What if she had lifted her hand and touched his shoulder that thursday night...

She is staring at the ceiling.

Well, not staring at the ceiling exactly, because the lights from the street are dim and the ceiling high, so rather she is staring at the place where the ceiling should be.

Those streetlights never go off, she thinks to herself. Even in the daylight she can still make out their faint glow.

And the people in the streets never go home.

She turns over on her side to look at the little blue alarm clock. 3:12 am and she can still hear stragglers from the bar giggling their goodnights and stumbling into parked cars.

In 78 minutes the street cleaner will come, and the people might be gone for the eleven minutes in rumbles through.

That damn thing wakes her up every Thursday. Or at least every Thursday since the Thursday he had been in her bed.

It hadn't woken him up that night.

It made a particularly horrendous noise when it turned around a corner. Something like an irritated, growling monster.

It had woken her up that night as it came lumbering around the corner of Erie and Main. But any irritation she had felt from being awoken at 4:30 am quickly melted into the darkness as her eyes fluttered open.

She was lying on her right side, her back against the wall. He was on his right side too, and her eyes were level with his broad, tan shoulders.

The sheets were tangled around his waist and his bare back was exposed to the breezy night air. She watched it expand and contract with his lazy breathing.

She listened to the pattern of his breath, his exhales always longer than his inhales.

The rumbling street cleaner and his rhythmic breathing made a pulsing pattern.

Inhale, exhale, rumble, rumble, rumble.

Inhale, exhale, rumble, rumble, rumble.

He shifted when the street cleaner rumbled by the window and flashed its rolling yellow light invasively into her room.

For a moment, his profile was illuminated, and the gold around his neck glowed against his tan skin.

She wanted to touch it.

She imagined herself reaching out and touching the chain with one finger. And then the back of his neck, and then the hollow on the inside of his shoulder.

But she was afraid to.

What if he woke up? What if he felt her hand on him? Aimless touching is so similar to cuddling, and that was clearly against the rules.

But for a few moments, she allowed herself to imagine it. What would it feel like to touch him like that? To feel his shoulders rise and fall under her fingertips? Would he feel different while sleeping? Would his skin feel softer, his muscles less tense?

She imagined him shifting in his sleep, adjusting to her touch, reacting to the warmth of her fingertip against the cool skin where his necklace rested.

Just that shift, that honest reaction to her, unconscious as it may be, was all she needed.

But there were rules she had to respect.

So she just watched his back instead.

Expand, contract, expand, contract.

And she listened to his breath in tune with the street cleaner outside.

Inhale, exhale, rumble, rumble, rumble.

But this Thursday is nothing like that Thursday had been. Her sniffling and whimpering doesn't create a rhythmic pattern like his breathing had. Rather a dissonant jumble of self-pity and mechanical grumbling.

Tonight, the street lights seem less like a glow, and more like a grimy haze, and the street monster's low growl has become a nasty roar.

There is no soothing image to calm her frustration when she opens her eyes tonight. Just the empty space where the ceiling should be.

What if the street cleaner crashed, she thought as she stared up into that emptiness. What if it tried to turn the corner and slid straight into the greasy little bar and sent all those people who never go home stumbling into the street?

What if it drove through the shiney store front of the photography studio and smashed the glass over the faces of all the family pets and high school graduates?

What if it rolled over the curb and into the shabby pizza parlor under her apartment, causing her bed, and her bookshelves, and her dressing mirror to come tumbling down onto the sidewalk?

What if she had lifted her hand and touched his shoulder that Thursday night and he had rolled over, opened his eyes, and looked at her?

source: www.myhappylove.com