The rain danced upon the poorly maintained student house’s roof. Different sections of the rooftop were worse off than others and so the liquid noise which resonated throughout the late night lights in Jeffery’s room was more of a song than static percipitation. The air was alive and he could feel it; such are these moments, rational cornerstones in the flow of time. The moments in which the rather major turnoffs on the highway of destiny seem to be rapidly approaching.
“Heya stranger…”
At this particular instance an attractive young woman named Krissy stood in the doorframe of Jeffery’s room staring at her roommate who was positioned in a chair, lazily staring out his window into the downpour. Upon hearing his name he let his head roll back in an attempt to look at Krissy in the laziest possible manner. She knew he coculdn’t see her but her but she appreciated the effort anyways - they were both fairly drunk.
“Hello my love”
She grinned at the words. Jeffery was many things that Mark was not but he certaintly kept her just as happy as her boyfriend did while she was away at school. Krissy strolled all the way into Jeffery’s room. Upon noticing he’d gone back to watching the army of transparent orbs racing each other down the window pane she walked over to stand right behind him.
“Can you believe it?” he said, clearly starting to fade off to sleep, “This is out last night together”. The young man watched the landscape outside of his room being hosed down and he couldn’t help but think that was what was going on with his life right now. Krissy was going to leave, along with everyone else. A new life, at least of sorts, would await him anew in the morning.
“I can’t…” she responded, allowing the rythmic sounds overhead to lull her thought process into a semi lucid rememberace of various events from Krissy’s two years in the residence. Leaning over a bit she extended her hands to cover up Jeffery’s eyes and, leaning down to position her mouth by his right ear she breathed “Wake up!”
The heated angel breeze flowed into Jeffery’s ear and marched straight to the pleasure capitol in his intoxicated brain. He came very close to letting out a small sigh but caught himself and sprung off his seat to turn and face his friend and living partener. “I’m awake!” he exclaimed with a small grin and a wink to Krissy, who naturally smiled.
“So…”
“So… is everyone else asleep?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Cool…”
Jeffery let out a small laugh, seemingly for no reason and Krissy responded with an even more subdued variation. The gavity of the situation has finally landed and so the air was now thick with uncertainty; the rain was a distant and fleeting sound. He could feel his car approaching one exit or another on the highway, but with the arrival of this newfound tension the automobile seemed to be transforming into nothing more but a pathetic shitbox on wheels. He had to say something and so, literally ripping the abstract concept from his mind Jeffery forced the words out.
“I’m going to miss you Kris, a lot”
Krissy forced a smile but she knew it was true, he would. Likewise she would miss him as well, but at the same time she wouldn’t be missing Mark. With her departure just around the corner, and the liquor in her veins at just the right amount, it occured to her that at this moment she was not missing Mark either. "I’ll miss you too Jeff… " she responded gently, trying to look at him harder so as to be able to charish the memory later.
He continued. “It’s weird you know? Because in the two years we lived in this house I never once thought to myself ‘I wish she would leave’ or, ‘Kris is really starting to piss me off’. All the other yes, on several occasions, but never you. I never really noticed it up until now but… all the things the other dislike about you, all the things they complain about you to me about - I never really noticed. I understood what they were talking about, but they simply didn’t register when you were aroud.”
Krissy bit her lower lip slightly. She did not know exactly what to say. Somewhere deep outside of her clouded perspective the rain danced down ourside, hammering the whispers of time into the aging wood. “Jeff…listen, I…-”
“I know Kris… honestly, I do. But this is our last night, we’re drunk, we might as well have this conversation.”
She stared at him for a long time; different memories of their life together tapdanced through her skull to the rhythm of the aerial symphony. Krissy could not make the claim that Jeffery had never gotten on her nerves, they were wholly different people. Still, when he wasn’t around she felt so isolated. Her and Mark parted ways for school but she would, in all likelyhood, never see Jeffery again. The thought was a dropoff of sorts, she couldn’t see beyond their departure. “Ok” she said finally.
“It’s so weird you know? I would come home every day and feel reassured that your light was on. Every day I would tell jokes just to get you to laugh and perhaps touch my arm.”
She looked down.
“I silently played the game knowing that I couldn’t win, I took comfort in it; knowing that when this moment came along I would no longer have to excuse not to pursue my own love, not to move onto the next stage”
“Jeff, what are saying?”
The young man turned back to the window exhaling. With one hand on either side of the frame he looked out into the blanketing wetness. “Did you know they called for sunshine today?”