Waking up and actually being in the harsh sunlight is a lot different than waking up to the sunlight shining through the blinds you forget to close at night. The heat melting away the chill from the darkness, the light shining through your eyelids, the annoyance of not being able to see and having to squint for ten minutes and adjust.
I'm up before Luke is, but I don't actually get out of our makeshift bed. Instead, I toss the blankets off of me and onto him and spread myself out over the rest of the area. We managed to squeeze ourselves against one end of the truck, leaving three quarters of the space open. I lay out as if I'm going to make a snow angel and shut my eyes tightly to avoid damaging anything.
I lay like this for a long time, thinking about life in general. About how if my parents hadn't given up on me and I'd have never met Luke. How if I had never gotten into the mess that I did, my parents would never have given up on me in the first place.
I watch the little blurbs of color dance around in the sky from the sun being so bright.
According to the time on my phone, I'm awake for twenty minutes until Luke finally opens his eyes. After five minutes of screaming that he's blind from the early-morning sun, he finally calms down and snuggles with me on top of the blankets.
"How long have you been awake?" He asks me, reaching up to play with my hair. Even though I move around a lot in my sleep, as people have told me, the curls managed to hold.
"About twenty minutes." I admit. He sighs and smiles.
"You should have woken me up."
"But you're cute when you're asleep." I giggle. He hides his face behind his hands, but the blush on his cheeks doesn't go unnoticed.
We hang out in the bed of the truck together for nearly another hour before Luke suggests we go somewhere for breakfast. I argue and say we're gonna look homeless due to the outfits and hair-do's we're rocking but he claims that no one will care. That's all the convincing it takes to get me up and out of the bed of the truck and into the passenger seat up front.
The back door opens, and Luke appears with an armful of blankets and pillows. He stuffs them into the back seat all at once and shuts the door lightly when he's finished. He then climbs into the drivers seat and starts up the old truck, ready to go get some breakfast.
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Luke brings us to some old place beside a rusty gas station. Even from the parking lot I can smell fresh bacon cooking.
"My mum used to take me here a lot with my brothers. It's family owned and run. The make the food fresh when you order, and it tastes so good." Luke gushes, turning the keys and yanking them from the slot. He pockets them and gets out of the truck, me following suit.
Once I'm properly on the pavement, Luke doesn't hesitate to grab my hand and intertwine our fingers. I don't hold back my smile.
A tiny bell jingles as soon as the door opens, and a pudgy woman with graying hair runs over to us from where she was washing a table and greets us.
"You can sit anywhere you like, there are menus at each table." She smiles, waving her chubby hand in a motion that indicates she wants us to move farther in.
Luke and I take a booth seat in the back corner, far away from the old couple sitting near the door. Besides them, the only other people here are the employees.
Once we're settled in the squishy seats, Luke pulls the menus from where they are wedged between the salt and pepper shakers and hands me one. I flip through the laminated menu and find a few appetizing foods. Luke seems to be ready just as a waitress approaches the table to take our orders.
