Page 52 of The Lover
“You’re being ridiculous,” I said as I settled under the covers.
“I don’t think I am.”
The worst part was as soon as I put my head down on the pillow I let out this massive yawn.
“Told you,” he muttered.
“Know-it-all.”
I turned on my side to watch him read for a bit. “This is a first for us.”
“How so?”
“It’s the first time we’re sleeping together without having sex first.”
He looked down at me. “You know we’re going to be married. For life. It’s not like we’re going to have sex every single night.”
“Why not?”
He laughed. “You’re going kill me.”
I settled into my pillow and then I reached out to touch his arm. Just because I could.
He didn’t pull back or shrug me off. Instead he let me stroke him with my fingers.
“Are you scared at all?” I wondered. “You know, about the whole parenting thing.”
He looked up from his magazine and then he got this strange faraway expression on his face, like he was looking into the past or the future, it was hard to tell.
“Desperately, Ellie. But I can promise you I’m going try my best.”
“Of course you are, Jake.”
Then I got drowsy and I could feel myself drifting off to sleep.
I guess I was tired after all.
* * *
Jake
She was asleep in minutes. She couldn’t see it, but I could. The dark circles under her eyes, the slump of her shoulders. She’d been bone tired by the time she got into bed, and the last thing she needed was me between her legs.
I couldn’t help but watch her for a while. Ellie was a beautiful girl, but not while she was sleeping. She wasn’t like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. All serenity and loveliness.
Nope, she usually slept with her face half smushed into the pillow, with her mouth open a little. In a couple more minutes she would make this small snoring noise. It wasn’t loud or obnoxious. Just a sound I would come to know as part of the soundtrack that was Ellie.
Hopefully, a sound I would sleep with every night of my life from here on out.
It was one of those things I liked knowing about her. Because I was the only one who did. I was the only one, would be the only one, to ever know how Ellie looked and sounded as she slept.
Her scales were set to seven. I knew because I checked right after she set them up. It was a decent number, and I thought maybe she did it because of how she was feeling about the baby. Obviously she was just as scared as I was. Her question suggested as much. We would get through that, too.
Still, in that moment, I had committed to making those scales go higher.
To be the man who, day in and day out, made Ellie happy. A ten, on a scale of one to ten. I turned the light off on my side of the bed and tossed the magazine on the nightstand. Then I settled down next to Ellie and thought about how right this all felt.
I listened to the sound of her soft snores until I drifted off to sleep.
