The world looks much prettier at night. Lights glow and bounce off the wet road. Creating a wonderful blur of neon outside of the car. You don’t see the dirt or the trash at night. Nature tries it’s best to wash away the remnants of humanity.
Raindrops assault his face with a volley of tiny stings as his head hangs of out the car window. Singing, or rather shouting lyrics to a song composed long before his time. Nevertheless, it boils up a nostalgic warmth in his guts. Stretching further and further out of the car, he felt like he could float away.
She tugs at his jacket with her right hand while trying to stay on the road with her left. The defrost didn’t work, and the wipers barely did. This junker was barely street legal. The perks of moving out at 18. The night wasn’t what she planned. But other than this musical attempt at suicide, it had been oddly enjoyable. She didn’t know why she was here. At least, not exactly sure. When she heard the voicemail, something in her acted almost on its own. She had to get him.
She pulls into her apartment complex around 4am. Barely awake, she helps him inside and lays him on the couch. She takes off their wet jackets and shoes and pretends to not hear the looping confessions of love he had been saying for the past half hour.
Locking the door and grabbing a blanket, she sits down beside him and rests his head in her lap. He was more or less sleepwalking at this point. He’d be passed out in seconds once they stopped moving. And she wouldn’t be far behind. It was a long day for both of them. She’d had a lot of long days lately. “Too long of days”, she thought. She slumped over next to him, and began to rest her eyes.
He woke up to sunlight tearing through the cheap plastic blinds and the sound of a hungry dog. He remembered most of the night, it was only slightly fuzzy when it came to the exact order of events. As he went to adjust his pillow, he instead found the lap of the girl whom had consumed most waking hours of his life for the past two years.
She looked like a person in a coma. A crash survivor that had been kept on life support since the 80s. She had a box of Oreos just below her outstretched hands. As if she was reaching for one last bite before traveling into the cosmos. She looked exhausted. She looked wonderful.
The moment of admiration didn’t last long. She stirred after feeling him look around. She looked as disoriented as he did. The barking dog and blinding sunlight didn’t help the situation.
“Hey”, he quietly muttered. “..hey”, she replied. Neither were in the mood for creative banter this morning. There was a million things he wanted to say. To do. To ask. He wanted to kiss her. Right then and there. To truly connect with the person who had been there when no one else was. Instead, he only got out the word “Why?”.
She looked at him perturbed. The kind of look you would give if someone asked you to donate an organ. She wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t angry. She didn’t know what she was. She didn’t know what this was.