First Light, Last Light (part 4)

Eyes opened, head bent to the side, I saw the pale blue of the pre-dawn. Emma's head laid on Roscoe's shoulder. Roscoe puffed on the exhale. I got up and stretched. The aura of the sun was just penetrating the eastern horizon. Roscoe and Emma woke slowly as I was beginning to walk away. "Hey!" Emma shouted and came running after me, Roscoe following behind. The gravel road was in a thin haze of fog for all the way home.
The kitchen clock read 7:35am when we got home, with the small arrow casting a shadow in the white space between the 7 and the 8. With sun up and raining in through the living room windows, Roscoe and Emma crashed on the couch while I threw together a mound of Krusteaz pancakes and brewed a pot of Americana coffee.
Roscoe got up and put the needle on some dusty, Neil Young wax. I came out of the kitchen—hands full of flapjacks and plates, pot of Joe, one coffee mug—to “A Man Needs a Maid” and set everything down on the coffee table.
“Thanks a lot, man,” Roscoe said. Emma nodded.
“No problem.”
And that was all that was said until everything was devoured—just Neil Young, those pillows of fried batter, and black black coffee all for me.
I took a cool shower while Roscoe and Emma passed out in the living room, then put on my best clothes—a pair of black jeans and a burgundy polo. And I was out the door and off to the bus stop a block away.