Jake

34. B For Becca

Tap...tap...tap...tap.

Jake groaned softly as the tapping noise grew louder. After a few minutes of trying to ignore it, he sat up, eyes half-open, ready to figure out what it was. He grumbled as he stood up and followed the noise to his window. He rubbed his eyes a little, opening them wider to see Sophia standing in his backyard, still in her pajamas. She was wearing her glasses again. He hadn’t seen her wear them in months. He waved at her. She waved back and pointed at her phone, then at him. He walked to his bedside table and grabbed his phone, seeing her text that read, Come downstairs.

He texted back, Okay and quietly made his way down the stairs, hoping they wouldn’t creak too loud. When he made it downstairs, he unlocked the door and saw Sophia in front of him.

She whispered, “Come with me.”

He whispered back, “It’s five in the morning.”

“I know. Come with me.”

He mumbled, “One second, let me get shoes on.” She waited by the door and pulled him outside by the arm when he was done.

“Just use my windowsill as a step. Come on, it’s easy.”

Jake mumbled to himself, “It would be a lot easier if I wasn’t half-asleep,” before climbing on her windowsill and jumping onto the roof, hanging by his arms. He lifted his knee and pulled himself up, climbing fully onto her roof.

“See? Told you it’d be easy. Now, sit...here.” She scooted forward so that she was at a slant and tapped the spot next to her.

He scooted forward and asked, “So what’s with this random ‘hey wake up and come sit on my roof with me thing’?”

She shrugged. “I wanted to talk to you and the sun wasn’t up yet. I figured maybe you’d want to see it or something.”

“What, the sunrise?”

She nodded.

“Wait, why are you up anyway?”

She shrugged again, “I just woke up. Couldn’t fall back to sleep, so…”

“Oh. Are you tired, though?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I just can’t seem to fall asleep. I’ve been up since around 4:15. I’ll probably end up taking a nap later or something.”

“Soph, you have to sleep. You didn’t even fall asleep until 2:00 in the first place.”

“How do you know?”

“You were texting me.”

She laughed softly. “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“Why don’t we go inside? The sun rises and sets every day, we don’t have to see it right now. We can take a rain check. I’ll bring you back up here when you’ve had more sleep. Deal?”

She seemed to yawn at the perfect moment, which he took as an answer.

They climbed off the roof and went inside. Sophia brought a can of pineapples and two forks into her room. She and Jake climbed onto her bed and put on a movie, seeing the light from the slowly rising sun coming  through the windows from the corners of their eyes as they ate. When they finished the can, Sophia’s eyes started getting heavy.

She rested her head on his chest and mumbled, “I need sleep…”

He laughed, “Yeah, I know. Go to sleep. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“But… I kind of don’t want to. But then I really, really want to a lot. Don’t you hate when that happens?” She cuddled up to him and said, “It ruins everything.”