I woke up before the sun did that morning. The still air revealed few sounds: the lonesome singing of the birds, and the faint noise of my neighbor practicing piano. The sounds played the same intricate pattern over and over. Half awake, I stayed listening, unwilling to open my eyes.
          It was cold that morning, and the covers of my bed were my only protection. But I couldn’t seem to escape my coffee craving and the light slowly entering my room, and they forced me out of bed.
          My kitchen was a complete mess, beyond its usual messy state. I threw back my head in frustration and shock when I saw the trash that littered the ground, including at least five items from my pantry that had been thrown on the floor and spread around. A raccoon, sleeping in the center of the trash pile, exited through the cat door as soon as I stomped in. I spent the next thirty minutes cleaning the kitchen.
          After I finished thoroughly cleaning the floor, I noticed six notifications on my phone — yikes. They were all texts from my friend asking me where I was, telling me that he’d been waiting for an hour now. I’d forgotten that I had made plans to go to the beach with Kenny today. He was probably so mad at me.
          I rushed out of the house, fired up my station wagon, and made my way to Kenny. When I picked him up, he wasn’t too happy about the circumstances. He muttered to me that it looked like it was going to rain and he couldn’t believe I was so late. It upset me, but it wasn’t any different from his usual complaining. I told him that I was happy to see him, more or less. That calmed him down a little. We didn’t talk much on the drive to the beach, but it sure was a long way to go.
          When we arrived, it was colder and windier than we had expected. We took the small footpath that led down to the beach and avoided the sheer drops of the cliff. I asked Kenny if he had brought lunch; I hadn’t, due to the whole incident with the raccoon in the kitchen. He gave me a frustrated stare and told me he thought I was going to bring lunch. Kenny never failed to irritate me, but today wasn’t the day that it would get the better of me. Today’s plans would work, no matter what.
          We got off the path and walked down the beach for quite a while. Kenny complained lazily the whole way, making quiet comments about how much he hated this and would rather be doing something else. I tried to show him the beauty of this beach, if only he could enjoy things for once, but my attempts to lighten the mood were useless and I eventually gave up. The beach got narrower until we came to a part where the water met the face of the cliff.
          “Was this your idea of a fun trip?” Kenny mumbled.
          “Well, it would be a lot better if you could keep your mouth shut for once,” I retorted.
          Kenny was about to break into an argument with me when booming thunder rolled down the coast, echoing off the water. Then it began to drizzle. The rain intensified quickly, until it was heavier than any other rain I’d experienced. I was being pelted by a thousand things from a thousand directions.
          As we picked up our pace, our feet danced in unison, kicking up sand as we launched ourselves into a sprint. The beach presented a chaotic stage, and we were its performers. Together, we ran down the beach as fast as we could. There was nothing we could do to prevent ourselves from getting soaked at this point. The waves crashed hard against the sand of the beach, and the wind threw the raindrops sideways. We were gliding down the beach, running through the rain, and I felt refreshed. For once, I didn’t care about the consequences. I was having fun again, and my body pulsed with joy. Together we laughed and smiled for the first time in a long time, even if we couldn’t really hear or see each other.
          By some miracle, we got up the precarious muddy slope and made it back to the car. We got in and sat back, listening to the rain and laughing so hard. We talked, too. We talked for so long that the rain went away and we forgot about our hunger and our disappointment. We forgot about everything we had done wrong together and everything that stood in our way. We could just be there, in the moment.
          Someday I wish I could return to that sense of carefreeness.
          Good things can’t last forever, though, and eventually our hunger and exhaustion got the better of us. The sun went down long after the rain stopped, and we went down with it. We drove in the same car to almost the same place, but soon we would go back to being two different people with two different interests. Finally, I began to see the good things without trying to force them.