Night-Owl Trucking

Wednesday, 3:30pm

Slowly, so very slowly, she grew aware of the all-encompassing warmth that cradled her sleep-heavy limbs. She took several languid, lazy breaths, her heart beating calm and steady as she swam that fine line between still-asleep and beginning-to-wake, the swell of an ocean wave beneath her. Something had pulled her from her slumber, but... What was... Where...? She heard it then, faint and sweet, over the steady thud-thump sounding in her ear. A wistful melody broke the short silence that wrapped the air as a new song started to play.

A pair of acoustic guitars plucked and strummed [a steady refrain][https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=8inJtTG_DuU], building up to the moment where the singers' words began to drift across the rise and fall of the music. She drifted up and down as well, the smallest warm breeze playing across her hair.

In the morning when I wake,
And the sun is coming through...
Oh, you fill my lungs with sweetness,
And you fill my head with you...

She had yet to open her eyes, but the faint glow of the indirect afternoon sun painted her waking moments in a dim maroon glow. She struggled against sleep-stuck eyelids, forcing them open to a squint. It took her a handful of heartbeats to recognize her surroundings, for her still-drowsy mind to make sense of the shapes and lines that she could see as she adjusted to the soft, red-tinged light that filled the cabin air. She blinked twice more, slowly, and breathed in lemons and something earthy... something that made her think of home.

Shall I write it in a letter?
Shall I try to get it down?
Oh, you fill my head with pieces,
Of a song I can't get out...

Amity stared at tanned skin shining like polished bronze in the afternoon light, the gentle sloping lines that traced shadows along her neck. She stared at the hollow of her throat, at the steady pulse tap-tapping against that honeyed skin in time with the sound of the heartbeat beneath her ear. As the puzzle pieces of her awareness slipped into place one by one, she drifted further away from sleep. This slow, methodical assembly of self was a strangely disorienting experience; almost every morning she would wake up in an instant, startled and anxious, her heart pounding in her throat, a deep-seated buzzing beneath her skin as she struggled to make sense of the sudden deluge of sensations: shivering from the cold, the stench of grease and oiled metal, the shrill squawk of her alarm. Yesterday she had been deliciously warm when she woke, and today? She was...

Can I be close to you?
Oh-oh-oh-ooh, ooh...

Her eyes drifted shut for a moment as she basked in the heat radiating from the tanned girl beneath her. She half-sprawled on top of Luz's left side, soaking up the comforting warmth from where their legs were still tangled together. Amity's arms had wrapped under Luz's shoulders in her sleep; one hand curled a fist around her loose gray sleep-shirt sleeve, the other stretched up higher, caught in the soft brown curls behind the shorter girl's ear. Amity had pressed her own ear to Luz's chest, just below her collarbone, where she had fallen to sleep listening to the exhausted girl's heartbeat. Their blanket was still pulled up next to Amity's chin, and Luz had crossed her arms over her back, holding her safe and secure through the night; Amity woke wrapped in a cocoon that she never wanted to leave. Amity felt the rise of Luz's chest as she breathed in, and her soft exhale ghosting across her forehead.

Can I be close to you?
Ooh, ooh...

Her lips bent in a smile as she watched the tap-tap beneath that molten-gold canvas, while she played with the twists of brown silk at her fingertips. She hummed along with the song in the air, absentmindedly breathing out the words that seemed to match the fierce ache in her chest. Amity was certain she had never felt like this about anyone else before.