A ray of late morning light peaked into the bedroom, shining onto Alina’s softly bronze skin. Before her hazel eyes blinked slowly open, she took a deep breath in, confused in her dreamlike state by the intoxicating smell of Liam all around her. Then, as her body instinctively stretched away the usual stiffness. The little morning habit was met with unfamiliar aches and a reminder of the good and bad of the night before. She rolled to her ‘good side’ and the blankets slipped away from her bare skin, covering her in goosebumps from the chill, at first, and then from the sight of Liam fast asleep next to her. Alina’s small hand reached out and brushed across his jaw, before curiosity got the better of her and she drew her thumb across his lips.
She’d slept in this bed a dozen times, through thunderstorms and late night movies. When he was gone for his surgery and she was told to go home to sleep and shower and she was too scared and worried to do anything but curl up where he was now asleep. A dozen times, she thought, but never like this. In the sunlight, bare with a kaleidoscope of bruises on her body, Alina wondered if Liam would regret taking care of her and if his heart was in the same place as hers. She could’ve sworn he made a sound, and her eyes went nervously wide. “Hold me?” she asked in a nervous whisper, hoping that in his own exhaustion she could stave off the inevitable heartbreak of being blindingly in love with her best friend and that he would realize, with a new day, that he wanted something different, something better. Her chin quivered, waiting hopefully for him to pull her close, as her eyes drank in every millisecond of bliss and hair on his head.
@bluchucs