Into the Night I Go

I quietly started to slip out of bed after midnight. I felt Rosa's hand reach out for mine.

"Where are you going?" she asked, sleepily.

"To the porch to smoke," I replied.

"Don't be long. I can't sleep without you."

I pulled on some shorts and my tennis shoes and escaped outside to be greeted by a beautiful night. There was a touch of fall in the air with the temps hovering in the sixties. It almost made me shiver. Don't be long. I can't sleep without you. Those words echoed in my mind as I sat there inhaling heavy cigar smoke -- the taste of cherries on the tip of my tongue. I remembered the first time I saw Rosa down at the shopping center. "You got a cigarette?" she asked. She looked homeless, frumpy, and lost. I would have never thought in a million years that we would fall in love. I thought we were like night and day. "I was a prostitute and homeless," she told me one day in a rare moment of introspection. "Really?" I asked, uncomfortable at such a subject. "It was the only way I could survive without sleeping in homeless shelters," she said. Never say never, I thought about love as I pulled on my cigar. Love has a way of making anything and everything happen.

Mom asked me last night with Rosa sitting there next to me if I thought we would ever get married. "Your father would disapprove, you know?" she said not meaning any harm. It is just mom's blunt and aloof way. I blushed. Yes, I could see us married I wanted to respond, but I just looked at Rosa and smiled. She has never spoken much of the subject.

"Coming to bed yet?" interrupted my wistful thoughts as I turned to look at who was speaking. Rosa was sexily standing at my porch door in a slip and a pair of white cotton panties. I took one more drag of my cigarillo and extinguished it in my ashtray. "Coming," I replied. "Let me write about this first." Rosa smirked and then escaped into my bedroom, shutting the door. Good night dear Rosa. I am soon to follow.