Before the Sun

Chapter One- A Welcomed Loneliness

Often, I wake early.

Before the sun and before the people.

Before the cars on the street and the people on the television.

I wake up and I go to the top. All the way to the peak of the house, the roof him and I used to hide on.

I sit on the ledge, the one we stayed away from.

My legs hang over the edge and the wind hits my back, taunting fate.

I look out to the beach below, the waves and the seagulls riding them. I watch the way the sea lightens with the rising sun and the way the dark sky clears. The way the moon goes back into hiding and the sun takes its place.

I wonder if he is still in there, parts of him.

His soul, maybe.

He loved the beach, the water- more than anything I ever knew. He loved it here, with me, with Luis. Just the three of us.

We all did.

We hated being awake before noon, Lucas especially. But now, it's one of the only things that bring me that same comfort as he did.

There's a sense of solace that comes with the knowingness that I'm the only one awake. A welcomed loneliness. It's so quiet. So quiet I can hear the thoughts in my head and feel the salt stuck in the air. I hear the end of the cigarette disintegrating and the stale smell of smoke dispersing into the space around me. It travels in little ripples of toxicity clouding the fresh air.

I can hear the waves, the crash that emits from them when they fold over into themselves. It's harsher today than it was yesterday, angrier.

I wonder if it's him, angry that I'm leaving again.

I wonder if I imagine the way the sea ahead of my family house gets more bitter, more violent when it's time for me to return to the states, return to university without him.

They all said we would get married. Get married, settle down and have a couple kids. They didn't know we were never like that, that we never touched like that. They didn't know that he was simply my best friend and nothing more. They couldn't comprehend that we were so close, yet not in love. Sometimes I wonder if I was in love, though. I wonder if that was what love felt like and I was simply unaware. I think about it so often, every night when I'm lying in bed. I imagine what it would be like to have him beside me, I wonder if I would kiss him, If I would want to.

I wonder if they were right, if we would have made a life together if we had the time to do what we wished.

The door to the roof pushes open, I don't look behind to see who it is. A scuff of shoes and an annoyed huff, I know it's Kenny.

A jacket is draped over my frame, goose-bumped arms thanking whatever it is blanketing them from the brisk air. Kenny takes a seat beside me, his back to the ocean and his face turned towards mine. I can feel his eyes on me, staring and staring. I still don't meet his eyes.

Not until his hand is raising, two fingers plucking the half dead cigarette from between my lips and stubbing it out on the ledge we sit on.

Then, I look at him. My lips flat in a line and my eyes accusing him in a single stare. His face tugs into a smile, and all I can do in response is shake my head to hide the growing one on my own.

'Your dad will smell it on you.'

He mutters, a single eyebrow raising.

'You're my bodyguard, not my babysitter.'