Her mouth’s parted a little against my skin. There’s the faintest crease at the corner of her eye from how she was sleeping. A piece of hair is stuck to her cheek where she drooled in her sleep — actually drooled, my girlfriend, a small wet patch on my chest — and I’m staring at it like it’s a religious artifact. Her eyelashes are dark fans against her skin. There’s a small scar on her chin I don’t remember her having before, white and faded, and I’m going to ask her about it later when she’s awake. I’m going to ask her about everything.
She makes a soft sound and shifts closer.
My heart thumps.
I can’t believe she’s mine.
I lift my hand and push the stuck piece of hair off her cheek with my knuckle. She doesn’t wake up. She just sighs into my collarbone, and her hand tightens against my skin.
I close my eyes.
I want to remember this.
The weight of her. The way her breath is warm on the side of my neck. The way her thumb is twitching in her sleep against my ribs like she’s dreaming. The way the sheet smells different now — like her shampoo, like vanilla mixed in with my detergent. The way my whole bed has, in eight hours, become a different bed.
I drift back under with her on me.
I wake again at eight to her stirring.
She lifts her head off my chest, blinking, and her hair’s wild around her face — half-up from where I had my hand in it last night, half-down where it’s escaped — and she’s looking down at me with a soft smile. The smile starts at the corner of her mouth and spreads. Her cheeks go soft pink. Her eyes get that thing in them I’m learning is mine.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight.”
She drops her forehead to my chest and groans softly. “Oh my god. I drooled on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God.”
“It’s fine.”
“It is not fine.”
She laughs into my chest, and I feel the laugh travel through my whole body. She tilts her head back up to look at me, and her hand comes up to my jaw.
“Come up here.”
She crawls up. Her chest against mine, her mouth at my mouth, her hair falling around our faces in a curtain that turns the world into the small dark space between us.
I kiss her.
The frantic first of last night is gone, replaced with something easier, something that already knows where it’s going. My hand finds her hip over my t-shirt, the one I gave to her to sleep in. Her hand stays on my jaw. Her thumb keeps moving. She’s looking at me like she did last night. Except softer.
She grins against my mouth. “Are you sore?”
“From what?”
“The shoulder.”
“Not enough to stop me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
