Flying Solo(70)

“Nope. I think I’m just going to close my eyes.”

She leaned toward him one more time. “Where are you?” she said.

“Here,” came his voice out of the dark, and she found his mouth and kissed him with presumptuous familiarity, like she’d do it again tomorrow and every day after that.

“If you wake up before me, there’s iced coffee in the fridge.”

“Thank you.”

“Good night, Nick.”

“Night, Laur.”



* * *



—

Laurie opened her eyes, and it took a few seconds to reorient herself: She was on the wrong side of the bed because of Nick, whose body lay heavily next to her. She could hear him breathing. Her foot was tangled in the sheet, and she gingerly tried to extract it without waking him. She moved like she was underwater, freezing when she heard him inhale and relaxing when he sighed and then was out again. She had a little stiffness in her hip, and kept thinking about how good it would feel to turn over and sleep on her other side, facing away from him, but it would be hard to do without kicking him or bumping him.

She closed her eyes and tried to fall back to sleep. She had slept with Nick. She had slept with Nick, whom she had specifically decided it would be a bad idea to sleep with a couple of weeks ago. She had slept with Nick, who seemed convinced she should come back here and live in Dot’s house, or one like it. And what if she did? She could be near the Atlantic instead of the Pacific. There would still be water, boats, green places to go. The winters would be colder, but it would rain less. She’d be farther away from her friends out there, but she had friends here, too. She could watch June’s kids grow up, throw summer parties for neighbors where Daisy and Melody would come over and play music on the deck.

She could fall asleep with Nick, wake up with him, have dinner with him, have coffee with him. He could be there to read her first drafts, and she could listen to his stories about patrons and bosses and the pain of public service. She could have sex with him on a better mattress, whenever she wanted. She could stand by the stove making breakfast and wait for him to come up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist, and maybe she would reach her hand up over her shoulder and touch his cheek, and maybe sometimes, they’d go right back to bed.

She could watch Halls of Power on the couch with her feet in his lap, and they could try to remember song lyrics and make out in the shower and just try hard to be very, very happy. Didn’t she deserve that?

Laurie slowly reached her arm backward, over her shoulder, and she felt on the nightstand for her phone. She picked it up and touched the screen to wake it up.

It was 2:08 in the morning.





Chapter Twenty-Three


Laurie woke up on the living room couch. She was in the shorts and T-shirt she’d taken off a pile of clean laundry on top of the washing machine after she gave up and climbed out of bed naked at 3:00 a.m., convinced she would not go back to sleep. Moving as silently as she could, she’d come out to the living room and dropped onto the couch, pulling an afghan over her middle, leaving her bare legs out. She was asleep before she had time to think about how much longer she’d be awake.

And now she was up again. She folded the blanket and returned it to where it had been, resting across the back of the sofa. It was light out, and her phone said it was 7:50, so she padded down the hall in her bare feet until she came to the open bedroom door. She stepped inside and saw Nick, still dead asleep, his face half pushed into the pillow and one arm crooked under it. She took a step toward the bed, then another, and then she lowered herself down next to him, a few pounds of her body weight at a time, then settled herself next to him, facing him and listening to him breathe.

This wasn’t bad, this knowledge within minutes of being awake that someone was going to drink coffee with you and have breakfast with you and ask you how you’d slept. She envied his ability to sleep through her leaving, through her returning, through her crawling back into bed. His cheek was stubbled, and she put her fingers up to her own face and wondered if it was pink with friction.

“Are you watching me sleep?” He didn’t even open his eyes, but when he spoke, she jumped.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“That’s okay,” he mumbled into the pillow. “I was going to get up anyway.”

She reached over and kissed his bare shoulder. “I like seeing you so early.”

He opened his eyes and rolled onto his side. “You should see me after I get to brush my teeth.”

“I think there are some unopened brushes in the medicine cabinet,” she said. “They were probably for guests of Dot’s, come to think of it.”

“Thank goodness for sex after eighty,” he said, and as he crawled out of bed and pulled on his jeans, she flopped onto her back and put her hands behind her head, whistling as lasciviously as she could manage. “Okay, lustball,” he said, “let me at least make myself beautiful before you get started.”

“You want coffee?”

“You read my mind.” He walked toward the bathroom.

Laurie went into the kitchen and took down two glasses, then she took out the pitcher of iced coffee. She poured hers over ice, and then she paused and went down the hall toward the bathroom. She asked through the door, “Do you want milk or sugar?”