Chapter Four - The Morning After That Night

CHAPTER FOUR

The Morning After That Night

WAKING UP NEXT to her felt like cheating time.
Like I’d skipped a few years of awkward phases and fast-forwards, and just landed right in the moment where love feels normal.

She was still asleep when I opened my eyes.
Hair a mess. Mouth slightly open. One arm thrown across my chest like she’d been guarding me in her dreams.

I didn’t move.
Didn’t want to break whatever spell the universe had wrapped around that morning.

The room was quiet. Soft sunlight leaking in through the blinds, cutting little gold lines across her cheek.
And my brain, which is usually so loud, finally shut the hell up.
All I could think was:
“There you are.”

Eventually she stirred, groaned like a cat waking from a thousand-year nap, and blinked up at me with a look that said, “You’re still here?”
And underneath that:
“Thank God.”

“Hi,” I whispered, like we were in church.

She stretched, yawned, buried her face in my neck and said, “You smell like laundry.”

I laughed.
She didn’t.
She just breathed me in again like I was something safe.

We didn’t rush.

No one had to go anywhere.
Phones stayed untouched.
We just laid there and talked.

About our dreams.
About what we were scared of.
About what it meant to feel this much this fast.

And we didn’t try to label it.
We didn’t try to solve it.

We just let it be.

Let the silence be soft, not awkward.
Let the closeness be earned, not forced.
Let ourselves be known, a little more than we’d planned.

At one point I looked at her and said, “You feel like something I’ve already survived.”

She looked right back and said, “You feel like something I haven’t had to survive at all.”

We made pancakes.
Burnt the first batch.
She got flour on her nose and tried to fight me with a spatula.
We kissed in the kitchen with the heat still on and syrup already on our fingers.

It wasn’t perfect.

But damn if it didn’t feel like home.

It wasn’t planned.
Of course it wasn’t. The best moments never are.

We were cleaning up, barefoot, still in that foggy morning haze.
Music playing low off her phone, some old song we both kind of knew but didn’t really care to name.

And then she spun.
Out of nowhere. Holding a mug like it was a mic.
Hair still messy, sleeves too long, singing into ceramic.

She caught me staring.
“Don’t,” she said, smiling too hard.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like I’m a Disney character.”

So naturally, I walked over, bowed like an idiot, and held out my hand.
“Dance with me, kitchen princess.”

She rolled her eyes like it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard.
Then set her mug down, took my hand, and stepped into my space like she’d been there a thousand times.

No choreography. No rhythm.
Just two sleepy people swaying in the morning light, arms wrapped around old wounds, breath warm against necks, bodies finding the rhythm that the world had tried to bury.

I hummed along, off-key.
She laughed and whispered, “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

We spun.
We bumped into the counter.
She stepped on my foot.
I kissed her shoulder.

And for a second, maybe longer than a second, there was no yesterday. No next week.
No baggage. No questions.

Just us.
Moving like memory.
Holding each other like we’d earned it.

When the song ended, we stayed like that.

Still.
Close.
Changed.

She whispered, “If you ever forget this moment, I’ll kill you.”

And I said, “If I ever forget this moment, I deserve to be.”