Summer Long

July 1 - Seven days (1)

It was 6 a.m. 1st of July.
My eyes were still puffy from sleep while I drank my latte.
"I don't know how you drink so little coffee in the morning." He said to me as he wearily leaned his back against the uncomfortable chair in the café.
"Are you on your second?" I asked.
"Yeah, and it's only 6 a.m." He replied as he crinkled his eyes.

His blue eyes were red and veined with violet hues, a sign that he too was still shaken by the sound the alarm clock made at 4 a.m.
Last night we had a quiet dinner in front of the television, then he fell asleep on the sofa and there he had stayed all night.
I slipped into bed, but pre-departure anxiety had gotten the better of my body and I practically didn't sleep all night.

It was about 6:30 a.m. when we got up from the airport bar to head for our gate.
Number 6, Hawaii.
More or less a five-hour flight from California.

When we got to the line he encircled my chest with his arm and held onto my body: "We're almost there...this is going to be great." He smiled at me as the line for the plane ahead of us was getting shorter and shorter.
As we reached the aisle I stared at the plane that would take us to one of the most beautiful islands America could offer us and to one of the most magnificent resorts on the coast.

What more could I have wanted? I had everything a 23-year-old girl could ask for from life.
Still...

We finally sat down in our assigned seats, I let him get on the window side because I knew his eyes would soon be lost in the clouds.
He shook my hand: "Despite my sleep, I am as excited as I have ever been in my life!" He confessed.
I smiled, hiding my face in the crook of my neck, "I can see it in your eyes that you are happy." I said to him.
"Are you too? Tell me yes, otherwise, I will lose my mind."

Joe had this habit of anticipating my answer so that I would say what he really wanted.

"Yes." I answered. Short and to the point.
His phone lit up in his hands and he read the message aloud: "Leo wished us a good trip."
"Of your friends, the only one I like is him... When did you say he's coming?"
Joe snorted, but laughed under his breath: "His girlfriend is nice too... you'll see, we'll have a great time. They will arrive tonight."
"If you say so." I replied and tightened my belt under my belly as the steward was admonishing.

He turned to me impatiently: "Look, I know you're a lot more shy than I am and you don't make friends right away but... we'll be just a couple having fun together with another couple in a resort.... For a week."

The couple Joe was talking about and with whom we would spend an entire week were his best friend Leo and his girlfriend.

When he had first proposed it to me, I had not been all that enthusiastic about the idea at first.
Leo was his best friend, the person with whom he had bonded both professionally and amicably these past 10 years.
Joe and Leo are also partners in a company that they practically created.
So I understood why Joe cared so much, and I went along with it....

So we would stay a week with them, just the four of us.
And on the seventh day, the last day there would be our wedding.

Joe was surrounded by friends and colleagues while I counted my friends on the palm of my hand and neither.
I, on the other hand, had two friends:
July, whom I had known since the teacher had put us in the same desk in middle school, we became friend from that day on.
Delilah: I had met her about 6 years ago at a party, from that day on she became my long-distance friend.
She lives in Nevada, I live in California, but at least once a month I get on a car or vice versa and we meet for a couple of days.
Perhaps she is the only one to whom I have ever truly opened my heart and who knows my deepest insecurities and fears.