Emmanuel is about 5’7 with tan skin, short black curly hair, sweet brown eyes, and a smooth voice, but he sucks at thinking twice before doing something. In a simpler way explaining a complex situation, he thinks something is one color, but doesn’t see the hidden hue of the situation or thing. He kind of reminds me of a stick sometimes because he’s so skinny; his legs are like little twigs. He’s probably hurt himself stupidly a million times. He’s a full time Market Basket worker in the dairy section. Honestly, why do I deal with him since he pisses me off so much? At this time, he's probably at home with his kid who is a beautiful baby girl that looks just like him, and his annoying ex-girlfriend who is the mom.
 

A perfect example of him being really stupid is when he locked himself out of his car (keys in the ignition and all) in the middle of a thunderstorm. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he did that at all honestly. We first tried breaking into it, however it was almost no use on our end since it was a car built to avoid break-ins. I remember him jokingly saying, “See, I’m already a bad influence; I’m teaching you how to break into cars.” Nothing screams romantic date more than being in a dress, soaked right through while flexing a car door open with lightening above our heads, right? Luis still owes me a new snow-scraper since I let him use it to flex the door open. As per usual, I was the perfect date letting him drive us (with my car) to his house in Lawrence to see if the spare key was there. That idiot left the spare in his car too…sigh. Also, imagine this: meeting the parents for the first time in a rain jacket and sweats (I changed before we left) and being soaking wet. His parents then started talking about AAA and how they didn’t have it. You can tell where this is going, right? In case you don’t, I told them when we got back to where the car was that I’d call them. You bet I got a lot of “You’re a life saver” lines, and was almost lulled to sleep by him stroking my hair. Anyways, we waited a good hour for them to show up after I got in touch, so we sat in my car just talking and sharing a few intimate moments. In the end, the worker and Luis were having such a great conversation in Spanish; the guy left without even writing my member code down.

I mentioned he works at Market Basket, and our story began with that store chain back when he worked at the store I’m at. I could never fit these past three months I’ve known him into a micro-essay when I think about it actually. What amazes me in general is knowing we’re the same exact age, but lead completely different lives. Luis being a city boy who hardly ever has money to himself, constantly pays everything on his own, plus doesn’t have the funds for college, so he works full-time. I am a sheltered girl who has a lot of what she wants, including the college she wanted to go to because she’s spoiled by her parents. We have a lot of the same views of the world we live in. Not many of the people who care about me like him and the situation he’s in, but I feel as if no matter how many stupid mistakes he’s made and ever will make that it won’t change my views. It’s as if he’s the first to understand my ways of thinking that most consider cold. My barely functioning heart (emotion wise) ached hearing the words “See, you’re going forward and doing something great with your life, and one day you’re going to look back at me and how stupid I am,” even if I tell him a million times that’s not true, I don’t think he’ll ever fully listen. I remember when his birthday passed by last month. I stopped by his work and gave him a card with gift cards for food inside. Inside the card was me trying to give him life advice I felt he doesn’t hear enough. Most people eventually throw away cards and keep the presents, but Luis said he wanted to keep it after he had me read aloud the words I could never say before until I wrote them down.

Yesterday I said to a friend, “I’ve never wanted to knock someone into next week so bad, yet always naturally smile around them, and miss them all at the same time.” I could go on and on about our little adventures, and how many different occasions I’ve bluntly told him how stupid he is; all of those little insults are actually in the name of happiness.