The roof access door had a sign that swore an alarm would sound, and in four years of propping it with a folded flyer, neither of them had ever once heard it. First cool night since June — thin enough that he'd hauled a blanket up without asking if she wanted one, and she'd let him.
"Ten minutes," she said, dropping onto the gravel beside where he'd spread it. "I have an early one." He didn't argue. He just sat close enough that their sleeves met at the seam, and neither of them adjusted for it.
The shower was supposed to peak at midnight, which left them a long stretch of nothing but sky and the water tower's shadow and the small talk they'd already used up weeks ago.
The first streak went by before either of them was really watching. "There," he said, pointing at where it had already stopped being anything. "You'll get the next one."
She didn't. Neither did he, twice in a row, and each miss became its own reason to stay a little longer — one more, and then we'll go in.
Her shoulder had found his somewhere in the second half hour, and stayed, and the warmth of it was doing something to the ten-minute plan that neither of them mentioned.
"You're not even looking anymore," he said, low, and she realized he was right — she'd been watching the side of his face for three streaks running.
His hand came off the blanket and found her waist instead, not asking, just arriving, the way a hand does when it's already decided something the rest of him hasn't said out loud.
The sky kept doing what the sky did. Neither of them was accounting for it anymore. Her early morning was still out there somewhere, theoretical, easy to forget under a roof full of stars and the one warm line where his shoulder met hers, both faces turned up at nothing, waiting for a reason that had already stopped being the sky.