The hurricane was supposed to be bad. I lived in a little studio apartment on a side of town that was supposed to get it bad so in preparation I temporarily moved in with my friend.
Four of us lived in the apartment. There was my friend Rebecca and her husband Michael. They occupied the master bedroom. I held the adjoining bedroom, and Brian lived up in the loft. When I was younger I thought I might hook up with Brian, we shared a lot in common but after college he would bring his much too younger girlfriend home and Rebecca and I would scare them off, laughing as we picked at Brian and his choice of women.
It was the night of the big storm. The lights had gone out and we were relying on the heat from the fireplace. Luckily, there were two in the house; one in the huge living room with the sink-in couch, and one in the master bedroom. Michael had gone to bed early, exhausted from his day at work, and Brian had called us to say he was snowed in at a friend’s house and wouldn’t be home. Rebecca knew I would be in the living room alone for the night and decided that we should have a mini slumber party with hot chocolate and ghost stories, since we had no television or music to listen to. We had long since ran out of silly stories and gradually fell into a comfortable silence.