la colombe (re-editing)

five

wynn

        "so, what's that book you're reading?" 

        she flips the book so that the title was facing her, a cover with a thick patch of candle smoke glowing through the blackness behind it. 

        "looking for alaska, by john green," ella says, while flipping through the book and scanning the printed letters scattered around the pages. 

        "you got a favorite part?" i question.

        her face lights up, like she's been dying to have someone ask her this question just so she can explain her point of view. as she flips through the pages she comes to a sudden stop and points to the very first paragraph and begins to read:

        "shhhh," she said. "i'm sleeping."

        just like that. from a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. i wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. not fuck, like in those movies. not even have sex. just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. but i lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and i was gawky and she was gorgeous and i was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. so i walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, i was drizzle and she was a hurricane." 

        to keep her enlightened, i took it upon myself to ask yet another question, which i assumed would make her light up again.

        "why's that you're favorite part?" i asked, giving her a cheerful grin.

        "now that's the tricky part," she began. "i have absolutely no clue, which is odd because every excerpt that i like in a book has some kind of mysterious reasoning behind it as to why on earth i love it, but," she looks down at the page with a look of confusement, "this one doesn't."

        she begins to tap on the page with her index finger, either trying to come up with a conclusion or thinking that by tapping on it the magical reasoning will just pop up out of nowhere.

        "well, don't force it. or else it'll just be some kind of cliche reasoning, and i refuse to believe that you are a cliche, ella." i say, finishing the last of my coffee. 

        "let's hope not," she says.