For Every Missing Shade

Entry 26

I woke up to her on my shoulder. The sun subtly illuminated the curtains by the window and the soft light of morning filled the room. I thought of checking the time, but then I let it slide.

Time can exist all day, I thought, but now it's just us.

Her head gently followed the rise and fall of my chest. I breathed in one giant breath to see if I could stir her awake.

Her brown hair was clouding half of her face so I slowly reached my hand out from under the comforter and brushed it to the side. Her face responded to my touch as she squinted her eyes and stretched her arms. She yawned as her big eyes fluttered open and closed for a couple of seconds. She looked up and saw me staring down at her.

She let out a small laugh. "Well good morning, creep," she said. "How long have you been looking at me?" Mental note: girls sound cute all the time, but the cutest is definitely when they wake up.

"I just woke up too. Thought I'd let you join humanity with me."

"Humanity can wait. I wanna sleep. What time is it?"

I checked my phone. "Quarter 'til nine."

"Ugh, fine. We should be out of here by ten. Do you want to go get some breakfast?"

"Yeah sure," I said while getting out of bed.

I got up and put on some pants as she sat up in bed. She yawned and stretched her arms. Her bed-head left a tangled mess as she slowly ran her hands through it. It was a look I had never seen before, but the feelings were all the same.

I love you, you're beautiful, never leave.

We brushed our teeth together in the bathroom and I put on some music from my phone. She started swaying back and forth to the beat as I bent down to spit out the toothpaste. I finished getting ready as she did her hair and makeup.

On our way down to breakfast we passed by the receptionist once again. She almost screamed, giddy with excitement.

"Oh, how was your night? How was the wine?"

Emma spoke up. "it was amazing. All of it. Thank you so much for doing that for us."

"It's the least I could do, sweetie," she responded.

We stole a kiss in the hallway as she walked away.

After breakfast, we walked the gravel parking lot back to our car. I started the engine and she checked her hair in the rearview mirror.

"About six hours until the next stop," she said.

"And, of course, I'm not allowed to know where or what it is."

"You bet your ass," she returned.

"Well, I'm at least smart enough to know that it's in Colorado or else we wouldn't be going this way for so long."

"Oh, you think you're so smart. How do you know that I'm not just going to make us drive south and spend some much needed time in Oklahoma?"

I scoffed at the idea of Emma choosing Oklahoma over the heart of the Rockies. But she was the navigator, not me. I turned on the car and she picked the music to play.

The hours drew just a little bit longer than they did the day before, but we kept things interesting. The hours passed with games of I spy and more talk about our lives before we met each other. Somehow, we got onto the topic of embarrassing and funny stories about our childhood. My childhood was boring and ordinary, but luckily I was just weird and stupid enough to make my own exciting parts.

"So one time," I began, "I threw a birthday party, and every one of my friends were there. We had this huge water gun fight during the party, and my team got slaughtered. But I wasn't going to let it slide that easily. I got a great idea - I was gonna get a gun, fill it back up, and sneak attack everyone while they were eating cake. The box for the water guns was hidden in a big chest with a heavy lid. With some effort, though, I got it open.

"So the lid was up, I rooted through it, and I had finally found my water gun. As I was standing up, though, I hit my head on the lid. It fell hard and I started screaming. The commotion brought everyone out to see what happened. My head was fine, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that my... thing was stuck in between the lid and the chest.

"So there I was, screaming bloody murder in front of all of my friends, and they watched as my mother lifted the lid off of my little dude and all of my friends had to hold in their laughs as I iced my groin for the next hour. That, I think, is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me."

Emma threw her head back in laughter. "Oh my gosh, there's no way. Does it even still work? How did you recover?"

"Okay, yes, as far as I know my penis still works. Pees and everything. It didn't break anything, it just hurt like hell."

"That's amazing. I can't believe it."

"Well I wish about a dozen people still at school couldn't believe it as well, then maybe they'd quit making fun of me for it. Sadly, they totally believed it, so here we are."

"Truly amazing. If I knew you had a broken penis, maybe I'd second guess taking you on this trip."

"IT'S NOT- okay I'm done with this conversation," I said. "When are we getting to Mysterious Location #2?"

"About three hours. Halfway there."

I squinted past the road to see the silhouette of mountains. I could just barely make them out in the distance, but even that got me excited. Memories of them flooded my brain as excitement coursed through me.

Within no time we were inside of them. We winded under cliff formations and high above glacial streams. I noticed that we were no longer talking but I didn't mind. We were both here for the mountains and we were each other's third wheel. Snow covered every bank and mountain top. It glimmered in the sunlight, reflecting light onto every other surface that shined the light right back.

The slopes in the distance reminded me of winter when I was a kid. We lived in Denver but each winter break would be spent somewhere in small town Colorado. My family would take us to a small cabin on a modest slope and we would take turns with the sled.

I'd tumble down the mountain, trying with glee to make my sled go faster. I'd race down the hill, competing against my parents and other kids like me. I'd spend entire days clumsily running up the hill and sliding back down.

We did that every year until I got too big for the sled. Then, my parents got promoted and we couldn't find the time to go at all. After that, blizzards turned to thunderstorms as we moved to Missouri.

And now here we are, back to the beginning. Reliving the same memories under completely different circumstances.

"Time's a bitch," I said.

I expected her to ask me why, but instead, she shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah."

"Ya know, that's the first thing we've said in like an hour," I replied.

"Is that a bad thing?"

I shrugged my shoulders just like she did, "nope."

And the silence continued.