RAY

July 3rd. We hadn't really planned on hanging out but it had a way of working out, as summer always does. We smoked hookah. We drove with the windows down as fireworks exploded from front lawns. They played Mario Kart. We sat on the back porch amid the fireflies and the stars and the distant explosions listening to the National and Kanye West and everything in between. And we only went inside once the sky began to fade into the faintest gold and the birds began to sing. We slept on couches and floors, tangled up in each other and blankets and the early morning sun. At an hour too late to be considered breakfast anymore, we got breakfast at Bob Evan's, all of us still in clothes from the night before, the youngest people in the entire building and proud of it. The exhaustion hurt so good when I went to work that 4th of July night.

-RAY