He lay listening to the soft shimmering sounds of his favorite band, feeling the heaviness in his eyelids grow as the tree frogs serenaded each other, struggling to be heard over their own racket. His windows were open in that first cool night of the year, a break from the damp mildew embrace of a north Florida night. He was in his boxers, very aware of just how alone he was on this night in his twentieth year of life. He could smell the beach and pina-colada smell of his surf gear lying in the other room while the moonlight fell on his red hair. He closed his eyes against the beautiful blue light and faded off, thinking of those he loved and those he missed.
She lay on a low small bed, the sun rising warm and red against the backdrop of the mountains which watched over the city. She heard the pensive and mournful cry of a bird she had never heard before. The air around her smelled of clean dry wood and of the rose bush that guarded her window. She was bundled up against the damp chill of Japanese fall, curled into a fetal position where it was impossible to tell where the beautiful young woman began and the warm linens ended. In her tank top, wrapped amongst all those cream colored blankets and sheets, she looked as if someone had laid her there in her finest dress with nothing but care and concern for the olive skinned girl with a coy smile and beautiful brown hair. The truth was that no one had. She lay in the guest bedroom of her host family, fighting off the consciousness that was shining in her eyes and chilling her feet. She drifted off after rolling over, taking the improbably arranged wrapping of blankets with her.
These two people had grown up together, within walking distance of their central Florida homes. She lived down a two lane road, past a church with pun-laden bits of wisdom on its white cinder block sign. There was a broken sidewalk with thrusting its roots through the buckled pavement. They would meet here, every morning as the sun rose over a savanna-like cow pasture with low wide reaching oaks like mushrooms laid across it. They waited for the bus and its clammy vinyl to take them to school. At the time he was pale with thin arms like two linguini sticking out of his bony torso. His red hair was forced into an improbable pattern of near uniform spiked and his teeth were held by the metallic shackles of braces. She was an attractive and pleasant girl still caught in the taunts and clothing of her awkward middle school years.
They had since scattered and gone on to the rest of their lives, blowing in what direction the wind took them. She went to the big state university, he to a smaller one on the coast. They both broke up with their high school lovers and lived in a state of aloneness neither of them appreciated, but both had learned to accept. It was a dull ache in both their lives, like his weak hamstring and her intermittent headaches.
As they slept, rotating on opposite sides of the earth, they were allowed to be together.
