Morning

Part of a bigger picture

Please No CSS

The morning started off with the smell of coffee and cigarettes, two tell tale signs that he was writing.  Drowsily she rolls over to find the expected empty space on his side of the bed.  Stretching and quietly moaning she boosts herself up on one arm as she looks at the clock.  6:46. “How does he get up so early?” she thinks as she moves the covers off of her body as she slips her bare feet onto the cool tile floor.  She stretches one last, big stretch before beginning her drudge into the living room to check on her tortured scribe, the man she loves.

He is sitting on the ground in their living room writing frantically as a cigarette burns in an ashtray next to him on the coffee table.  His usual jeans and t-shirt substituted with blue flannel boxers and tube socks makes her wonder if he had slept at all the night before, or if he had snuck out of bed after he an hour or so of tossing and turning.  Her guess was the latter.   

She knew this was not the time to interrupt him.  The sight of him scribbling his thoughts onto a yellow legal pad rather than using his computer tells her that what he was writing was intense and dramatic.  He always wrote long hand when someone was dying or going through insane tragedy.    Rather than break his concentration she sneaks by as quietly as she can and goes into the kitchen to see if he had left her any coffee.

She pours the remainder of the pot into her cobalt blue coffee mug and walks to the doorway separating the kitchen and the living room.  Slowly sipping she watches him, knowing that before long she was going to have to help him back to reality.   “I can feel that you know.” he says still transfixed on his writing.

“And what is that?” she asks taking another sip of her coffee.

“You, wanting me.  How much you want to come over here” he responds, never stopping to look up.

“Is that right?” she asks coyly as she starts to walk over to him.

“Mmhmm and it is killing you to know that if you don’t kiss me in the next 10 seconds,” he continues but is interrupted by her lips on his mouth as she is sitting next to him on the floor.

“What was going to happen if I didn’t kiss you in the next 20 seconds?” she asks playfully between kisses. 

“Oh whatever, it doesn’t even matter anymore now does it?”  He answers while rubbing his fingers through her tangled hair.  This was his favorite time with her, first thing in the morning.  He looks at her sleepy eyes and her naked face and fell so deeply in love with her all over again.  In these honest stripped down moments she is his saint, his harlot, his savior and most of all his lover.  Before another word can be said, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her again; wanting her to know that he needs her to always be there.  She shows him she understands by closing her eyes and holding his hand tightly as they kiss. 

“Sorry about my morning breath,” she says, pulling away slightly paranoid.

“You should be, gross” he teases, knowing his breath was a combination of coffee and menthol cigarettes.

“How is it shapin’ up?” she asks, intentionally stopping the intimacy.  She knows how into his writing he gets and how hard it is for him to separate his life from the life of his characters.  It has always been an unsaid agreement between them that if she felt him getting to deep, she will help him back. 

“Ugh, its fine, you know, the usual crap.  How did you sleep?” he answers as he puts down his pad and grabs the cigarette.    “I didn’t wake you did I?”

“Nah, don’t worry, I was dreaming crazy stuff anyway. “  She had been having a dream.  The dream she had a lot lately.  She was pregnant and it was summer time.  She always feels the baby moving and growing inside her.  This time the dream changed course.   This time instead of the two of them excitingly expecting their child’s arrival, she dreamed he was dead.  Although she didn’t actually see how it happened, she couldn’t help but think about what this meant now that she was awake.