For some reason, he wasn’t able to sleep
properly, as he would have wanted. Ever since he could remember, his eyes
opened automatically very early, always around seven o’clock in the morning.
Every single time he tried to keep sleeping, staying in bed and covering
himself up with his bed sheets, he failed miserably as his eyes wouldn’t close
for anything, no matter how much and how long he tried. When he had something
to do late some day, he just woke up that early and then waited.
If he ever had to wake up earlier than that,
then there was no problem. It was over sleeping that was the problem and not
the other way around. Certainly, it was a very uncommon thing, but very real
nevertheless. Craig, that was his name, had become an expert in handling all those
hours that he normally had to spare on days he didn’t have to work or on
weekends. He tried to use them for exercising or doing some of the things he
never got to do when he was busy like his taxes and stuff like that.
It was this early, once he went cycling around
his neighbourhood, when he met someone that had a problem with his bike. His
name was Rick and he his bicycle on the lawn of a park, trying to figure out
what was wrong with it. As Craig had gathered a considerable amount of
expertise related to cycling, he decided to stop and help the guy, carrying the
bike to a near gas station where they could check the tires for any problems.
Indeed, the issue was that something had cut through one of them.
Rick felt really silly and blamed his accident
to the fact that he hadn’t been sleeping much. That small phrase caught Craig’s
attention, who rapidly responded by smiling and confessing he rarely slept too
much, instead doing things like cycling to spend the time. Rick was very
intrigued by that, so he asked Craig if he would like to join him for some
lemonade while walking towards his house. There was a place nearby that made an
excellent, sweet, lemonade.
They each bought one and talked about
everything as they sipped lemonade and walked with their bicycles on the side.
Craig realized, once he got home, that he had practically neglected to actually
exercise that day. But he didn’t mind because of two reasons. The first was
because he didn’t cycle to exercise as such but to get distracted and spend
time he didn’t want to waste. And the other reason was because he had enjoyed
Rick’s company too much and would have wanted to spend even more time with him.
It had been a nice thing to ask for his phone number.
He had to wait a week, until next Saturday, to
receive a text message on his phone. Rick wanted to know if he was going to go
out on his bicycle again, as he had already fixed his bike’s tires and he was
looking forward doing it correctly this time. Craig wrote him that he was
indeed coming out with his bicycle and that he would love to meet to exercise
together. Sure enough, Rick was on the front door of Craig’s building very
early on Sunday, yawning a lot but with a smile.
That day, they both really exercised a lot.
They went very far, some ten kilometres away. There they looked for some place
to have something to drink and then they came back to Craig’s apartment. As the
only thing to drink they had found was a store they had bought some water bags
from, Craig decided to invite Rick to his apartment, for a proper breakfast.
Rick refused at first, saying he still had to go to his house, but as Craig
knew it wasn’t very far, he accepted the invitation.
The bikes stayed on the basement, behind
Craig’s car. On the elevator going up to the apartment, the two men realized
they didn’t know what to talk about. They were tired but at the same time they
both felt it was necessary to speak, as they were going to spend some more time
together that day. But not a word was said in the elevator. On the fifth floor,
Craig grabbed his keys from his pocket opened the door. Rick was visibly
uncomfortable, as Craig walked stretching his arms into the air.
They both entered the kitchen and then decided
to make omelettes for breakfast. Realizing how tense Rick appeared to be, Craig
decided to make the moment very interactive: he would ask the other guy fro
every single ingredient for breakfast and Rick would have to look around for
it. Surprisingly enough, he was very fast with everything, finding all
necessary items in just a few seconds. The game was a very smart way to break
the ice and initiate a proper conversation.
As the eggs cooked, Craig explained Rick
everything about his rare condition, where he couldn’t sleep past seven
o’clock, how he blamed his childhood for it and some funny things that had
happened as the years had gone by, during those early hours. Then, it was
Rick’s time to talk about himself. He chose to acknowledge the fact that he was
very shy but that he was always trying to push himself forward, in order to
meet new people. He confessed that was the first time his experiments had
actually been successful. Craig proposed a toast with orange juice.
They spend the morning eating and talking,
until they realized the moment was becoming very awkward again. Thankfully,
Rick’s phone rang and broke an uncomfortable silence that had settled in. They
didn’t write or called each other during the week. But, at least Craig,
certainly thought about Rick when his mind wasn’t busy doing something else. He
realized he felt something but he didn’t know what it was and it bothered him.
So he tried not to think about it too much.
The next weekend, nothing. Rick didn’t call or
sent a text. Nothing at all. That was the first Sunday in a long time that
Craig spent in his bed. He decided he was tired of exercising and instead chose
to watch an animated movie he had never paid attention to. He surprised himself
by doing that, as he wasn’t the type of guy to watch cartoons but he thoroughly
enjoyed his morning, complete with a big bowl of cereal and sliced bananas. He
felt like a younger self again, for some time.
That afternoon he decided to go to the
supermarket, as his refrigerator was becoming more and more empty. He normally
didn’t worry too much about it, as he normally ate outside of the house, but an
urge to eat better thing took over him, so Craig decided he wanted to start
cooking more. He was on the pasta aisle when he heard a familiar voice. At
first, he thought he was imagining it and got very embarrassed with himself
because of that, but then he realized it was really happening.
Slowly, he moved his shopping cart around the
corner into the next aisle. There he was: Rick was talking to a small girl.
Apparently she was deciding which cereal she was going to buy. The decision was
down to a pink box with princess related stuff painted on it, or a red box with
a big panda on the front, eating something that looked like tiny chocolate
cylinders. The girl grabbed the pink box and hugged it. Rick smiled and then
his eyes moved up, to see Craig standing there like a lamp.
There was no way of pretending he hadn’t been
looking so he only waved and smiled. He didn’t come closer; somehow his legs
wouldn’t move his body forward. There was a tense moment, in which the only
noise was the girl trying to make Rick move from his spot. They didn’t say
anything. Craig was the one who moved first, turning around, almost sprinting
to the nearest paying point. Once he was at home, he decided that his early
hours would never be used to do any exercise again, or at least not one that
involved meeting strangers, as if that had anything to do with his embarrassment
at the moment.
