Miguel
A.M. Aches
Iwakeasmyalarm starts and I silence quickly. Laney stirs in my arms but doesn’t wake.
The soft pre-dawn light filters in and I take the moment offered to quietly just be. To feel all of the places our skin melds together. To hear the soft inhales and exhales she makes in her sleep. To see how each individual strand of her hair seems to vary slightly in its golden hue.
My lips press to her forehead and I smell the hotel’s shampoo in her hair. It isn’t her usual rose petal sweetness but the essence of her is there underneath.
And, that is the truth of it all.
Who Laney is, down to her very being, is the thing that makes me want to slow down. To stop running. To simply be here instead of chasing the next achievement.
My sense of accomplishment is so tied up in her; her training efforts and her results. And I feel her success like it was my own.
Absent-mindedly my hand has started to caress her side.
“Morning.” Her greeting is muffled as her cheek stays planted on my chest.
“Good morning sunshine.”
“Not ‘Princess’?” She asks before a yawn.
“Always my princess, but this morning?” I lift the braid off her back, “this looks like rays of sunlight.”
Laney pulls her head back to look up at me. I stare down into her ocean blue eyes and smile.
“You’re being mushy. Are you feeling okay?” She asks and she slowly brings the back of her hand to my forehead.
“I’m perfectly fine. Just admiring my girl.”
“I’ll allow it.” She smiles against my chest as she settles back in. “Did the alarm go off?”
“Yeah, I silenced it already.”
“You did?” This time when she turns up to me she looks truly concerned.
I laugh. “Yes. I did. It’s the day after a race, you went full out yesterday. We’re going to take it easy today.”
“I didn’t know you knew how to do that.” She mutters.
“I used to do it all the time.”
“What changed?” She asks as her fingers trace circles around my abdomen.
“Habits mostly.” I answer. The day has barely started and I want to ride the high of the words I shared with her last night. I want to get back to the place where she feels how deeply I love her.
Because I do.
Desperately.
Laney’s quiet and I feel her eyelashes brush gently along my skin as she blinks.
“Miguel?” She asks, keeping her head against my chest.
“Yes?”
“You meant it, didn’t you?”
