(no subject)
God knows how many nights she’d spent out here alone, with or without a pack of ciggs. Nights like these eventually ran together, piling and morphing into a clutter almost comparable to the thoughts that relentlessly pounded at her brain. No one had ever found her, well, no one except for him. But that had been a long time ago. Or maybe it hadn’t been that long ago, she didn’t know. Sometimes it felt like she’d lived a thousand years in the blink of an eye. Three months were three days that felt like three years.
She smiled to herself, taking another drag of her cigarette. He had come walking past her one night, all moonlight and dark coloring. Trotting in on her late night rebirth, early morning contemplation was the best thing anyone had ever done for her. His black tee shirt hung untucked over his black dickies, dark hair bed headed and looking like some kind of out of control bush on his head. His voice had been confident, not arrogant but sure. He always took a few seconds to answer she had noticed, like he made sure to consider what he said carefully before speaking.
“What’re you doing sitting there?” He had asked her, his hands in his pockets, leaning over a bit as you would to talk to a small child, “It’s nearly four, you should be in bed.”
She shuffled her feet unnecessarily.
“I could say the same for you, as you’re going on a stroll at the same time I’m sitting two feet from my door.” He was young, not much older than her she noted, looking up at him. His eyes seemed to twinkle at her response, a small smirk upturning the corner of her lips.
“You have me there. I just never believed anyone besides me felt the necessity to be out of doors at four in the morning before. Now, if you could answer my question…”
“What was your question?”
“Why you’re sitting against a brick wall staring at the sky in the wee hours of the morning?”
She blinked. “I like the stars?”
“Have you no window?”
“I’m thinking, or well, I was. Until you walked by.” She replied irritably as he plopped down next to her.
“What’re you thinking of, then?” he asked, almost cheerfully, as if they were old pals.
“Things.” she replied blandly. Silence grew between them for a few seconds, and stretched on into minutes. She glanced over at him, seeing his face upturned to the sky, looking like he wasn’t really looking at all. His eyes were blue. Piercing blue, so that the color contrasted greatly with his dark hair and fair skin. Slowly his eyes met hers, and he leaned in a little, a hint of a smile on his lips.
“What ‘things’?”
And that was how it began. They started talking. Exchanging stories, memories, feelings, times, places, people they’d known and people they wish they hadn’t known. Looking back on it all she couldn’t even remember what it was they talked about, it all garbled up and regurgitated itself as one big ball of confusion. After what had seemed like hours of talk he stood, holding out a hand for her to shake.
“Same time tomorrow?”
“Heh, sure. Why not?” She shook his hand.
The nights that followed were just like the first, but each different and similar all at once. They would sit out there for hours, just saying what would pop into their minds; he would even make her laugh. Once she placed her hand on his by accident, and he held it. Another time she leaned her head on his shoulder. Then another time he put his head in her lap. And, one time, he kissed her. Those nights were what made her days, and they flew by faster than the second hand on a clock fast-forwarded.
But then, one night, he didn’t show up. She sat against that brick wall for hours that night, and the next, and the next, not really thinking anything at all, just staring blankly at the end of her block, expecting him to swagger around the corner any second. Swaggering or no, he never came. She was foolish enough, that night, to cry about it. Before she realized she was wasting her time, and she went to bed, fighting back tears all the while.
And that was how it ended. Weather it was a centaury or a second ago, she didn’t remember and she didn’t care. Grinding the bud of her cigarette into the sidewalk, she looked out on the sky one last time before standing up and heading in.
“You know,” She said, more to the sky than herself, “I never even got his name” Unfortunately, the sky had no reply for her, and so she shuffled up her porch, quietly shutting the door behind her as she entered the house.
From across the street a dark figure watched her, leaning easy against the wall of a tall building. He smiled slightly, the corner of his lips turning slightly as his eyes pierced through the darkness.
“I never got yours either.”