just like before
"Koko Josh, can I sleep with you?" David whispered.
He wasn’t sure if I was asleep yet. The thunder was pretty loud and the rain seemed to pour in waves against our bedroom window. Every so often, a flash of lightning seemed to explode in front of our house. For all we knew, we might not make it till morning. A little bit of light from somewhere illuminated my little brother’s frightened face. We were both old enough to be ashamed of sleeping with our parents but not too old to share a bed when the storms got scary or when a monster chased us out of our dreams.
I scooted over to give him room and David thankfully crawled into bed next to me. Within a couple of minutes he was snoring peacefully.
—————————————————————————————-
"Oh, sick, man!" My brother shoved me and laughed as I pretended to snuggle up to him. We are too old to sleep in the same bed even when storms threaten our bedrooms. We are definitely too old to sleep with our parents for any reason at all. However, with both of my brothers visiting me here in Beijing, two of us were going to have to share a bed. David and I did. He slept in my room and Alex slept in the guest room upstairs. My blankets were meant for one person so we slept a little closer together than we would have liked. If the room temperature hadn’t been as cold as my refridgerator, I’m sure one of us would have opted to sleep without covers.
"Hey, when do you think Ko will get married?" I asked.
"I don’t know," David replied. "Hey, I’m a little worried about starting my career."
"Aw don’t worry. You just graduated and I’m sure you’ll be fine."
"Yeah, but I’m afraid I’ll get stuck doing something that I don’t really like."
We talked about this and other grown up things for quite some time before we both fell asleep. Just like when we were kids, my little brother fell asleep first. The last thing I heard before I floated away on a cloud was David snoring peacefully.
