Rush Hour

the eleventh

“Okay, so this isn’t exactly a five star resort, but it’ll have to do,” Will says, gesturing to the living room. Kane’s blankets are over in the corner, and there’s one sad little pillow.

“You said you have more stuff in the car, right?” I ask, remembering he said something about extra blankets earlier.

“Yeah, I’ll go grab them,” he says and runs outside.

I start to move the furniture, so there’s one big space in the middle of everything. Kane helps me, until everything is pushed up against the wall.

I mopped earlier, so it’s pretty clean on the tile that’s in here.

Will comes back in and drops a ton of blankets and pillows on the floor, and I start spreading them out everywhere with Sarah’s help. She’s been pretty quiet since we got here, but I think she’s just trying to figure out everything that’s going on. It’s all happening pretty fast.

Soon, every spare inch of floor is covered with a few layers of blankets. I survey my work, and step back with my hands on my hips. “Looks pretty good,” Kane says, coming up behind me, and sliding his hands around my torso.

Will rolls his eyes, “We seriously have to sleep in the same room as the lovebirds?”

Sarah laughs and Kane and I just shake our heads. “Get over it, Will.”

There aren’t any lights in this place, so we’ve been operating under the four flashlights Will snagged from his work. So after we all get situated on the floor, we turn out each of ours, and the room becomes engulfed in darkness.

I turn over, rolling into the fetal position on my pillow, and someone’s hand comes up and touches my back. I jump a little and Kane chuckles from behind me, “It’s just me, Charlie.”

I relax back into my pillow, only to jump when Will yells, demanding to know who touched his butt.

Only after lots of arguing and the turning on of all the flashlights, do we decide that the thing that touched his butt was a pillow.

“’Night, guys,” I yawn, curling into my pillow.

Kane rubs my back, running his fingers down my spine and the rest of everybody exchanges goodnights.

There’s then a period of silence, and then Sarah screams because she thinks she felt a bug, we have to turn the lights back on, we determine that she’s crazy, and turn the lights back out, only to have a deep and intriguing conversation about death and life and our purposes here.

It’s like a regular slumber party.

I fall asleep in Kane’s arms.

“Okay, I’m all done watching you two spoon, get up!” Will is yelling right above my head, and banging around a pan.

I’m guessing it’s morning, because there are lights on that aren’t coming from the flashlights.

I roll over and automatically miss Kane’s body heat.

I groan into my pillow, not wanting to get up. All my limbs hurt. Probably because they’re not used to floors. I mean, it wasn’t that bad sleeping on the floor last night, but it also wasn’t great.

“Get up, sleeping beauty!” Will yells as he walks back into the kitchen. I sit up, desperately trying to figure out what Will thinks he’s doing with those pans when the stove doesn’t work.

I walk in on him coming back from the creek with panfuls of water. He sets them out and nods towards them, “You’re welcome.”

I grab a cup (one of the disposable ones they bought at the store yesterday, not the gross ones here) and get some water, drinking it gratefully.