Shannon

"Do you ever wonder," Shannon began, "why the moon looks like a face, or why people named the stars what they did? What if there are people out there and they don't like the names we gave them?"

"Huh?" Jonathan groaned, exhaling loudly and trying to roll over away from her. It was summer then, and the crickets were chirping a mating cadence outside their window. The thin blanket on the bed was bunched at the foot of the bed, its sticky closeness too much for a warm July night like this one. It was too hot to sleep, and Shannon started in on what Jonathan liked to call her "what ifs."

"Don't you ever wonder about those things?" Although she knew it annoyed him, she wanted to press him into a conversation. Why did she do this? She didn't know. Maybe she just wanted to feel him close to her, wanted to know he wanted her for more than the athletic event they'd just shared together. Maybe it was more subtly devious than that, wanting him to experience sleeplessness if she had to. You know, sympathy pains.

"Baby, it's 2 in the morning. Don't you ever stop thinking?"

"Not if I can help it," she grinned into the darkness. She rolled over next to him, tracing her finger along his spine. He farted in response, then started snoring. Sometimes she hated him, she thought, the idea coming unbidden to the forefront of her mind before she shook it away, an unpleasantness she told herself she shouldn't be thinking.

Yet outside the crickets chirped, above the sound of the rotating fan that brought some semblance of relief to the hot apartment and pulled in some of the outside air. She tried to sleep, but sleep ran like a sprinter far from her. Tomorrow she'd hate this, she'd have to go to work, but before then she'd toss and turn until capturing the final couple hours of sleep when the world rests and the crickets quiet, exhausted or satisfied, and a peace settles before the sun rises. Those two hours wouldn't be enough.

He'd always been tall, and she loved the sculpted, lean features of his body, his angled face, his strong hands. He reminded her of a movie star. She'd feel a pang of jealousy and pride when other women did a double take as he'd pass by (He's with me! Back off!). When they'd first met he'd smiled a lot. He still smiled, at work, when they were out, but behind closed doors the frame holding that bridge had sagged, if not cracked. They were losing it; she was falling apart from the inside, and she didn't know how to stop it.

And there it was, the thought that came as she lay next to this tall, lean lover she no longer knew, maybe no longer loved, just waiting for the sun to rise, waiting for the night to end. It wasn't bad, there weren't storms in the sky, but somehow, it just wasn't enough. And that knowledge was eating her from the inside, clawing its way out. She rolled over, trying not to look at the numbers on the clock and squeezed her eyes closed, so tightly she saw flashes of light behind her eyelids. She was just tired, she told herself. Tomorrow it'd look different. . .