"Let's get breakfast," I rolled over, setting my head down on his chest.
"It's 5 A.M," Leon's raspy morning voice cut in and out with every syllable.
"But pancakes, and hashbrowns, and eggs, and sausage," I looked up at him, watching his stern, tired expression turn into a small smirk.
"Jacks?" He looked down, cocking an eyebrow.
"Duh. Where else would we go?" I sat up on my bed, pushing the brown curls from my face.
I grabbed a pair of leggings and a Breakfast Club tee shirt from my closet and went into the bathroom to change. There was no effort put in as I pulled my hair back into its usual clip and brushed my teeth. Making it in and out of the bathroom in less than five minutes. Opening the door, I was greeted with the sight of a tired Leon sitting at the edge of the bed, knotting his Converse before pushing messy blonde hair from his face.
"You know I'll never understand how you just get out of bed like that" Leon's voice was starting to come back as he stood up from the bed.
"Maybe you should learn how if you plan on joining the force" I huffed out, looking over my shoulder to meet the eyes of Leon's intense glare.
I can't remember when Leon started saving up for this Jeep, but I'll never forget that beaming smile on his face as he signed the papers and sped out of the dealership parking lot. The Cranberries played on the radio. Gently humming as Leon's thumb tapped against the steering wheel. The sky was painted shades of orange and pink, the sun just beginning to wake up as we pulled into the parking lot.
Living so close to this place was both a good and a bad thing. The good- it's only a 10-minute drive for the best hashbrowns in Ohio. The bad- I've spent way too much of my paychecks here. The servers know us by name and order at this point. The fall morning air stung my cheeks as Leon and I hurried into the diner and grabbing the corner booth. Being the only ones here wasn't a bad thing at all- it just means fresher hashbrowns.
"Now I know what y'all are gonna order, but I just got here and still need to finish my coffee. Be back in ten" Jenny, who always worked the first shift, set down a pot of coffee and two mugs as well as our menus and proceeded to disappear into the kitchen.
Leon picked out my favorite booth- the one where you could see the freeway from the window. The morning sun reflecting off the windshields of commuting cars. Sometimes, if you got really lucky and there wasn't much traffic, you could see Lake Eerie about a mile or two away. The sight of dawn and water clashing together in perfect harmony never got old.
Jenny came back and asked if we wanted our usuals- Leon with the spinach and tomato omelet, and me with the strawberry crepes and a side of hashbrowns. After Jenny took our orders, Leon and I simply sat in a comfortable silence.
"You're really going to Emerson, huh?" He looked down at his coffee then back up at me. Leon was always the one to break the silence.
"They're giving me a full-ride, I can't pass this up," My hands grasped tightly around the coffee cup.
"But Boston? Leaving everything behind?" He shook his head, the ends of his hair brushing against golden skin.
"I'm not leaving everything behind, Leon. I'll visit as much as I can,"
Jenny broke the conversation before we could say anything else. We thanked her before I reached for the bottle of Tabasco in the small caddy on the edge of the table. Before I could lean for it, Leon's long reach came in handy and handed me the hot sauce, his face in spinach and egg as I took the bottle from his hand.
"But for now, we can eat the best damn hash browns in the state of Ohio," I tap the bottle of hot sauce onto my hash browns.
I knew Leon couldn't be mad at me for long, 5 minutes into our breakfast and we were talking about Polaroid pictures. He's always loved my obsession for Polaroids and gets me a giant refill of them for my birthday and Christmas every year. Although Leon hated photos of himself, he always insisted on taking my camera and snapping shots of me. It never worked- Leon had never been good at sneaking around.
Leon and I were both the kind of people to simply eat, pay, leave. Kind of like "eat, pray, love" but without the bullshit. In the time that we would be having mindless conversations in this diner could be spent going back to sleep. And that's exactly what we did. Leon and I both threw a $10 on the table and headed back to his car.
"Now I'm tired again," Leon yawned.
"You wanna take a nap while I pack up my room?" I looked over at him, dark circles beneath his eyes.
"No, no I'll help you. You have a lot of stuff" He yawned again, a smile peeking through his open mouth.
"Take a nap, sleepyhead. I'm almost done anyway," I chuckled, leaning over to turn on the radio.
There hasn't been one car ride where Leon and I don't listen to 80's music on the way home. Whatever was playing on the 80's station was good with us- today, it was Bonnie Tyler, Fleetwood Mac, and Toto. A pretty good lineup I would say. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on my thigh, Leon brushed his calloused thumb against the black fabric of my pants, still somehow making goosebumps erupt beneath the polyester fibers.
The neighborhood was just beginning to wake up- neighbors watering bushes, men kissing their wives goodbye, people making early morning phone calls while rushing towards their cars. This was suburbia at its finest. We pulled into the driveway, saying good morning to John, Taylor, and their beautiful daughter, Jessica. After a few minutes of small talk, we finally entered the house.
The aroma of a vanilla candle filled our noses the second we walked in. Mom must have lit it before going to work. Leon went straight up the stairs towards my room, the sound of his body hitting the bed echoed through the walls as I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and followed in Leon's footsteps. But rather than collapsing onto the bed, I started the process of packing the last of my belonging in Home Depot boxes.
Books, magazines, and posters were the last thing I needed to pack. An empty white dresser stood against the wall, along with the desk I got on the side of the road all those years ago. It's crazy how much bigger a room looks without so much shit in it. The only thing left to do was pack my suitcases, but that was a task for another day.
For now, I wanted to spend as much time in the present as possible. Quietly, I sat down at the edge of the bed and pulled out the Disney Princess lunch box from my nightstand. Belle's face had completely smudged off and the once bright pink metal was now dented and scraped with childhood clumsiness.
Instead of peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off, the tin box was filled with hundreds of Polaroids. Each sorted by month and year with little notes written in the space beneath the photo. Some of the notes were in Leon's handwriting, and those pictures were usually candid, blurry pictures of myself. Prom night, the beach, road trips, 3 AM diner adventures, the lookout, summer shenanigans, every moment that Leon and I had spent together was captured in permanent stillness. But out of all the photos, there was one that I simply couldn't forget.
Leon and I were camping. Just the two of us. It was nighttime, the sky was clear and the stars brighter than the fire in front of us. We had just finished dinner- bratwursts, potato salad, and s'mores. His arm was wrapped around my shoulder, curled up in a fleece blanket, listening to the staticky radio all while trying to avoid the smoke and ash coming from the fire. It was the summer of Junior Year, I was celebrating my SAT scores and Leon had finally chosen a Police Academy to join.
I remember trying so hard to stealthily take out that bulky camera, knowing damn well that Leon didn't want to be photographed with sunburnt cheeks and messy hair. The camera was set on my lap, the lens facing up towards us. Looking up at him, I brushed the sandy blonde strands from his face, my hand resting against his marble-carved jawline. Looking down with that contagious, rare smile and placing a small kiss on my forehead, I pressed the button on the camera- a flash temporarily blinding us as Leon groaned against my skin.
Even Leon liked it.
