"get up get up GET UP!" it is approximately 1:45am. beans barrels into my bedroom, complete disregard for the closed door and the late hour and the fact that i am dead asleep. what?! is the house on fire? did you bring me a strawberry frosted donut? is john mayer waiting for me in the driveway? all of the above? these questions translate to "mmmprfrgl go away i sleep now" as i roll over and put the blankets over my head. "but kimbo! the meteors, kimbo!" i crack open one eye and see her excited face, her hair piled wildly at the very top of her head like a classy sumo wrestler at fashion week, and she's bouncing from foot to foot and i know this is the one and only time she will ever be this excited about astronomy. absolutely worth it. we're going to see some meteors.
naturally, because it is august, i put polarfleece pants on over my shorts, a jacket, and my ll bean wicked good slippers that make me look like dobby the house elf but are toastier than the mojave desert. beans wears neon gym shorts, because they are a beacon in the night, and also because she will forever wear gym shorts. (i not so secretly believe she picked her college major based on that fact alone.) beans grabs a pillow and the blanket off the couch, and we creep down the walkway like very poorly trained secret agents. neither of us will be sydney bristow for halloween.
i am still blinking sleepily, my eyes trying hard to focus in the dark, the stars winking at me, saying "ha, sucker. you got out of bed for this." without a thought to the myriad of things that have been on our driveway (dogs, beer, motor oil, acid rain) she throws down the pillow and lays right down in the middle of the driveway in the middle of the night, dragging me down with her. we get comfortable, if that is even such a thing, digging pebbles from the small of my back and her hair from under my nose. the blanket is small and meant for one, so we burrow closer, pretending we are once again four and six years old, when a cardboard box was the perfect fort fit for the two of us.
instead, we are terrifyingly older than that, twenty-one and twenty-three years old, scrunching ourselves under one blanket, sharing a pillow. if my toes are sticking out from the bottom, beans' shins must be glowing in the dark. even though we are far too big for that blanket, and now we occupy ourselves with scooping ice cream and filling the gas tank, searching for the perfect emoji and debating the best way to put on mascara and making emergency runs to the liquor store for margaritas at the kitchen table, it feels like we're kids again, trying to find the big dipper and the north star and whether or not that's an airplane or just a shooting star that occasionally blinks red. a rush of cold air seeps under the blanket as beans points up into the night, "see that, kimbo? did you see that one?" we try to keep a tally, but lose track of flashing meteors because the oohs and ahhs that escape our mouths are more important, and aren't shooting stars something too beautiful to be counted anyway?
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