A Dark Fall [ORIGINAL & UNEDITED VERSION]

Twenty Three

I've been lying awake watching him sleep for what feels like hours. Watching the slow movement of his chest and listening to the soft sound of his breathing, which is deep and very male.   He looks less dangerous when he's asleep I think, vulnerable almost, like how a sleeping lion looks a little like a housecat when you see them snoozing in the sun.  Every so often his body twitches so that his beautifully inked chest rises up and down in broken staggered movements.  I wonder if he's dreaming.  Though I think maybe not because mainly his face is a picture of calm; his beautiful mouth in an almost pout and his eyelids perfectly still. 

Jake sleeping is quite a sight if I'm honest.   I could quite easily lie here on my stomach forever and watch him.  Which, since sleep seems to have abandoned me entirely, might actually be possible.  But my head is packed full of thoughts and I know the longer I lie here the more jumbled and loud they'll become.  No, I can't lie here anymore.

Getting out of bed quietly, I lift the tartan throw from the bottom of the bed and wrap it around myself, before padding softly across the room and out into the hallway shutting the door behind me as quietly as possible.   I tiptoe along the quirky lopsided hallway to the staircase at the end that leads up to the attic, cursing at the creaky floorboards under my breath.

Upstairs is in total darkness when I get there, but the light from the skylight shines across my beloved white Steinway and partially illuminates my way across the room.   My piano looks stunning under the moon.  It's still my most prized possession and I remember vividly the day I came downstairs to find it wrapped with a bottle green bow in the front room on my 18th birthday.   I'd burst into tears.  I couldn't believe mum and dad had bought it for me.  It was secondhand but I knew it had still cost them a fortune.  Finally, when I managed to stop crying I'd say down at the stool and tried my best to convince them they hadn't wasted their money.  Mum stood sobbing behind me as I played. Thankfully it was the fact that I was "all grown up" and not because she'd had the biggest case of buyers remorse she'd ever known.

I move across the bare whitewashed floor to switch on the lamp in the corner first and then cautiously approach my piano, skimming my fingers softly across the keys.  I adore the soft tinkling sound it makes, as though I'm waking it up.   I need to start playing everyday again.  It always calms me and I've needed calmed since the day he walked into my life.

I slide onto the stool and press my bare foot against the pedal and raise my hands.  The blanket slips down my arms but I barely feel it.  It's a warm balmy night and my body is still feeling the after effects of Jake.  My run in with Ben had some positives; namely the way Jake had been with me and my body.  He was rough and commanding at first as though claiming ownership of me and then he was slow and tender as though to make up for it.  He worshipped my body slowly with his mouth and his hands and those familiar intoxicating words in my ear.

Moonlight Sonata is always my go to.   It was the first piece I ever truly mastered - I say mastered but I still sound amateurish to my own ears, and after twenty years I still haven't managed to perfect the whole thing; just the Op. 27 No.2 and the first, second and part of the third movements.  My fingers pick out the notes from memory and a moment later I'm lost in the familiar melancholic sound which I'd always found very dark and very sad.  I'm not sure it fits my mood right now really.  I picked it only as it was easy to play and lose myself in.  Though I never really lose myself completely when I play - I guess I never quite mastered that either. The man sleeping downstairs is the flickering image going through my head in time to the music.   He's possessed me in every conceivable way. I feel him in my bones and under my skin and I don't know what to do about it. I don't know if I want to do anything about it. Im terrified and excited and nervous about everything. Maybe I just need to get under his skin too; get him to trust me with his secrets and trust me not to walk away.