind—Always use your legs to lift, not your back. I grinned a little to myself at the thought.
“Okay, Les, are you ready?” I asked.
She positioned herself at the edge of the truck's bed, clutched her side of the sofa tight, and gritted her teeth. “I got this,” she assured me. “Been doing squats at gym with Antonio. I'm ready, as ready as I've ever been!” Her over-the-top enthusiasm made me laugh. Especially considering I could barely see her face peeking over the top of the clunky sofa.
I tried to reposition my hands in a way that wouldn’t slip on the plastic furniture cover encasing Leslie's grandmother's still-pristine relic. One thing was for certain, the thing was sturdy. And there wasn’t a spot on it. Without the plastic covering, it looked as though it had just been delivered from the showroom. However, it had been sitting in Leslie’s storage since her grandmother had passed a few months before. And while it was kind of clunky, we both agreed that it was pretty much the most comfortable sofa either of us had ever sat on. Combined with the fact that the style of it was so retro that it was practically back in style, it was a no-brainer to use it for our new apartment. We'd saved more than a few dollars by not buying a new one, and we used the money we saved to buy other items that weren’t practically antique and were a little more our style so that we could decorate the apartment with flair.
Of course, before worrying about that, we had to actually get the sofa off the truck and into the apartment. Getting the thing onto the truck had been easy enough. Leslie's uncle—a big, burly, biker—had helped us get it out of her storage building and onto the back of the truck. But then he'd had to head off to work. It had sure seemed a lot lighter when we'd had a three-hundred-pound biker helping us lift it.
“Alright, you ready? On three,” I said. “One, two, three!”
We both grunted and tried to put our backs into it. We managed to get it up off the bed of the truck, but then Leslie's eyes started bulging white in their sockets and the look on her face was more than enough for me to know we weren’t going to make it far with the sofa.
“Put it down, put it down,” she managed to gasp. “Hurry, or I'm gonna drop it on my foot!”
“Okay, okay! Easy!”
We lowered the sofa back onto the truck bed and Leslie breathed a sigh of relief as she flailed herself over the back of the sofa. After a moment she stood, resting her hands on her thighs as she breathed in and out in deep breaths of exertion.
“So, ummm, what happened to 'I've been doing squats?'” I laughed.
She looked up at me and shook her head. “Clearly I haven't been putting enough weight on the bar! Damn, that sofa feels like it weighs as much as a small car!”
I leaned back against the rear window of the truck. “Well, we've gotta get it off here somehow. And we've gotta do it soon. My brother will be getting off work in about an hour and I've gotta get to the other side of town to give him his truck back. We need to have all of this stuff unloaded in the next thirty minutes…give or take.”
“Girl, I'm telling you, if I have to try get this big-ass sofa off this truck again without any help, I’m pretty sure my back is gonna snap clean in half like a lil' ol' matchstick.”
“Well, do you have any suggestions about what we’re gonna do? Bryan only agreed to lend me his truck for the afternoon.”
“Let me think,” Leslie said as she plopped down into the sofa.
The sound of a motorcycle screaming up the road distracted us from our current predicament. Even if we wanted to discuss ways to get the monstrous sofa into the apartment, we wouldn’t have been able to hear ourselves talk. We turned our heads as the motorcycle sped closer until a bright red, sleek and sexy machine with aerodynamic bodywork and sharp, purposeful curves came into view. The bike slowed down as it rounded the corner to our apartment block. The rider—a young, muscular guy dressed in a tight tee shirt and faded jeans—pulled into the parking space next to us, killing the bike's rumbling engine as he did. My knees went a little weak when he pulled off his helmet and grinned at us with a set of brilliantly white teeth. I almost expected to hear a tiny dinging sound like you’d hear on a toothpaste commercial. He had the square-jawed look of a cover model and despite having just pulled a helmet off, his dark chestnut hair was meticulously styled—short on the sides, but longer and flowing on top. His eyes seemed to hover on me for a few moments before his gaze moved to the sofa where Leslie sat. Then again, it could have simply been wishful thinking on my part.
“Nice bike, cowboy,” Leslie called out to him. “Is that a Suzuki?”
“Kawasaki,” he replied.
“Hmph. Got something against Honda or Ducati?” she asked with a grin.
“Not really, but I only ride Japanese bikes.”
“Do ya now?” she said twisting her mouth curiously. “My friend Brooke here lived in Japan for a while.”
“Nice,” he said, his stare moving back to me with a crooked grin turning up one side of his breathtaking face. “I'm hoping to visit Tokyo over semester break. I've always wanted to go. Maybe you can tell me some places I should check out?”
“Um, sure,” I replied, fighting back a flutter of butterflies in my stomach as he directed his attention toward me. “But maybe we should be properly introduced first?”
He chuckled warmly. “Of course, where are my manners? I'm Emerson Reed. I live just over there,” he said, pointing at one of the apartment buildings.
“No way!” said Leslie. “That's right next door to us!”