A Bed Time Story

It was Sunday. The night clear, the moon full and the streets emptying as the cars crowded the roads. Everything was growing less alone. And this evening, as he walked; brisk in the chilling air, was becoming so for him. He lit a cigarette and leaned his weight on the fire hydrant outside: in front of the shop window; placing his eyes through it and around it; all over it, for her. Spying her blonde locks, he was glad. Glad to wait and glad he not late. She was finishing her shift at the shop. He dragged: on the filter tip and on the activity of Chapel Street; taking it all in and exhaling with patience. The slowness becoming, for her, an increasingly eager and pleasing proposition. As he stepped out the butt of his smoke, she crept up on him and hugged him; tight a second, holding him before locking upon his lips firmly with hers.

He enjoyed their greetings: the slight sighs and widening eyes of acknowledgment the dive of the day over and the wave of relaxation about to begin. They imparted casual catch ups on moments apart and begun to walk, knowingly, towards coffee, which becoming their crutch, was a looked forward to exposé of their mutual and crucial beginning. They had now acquired regular places for their undertakings and it was becoming less evident a prerequisite to discuss where to go and instead just a silent knowing.

Silence was a comforting conversation for them. He'd catch her gaze and try reading in her eyes the lines written in her mind but she retained a cool and subtle edge, pertaining to a slightly elusive mystery. He could not help noticing the little particulars of their time: the haste in comparison to him, which she finished a coffee; the way that before sipping it, she'd tip her spoon in and out of the froth, feeding the chocolate with delicacy between her lips. Also, their both distaste for sugar and the savoring of the drink rather than it just an instinct.

He noticed, also, of himself, after must've been a few times now; his subconscious trying to maintain them on the same cigarette cycle and was enthused by her focus on just the situation and her lack of distraction by the world around. Now, whilst, in her modesty, he knew she would claim to be off in her own little world or spacey and baring less trace to conscious thought, she created a bubble of a world that was her own but where he was allowed to be a part of. And he felt exclusive, privileged, as though she bared him access to secrets no others chanced. And he was convinced words too often overrated. They paid, equally and left.

Then, driving; he was consumed with thought of them as a musical composition. Notes and melody with rhythm and tension and build-up and release. Maybe jazz; for it did not have consistency, necessarily, but for all it's activity spurred on a desire for life and the butterflies to which great music is responsible. The road, though fairly speed limited, appeared more like a highway in the night, streetlight lit, glowing horizon line. Stretching out before them and beyond them; with that beckoning of more and exciting unknown and travels.

They arrived home; and still only concluding dusk, they decided to dine and effortlessly turned a simple task into a quirky, contagious, binding event. Pleasantly, the evening progressed with that slow front porch smokey haze wafting pace that shapes an evening with a perception of not as late as true. And on that porch; with her at his cigarette in flame; he leaned, and her draping her legs across his in a warming almost fetal huddle, they were losing one sense of control, finding another and in console to himself he told it out in a sigh. He not realising it so loud and obvious; she inquired why. And he proceeded reply in explanation of it- visceral. That, which he wished he could place but only came without reason and logic and sense and stayed with him impossible to forget. He looked at her with the most innocent content and adored her destroying all his guard and once intent.

They begun inside and retired to her bedroom. She tackled some homework on her laptop and he worked with pen in his notebook. Their air of content settled with them there and the quiet was sleepy and calming. As it rounded the later hours and yawns increased in frequency they put aside their work and grew warmer, with each other, beneath the made covers of her double bed. He read to her a story and the words with his voice were a lullaby and almost shy in their delivery. She cuddled close to him, her head on his chest listening to the rhythm of his entire body winding down for the night.

They both dressed themselves in sleep attire and began to dream before even falling asleep. The inclination of their bodies seemed to gravitate them to lips together. He kissed her and tasted her and imbued himself in her offering to his senses. They continued, becoming more hastened with passion, kissing and kissing as everything else disappeared; dark and dissolved. They resolved to each other the hard task of beginning to sleep for wanting to persist in affections. But, for both their acknowledgment of the predicament, they knew they could rest well being so together. She turned to her right and on her side he slipped his arm under her neck and shifted his weight to alleviate any strain. He kissed her head and she sighed, relaxed, intoxicated, satisfied.

He felt the heaviness of his own head subside as he commenced a drift into sleep. He held her and felt the slowing breathing of her chest heave. Now together, they knew this the best and only pursuit of dream. Where waking, for whatever day lies ahead, is in the just so slept other's arms and the confident return to its gleam.