Love and the Sea and Everything in Between

chapter three

Most people begin their mornings with a nice cup of coffee. I begin mine with a cigarette.

Standing on the dorm roof, I watch the sun rise above the city. I flick the ash from my cig and return it to its place at my lips. I inhale, the smoke flooding my lungs, seeping into the fibers of my existence. I close my eyes and for a second I feel Liz's fingertips brush against mine again.

My mind travels to that night just a week ago. We didn't get back to the campus until sometime after midnight so we had to sneak into the dorms without waking our RA's up. If they caught us, we'd receive a warning. Well, she would. My punishment might have been a little more severe since staying out past curfew isn't exactly new to me.

After watching the stars from the top of the water tower, we spent the rest of the time (I don't know how long) driving across the countryside, admiring the vineyards and their million-dollar mansions.

We didn't talk much, but we were there. Together. Under the stars. And it felt good, to be with someone, to feel her beside me, to hear every breath she took.

I smile against my cigarette. We haven't seen much of each other since that night. I imagine she's probably been studying and I, as always, have been off doing my own thing. I see her in classes, though, and she always acknowledges me with a smile, which is a first. I wave back too. I'd forgotten what it feels like to be noticed by someone.

Slipping my journal from my backpack, I sit cross-legged on the roof and begin to write.

There are some things you can't explain. Like how tons and tons of metal and flesh can soar effortlessly across the sky. Or how the sun rises each day, as if keeping an eternal appointment with the Earth. Or how people come and go in your life, but they all matter. Everything they say and do and feel. It all matters. This dance of spirit and flesh, of soul and bone, it matters. It affects everything and everyone around you.

Because it matters.

As the sun and moon move in rhythmic harmony, breathing life into the waves, so moves every beating heart. You can't explain the harmony of it all, life and love, joy and sadness, anger and madness, but it's all there, working together like the sun and the moon as they create the waves and the tide.

I pause to let the words at my fingertips take root in the caverns of my being. I stare at nothing in particular for a long while, lost in time, lost in thought, until I return to the pages of my journal.

Maybe my heart is the moon and hers is the sun. If that's the case, our gravitational pull will be a force to be reckoned with.

Taking one last drag of my cigarette, I close my journal, shove it in my backpack, and stand to my feet. Dropping the cig on the roof, I grind it into the concrete with my heel. I pop a piece of peppermint gum into my mouth and climb down the ladder on the backside of the building.

I make my way to the auditorium for Wednesday morning announcements and when I get there I think I'm the last one in. So I sit at the back of the room in the back row as the Dean makes his way to the podium. It isn't a big auditorium; it only fits roughly one-hundred people. Even still, it's easy to get lost in the crowd when the entire student body is together in the same room. I'm thankful for that because I feel safe and secure, hidden from notice by dozens of bodies and my denim jacket.

"Good morning, students," the Dean says.

Scattered replies come from the crowd of students.