The feeling permeates the air in the room. It sits leaden on his eyelids and insinuates itself into his brain like a drug. The complete lack of desire to fully awaken, the proclivity towards staying wrapped up beneath sheets and blankets, intertwining limbs. Not wanting to place feet on firm ground and accept the end of what glorious hours prior have entailed. They can be awake but not up, can be up, but not have moved from the part of the day titled 'in bed' to the part titled 'out of bed and everything thereafter.' The rustling is acceptable, the back and forth from on my back with her head resting on his chest, nestled comfortably in the crook that is created when he wraps his left arm around her and pulls her close, tight, safe.
How perfectly they fit together, as if, "God Himself did make us out of corresponding pieces from the clay," he thinks, despite the hypocrisy that thought belies. The switch to her facing the wall and he immediately, instinctively, without conscious thought, rolls to his left, right arm reaching around her soft, petite waist as the left finds the space her neck generously leaves for it to reach under and around to meet the other arm, pulling and squeezing her into a tight, but tender, hug full of warmth and security. Receiving tangible evidence that it is a mutual pleasant feeling from the reactions of her body: the way her legs firmly wrap themselves around his, squeezing his hand in hers, softly cooing contentment that underscores an intensity of emotion bubbling underneath the surface.
Back to side to back to side to back to side. This carries on for minutes, a perfectly synchronized horizontal dance of genuine affection, expressed in a prolonged squeeze here, a gentle stroke of her hair there, a knowing gaze shared for lingering moments before eyes are closed to allow the other senses to fully soak in the unexpected but much welcomed occurrence for the absolute bliss it was and is.
As the early morning hours give way to mid-morning, the sun begins to peak through the spaces between blinds in earnest, making it more difficult to ignore the departure of night and the arrival of a new day. Each second that passes is a second closer to the inevitable, unenviable necessity to cease what has been occurring for the better part of nine hours.
Lips upturned in a familiar smile accompany an innocuous, "What’re you thinking?" as if she can read in his face the multitude of thoughts and feelings going on in his mind about what was currently occurring and what he was confident, certain, would come days, weeks, years…and years…and years onward, and what that all meant to him. A brief pause in an attempt to gather together those thoughts and formulate them into something coherent, something relatively cognizant sounding considering the monumentally daunting prospect of collecting that plethora of thoughts, akin to attempting to neatly order all of the grains of grains of sand on the beach he so badly wants to take her and make it one of "their things."
Pause.
Then, abandoning thought and speaking glibly, off the cuff, as he has always been able to do, wanted to do with her. "I’m just thinking about how happy I am. Right now. In general. With you. How much of a treat it is to spend the night with you here, to go to sleep and wake up with my arms wrapped around you, with your head on my chest. I am just so unbelievably, indescribably happy in this specific circumstance and in general. Laying here I get this overwhelming feeling of joy and amazement that is real, all of this is actually happening because I couldn’t dream it any better."
The rambling had started. It would continue in this gushing, scattered vein for a number of minutes. All the while she lay there, on her side, her left arm resting delicately on his waist, her other absent-mindedly caressing the nape of his neck, running fingers through hair. Her eyes were wide and her face was screwed up in an intense but not menacing expression that he was having trouble reading, a rarity at even this early juncture. It wasn’t until well into his diatribe that he notices anything really- her face, the color of the walls (a soft lavender she told him was done thinking it would prevent her brother from claiming it in her absence), the light that had been steadily growing in intensity and burrowing deeper into the room and under closed eyelids from the first moment of consciousness.
All at once, for the first time since he had launched into this, since he had let go and allowed the train of thought to pull out of the station, let it gradually run more and more out of control, everything came into focus. He becomes aware of the fact that she was perfectly content to allow him to continue ad infinitum. She always said she enjoyed his rants. Lately she featured prominently and positively in them, so why shouldn’t she?
He stops himself, lest he spend the whole day expounding her many virtues, lest she spend the whole day listening and absorbing the encyclopedic amount of thought he could offer about her. They had things to do today. Driving, running, a Super Bowl to watch, a Giants win to enjoy.
"What about you? What are you thinking?"
Silence. A silence that speaks volumes in his mind. Clearly there was a thought being thought in her head. The tell-tale signs of a brain at work were present. The way her lips sit tense, ready to move and work with the tongue to form words, words undoubtedly of the utmost import. The nose betrays a twitch or three. But it was in the eyes, her eyes, those deep, mesmerizing, captivating blue eyes, that clued him in. They stare, unblinking, unmoving, intensely intent upon his own. Would that they could communicate on their own, they would have elaborated so much. This he knows. And she knows he knows, despite her best transparent attempt at nonchalance, "Nothing."
Pause.
A knowing look cast in her direction. The bullshit detectors are working just fine today.
"I don’t know what to say. Because I feel I’ll have to justify it and I don’t want to have to."
"What?! Come on! You can’t do that to me!" The pecuniary pangs of panic begin peeking around the corner of his psyche. "I just spilled my thoughts out. Every last drop.” The thought is not necessarily dread, but he is curious if it has to do with his most recent oration. He wonders if something struck a chord, possibly a sour note. His imagination races. He’s fairly certain she’s thinking something good, something positive, something he’d like very much to hear. At least that’s what her body language is stating. She hasn’t moved farther or ungrasped his hand or looked away. "But if it’s something good then why won’t she tell me? What does she mean, ‘justify it’?" These thoughts bandy back and forth as he implores her to tell him as best an eight year old can. "Come on, tell me!"
Logic takes hold. "You told me just yesterday that you want me to tell you how I feel, if something’s bothering me, whatever, no matter what, so we can work it out, so you’re not in the dark, so we don’t go hours being upset. We JUST talked about this and now you’re trying to do what you get on me so much for?"
"It’s not bad,” she says, effusively, looking like she had just uttered something nice, sweet, not hinted at something potentially monumental, "I just don’t want to say."
Pause.
His brow beginning to furrow, thoughts beginning to swirl, thoughts and suppositions, prognostications on both the nature and exact wording of her "nothing." Back and forth they went. He traded increasingly impassioned pleas for full disclosure for her increasingly defensive circuitous rhetoric, engaging in a polite mental tennis match, verbally volleying the same sentiments with slightly different wordings, slightly different emphases, neither attempting a winner, content to let persistence wear the other down to either giving up or relenting.
And then, after his latest exortation, a pause. Her face changes slightly, imperceptibly and yet he notices. And braces himself because he has a feeling he’s through her last line of reservation. She hasn’t immediately rebuked him and now she has her mouth closed, now lips parted slightly, anticipating the command to release what has been on them for the morning, for days, for weeks even. What they’ve struggled to withhold at times, since she saw him ambling towards her on a New York City street corner, right hand with his phone to his ear, she on the other end, his left casually, James-Dean-ly in his pocket, but only halfway, thumb hooking the belt buckle.
Pause.
A pause that feels like it spans the length of time from eternity to nothing and passes quicker than a heartbeat.
Her lips move, her mind empties the summation of her many thoughts. From the air in her lungs, up her larynx, through her mouth, and off her lips come the words. His fears subside and he feels more than a little foolish for having any degree of trepidation in the first place. A pleasant, powerful wind sweeps through his mind and empties it of all but the statement she has just uttered.
Simple, sanguine, contrite, colossal. Like so many thoughts to that point between them, in immediate retrospect THE ONLY thing that could have been said.
Positively perfect.
"I love you."
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