Up on a Roof

The man turned to the woman, expecting to see a look of horror on her face. Instead, she was laughing. It always seemed to work that way with her. She laughed at everything he said, the first woman he had ever met who did.

They were sitting on his roof, talking, like they had been for the last six hours. All of that time, they had talked. There hadn’t been more than two minutes of silence at a stretch. And those silences weren’t awkward, either. They were comfortable, contemplative silences. Good silences that contribute more to conversation than actual speaking. All around, he figured, the night went well.

And she was a good friend, so there should have been understanding and an ability to communicate there, but it was more than understanding they shared, it was harmony. He never felt out of place with her, and definitely never felt awkward. She was one of his best friends, even if they had only really been friends for a month or two. They had clicked in a way that doesn’t happen often.

He looked at his watch, 5 am! Although he had been acutely aware of the passage of time, he would never have guessed that it was nearly dawn.

“Have you ever watched a sunrise?” he asked her.

“No,” she answered. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve never watched a sunset either. I mean, I’ve seen one, but never really watched one, if you know what I mean.”

“I do, I know exactly what you mean. We’ll watch this sunrise together, and when you go home tonight, we’ll both watch the sunset, and it will be like we're watching it together,” he said, half in jest, making fun of her romantic nature, half meaning it.

So they sat for the next ten minutes in silence, not speaking, but knowing exactly what was being thought, anyway.

As the first rays of sun appeared over the horizon, he looked into her face for the first time since he had returned to his room to turn off the light. The look there made his heart melt. That was the moment he realized for certain that she was special. She was someone.

He realized later that they had watched Venus make her slow progress across the sky for the whole night, and he realized that it had to be a sign, that these two, meeting under Venus was not a mistake. That it was destiny. Alright, he thought, destiny sounded corny. He didn’t believe in destiny, anyway. I believe that everything was free will and that all of my decisions had played exactly off all of her decisions to bring us together that night.