PERFECT PLACES

Cole (5)

She met him outside of her residence. She had asked him to meet her there because she had a lot of bags to drop off in her new room. Most of her stuff had already made it to her room; her mom had dropped it all off for her on moving day, without her daughter being there with her. Cole told me that he guessed Sarah might have had the nicest mom in the entire world.

When she got out of the taxi, she looked tired. She looked like she should have looked, having just survived a long overnight flight. There were bags under her eyes and her hair was messily done up in a bun, single hairs straying away from her head in different directions.

Cole felt a sudden rush of energy flow into his body as she looked up to meet his eyes for the first time in a few weeks. Like summer coming back each year as a familiar yet distant feeling, he felt all of a sudden as if he were at home. It was clear to him then that the past few weeks had been a vacation for him, a far-away island with no consequences and no real feelings and just momentary happiness, artificially created for a few memorable moments. He realized then that the memories he had made with his new friends were not the right ones; they were hideous now. He wished they could rot away from his brain in that moment and never come back to ever haunt him again.

She gave him a warm hug. She told him she had missed him. He agreed that he had missed her too. She tried to seem excited, even though she was exhausted. She hadn't been able to sleep on the plane, she explained. She had hoped that the long final day in London would have allowed her drift off once in the air. But for her entire life she had never been able to sleep during car road trips, and for her first flight back over the ocean the same effect seemed to have occurred.

As she told Cole about this, his soul lit up and warmth filled his body, as the familiar sounds of his favourite person's voice came back to him.

They walked into her residence and took the elevator up to her room.

He spent the first hour making her bed. She sat down against the wall and told him everything she needed him to know about her trip. There was a lot to tell; she had had the time of her life.

After the bed was done, she put some earplugs in, ones that she had bought for the plane ride, and took a nap on the newly made bed. While she slept, Cole tried to construct her other furniture as quietly as possible. He felt bad for her, that she was so tired, and he wanted her to get the rest that she so desperately needed.

But when he dropped a screwdriver on the ground while trying to screw her new desk together, she woke up. He recommended that they walk to his residence, three blocks away, so that she could sleep in his room while he finished making her furniture. She said no, that it was fine and they could just talk, but Cole insisted. He wanted to make his girlfriend happy. He had missed having that responsibility, even for the little while she had been gone.

They walked over to his residence so that she could finally get the sleep that she deserved. The minute she got into his bed, she was asleep. Cole watched her sleep for a few minutes, admiring how amazing she looked even when she was wiped from jet lag. It was a good feeling.

Cole closed the door, quietly, and left for the rest of the morning to go make her desk and her chair and her dresser. He would wake her up soon, for lunch, and they would keep talking for hours about her trip. And then she would finally ask him about his first weeks of college.