He felt himself falling, two or three feet, and all at once. He opened his eyes, and visions of rooftops and fast-approaching pavement dissolved into the soft blue glow of streetlights that filtered in through the thin windows. A ceiling fan cut through the quiet, rolling in large, lazy circles. His feet felt cold, and he raised his head to see them jutting out from under the comforter, into the inlet that divided the bed from the window, reaching out for the frost beyond the glass.
He tucked them back into the warmth of the bed. Feeling dizzy, he raised his hand and pressed it to his left cheek, pausing for a moment to examine the cheekbone that felt new and foreign, before sliding it down toward the coast of his jawline. He sat half-up, balanced between his hips and right elbow, and reached for the yellow cup on the bedside table. To his left, a girl, a few inches shorter and a few weeks older, lay silently under the weight of easy sleep. He watched her breaths pour out in waves, short and shallow, floating upward into the waiting mouths of noisy fan blades. He tipped his cup up, and drained the water.
Her eyebrows slid in toward the top of her nose as she fell into the dissatisfaction of dreams. Her body rolled toward him. Unintelligible whispers bubbled up from her brain as her head settled on his shoulder, sending her hair splashing across his chest in little brown rivulets, like muddy waters winding their way from Southern seas.
Outside, the wails of police sirens sped away into silence, and the hushed roar of 12th Avenue traffic crept up the window and froze into opacity. He looked up at the rotating indifference of the fan. He heard cats romping in the hallway. He thought of the way his mother used to laugh at all his questions, and closed his eyes.