Miss, Do I Know You?

24 - Friday, January 15

"Mikayla! Out!"

"Huh?" I muttered, my bleary eyes struggling to focus on anything. The world seemed to spin as I rolled off the couch and landed unceremoniously on the floor, struggling to gather my wits and to desperately make sense of what was going on. "What the—"

"I swear to god, I will smother you with a pillow one night!" Alex pushed herself up on her elbows, eyes barely open. "Blanket snatcher."

"That's why you shoved me onto the floor?" I groaned. "This is my bed! No one asked you to be here."

"It's my couch you're sleeping on, you hobo. I sleep wherever I want."

I stared at her wide-eyed, amusement slowly playing across my features. "You did not..."

"Too soon?"

I shrugged. "Can't argue with the truth."

With a comical sigh, she tossed the blanket over herself and flopped back down on the couch like a marionette whose strings had been suddenly cut. "Sleep on the floor," she half-heartedly declared.

"I'll just go to your bed."

"I'll just drag you out," she muttered muffled words into the pillow.

"Oh, so you can sleep in my bed for a whole week, but yours is off-limits? If I'm not sleeping anymore, you're not either." I pouted and grabbed her by the leg. Alex didn't even make a sound as I dragged her off the couch. Just let me have my way and dropped beside me, the blanket and pillow accompanying her descent. "Here, just like old times. But you weren't half as grumpy then. Or this heavy."

A small huff-like laugh broke through her facade as she turned her head and cracked an eye open to look at me. "You know what, Kayla? I honestly have no idea why I'm still friends with you sometimes."

Smiling, I propped myself up on my elbow and peered down at her lying on her stomach with arms buried under the pillow. At how she kept trying to blow this one strand of hair away from her face, only to have it fall back into place every time. My fingers itched to reach out and brush it away, a bit hesitantly since I feared my hand might get burned somehow the moment I touched her like that, so intentionally. She didn't seem to mind though, for she rolled over onto her back and gazed up at me with that sleepy stare and that warm smile.

I really had to command myself to maintain a respectful distance, to keep the established boundaries, but my senses delighted in those stolen moments, ones that seemed to occur more frequently than expected lately. We might've even remained there, rolling around the floor and stealing glances through any possible minute of the morning, if the rumble in her stomach hadn't played as loud as it did and made us both laugh in the end. And left me lying on the floor with a silly smile on my face.

These mornings were becoming a new kind of norm, ones that both of us creatively avoided acknowledging. But there was something so incredibly simple about it. When my nights were plagued by restlessness, she would come and intertwine herself around me, no words needed. Even when sleep came easier, I would often wake in the middle of the night to find her beside me, and I knew she had been the one struggling this time.

I couldn't even remember if one of us had initiated it that night, or if we had subconsciously ended up in one bed, but it didn't really matter. We knew that our rest was sweeter when shared, that some strange comfort was found there. Every time of day had become a beautiful space in her company—all those conversations shared during midnight hours, the comfort of nightfall, the playful and slightly awkward banter that greeted each new sunrise, and the moments of stillness that graced our afternoons.

The mornings always passed quickly, filled with familiar routines. I made breakfast and lunch for Alex before she took off to usher Benji to school and then head to work, while I remained at the apartment and tried to catch up on some schoolwork. And by the time the sun had relinquished itself to wintry twilight, she returned from work and extended the same invitation she had for quite a while. On this day, I finally chose to accept it.