It's a Jungle, Baby

Pictures

Duff

It's the dead of the night and I can't sleep worth a shit. I'm worried about tomorrow, or later today, I'm not sure what time it is. We fly out tomorrow afternoon (or today)  but tomorrow (or today) is also a Sunday, their parents go to church every Sunday. Taylor was freaking out about it until she finally tired herself out. We tired to talk them out of dragging us with them, saying we had to pack or something but they insist that we go to church. God, we're all going to burn up.

I look down at sleeping Taylor, she wears the necklace I got her everyday. She lays on her stomach, her arms tightly wrapped around a pillow, and her hair covering her face.  I brush the hair away from her face, she's prefect. I run my hand down her spine, she's always freezing. I pull the blanket back up around her shoulders.

I look over to the bedside table and see a big leather bond book. I pick it up hoping that it's not an encyclopedia, why would Taylor have an encyclopedia in her room anyways? I open it to see the pictures of Axl and her sitting at the piano, it's a photo album/scrapbook thing. Above the piano pictures reads 'Two of a Kind' with cut outs of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. I turn the page and see various pictures of Taylor and Axl growing up. There's one of them both asleep of the retro couches in the living room, Taylor looked to be about six. There's one where they're older, Axl is piggybacking Taylor while she braids his hair, they look to high school aged. The next page is filled with all kinds of soccer pictures, the top of the page says 'My passion'. There's pictures all the way from little league to what looks to be state championships to Taylor and Kendra with a bunch of kids, coaching. The next couple of pages are filled with some of Taylor's amazing artwork, realistic drawings.

I flip through the rest of the book, seeing pictures of Romeo and Juliet, pictures of Axl, Izzy, and Taylor all out having fun, and pictures of all other kinds. The further I get into the book the more I realize why she left it here. There's no pictures of  her mom or prick. The last picture is a picture of a one way plane ticket dated for 1983 going to LA, underneath the words 'I'm not going to be your puppet anymore'. There's about seven blank pages at the end.  Taylor sits up beside me looking at the book.

"Found that, huh?" She wonders in a sleepy voice.

"Yeah, you were a cute kid." I say and she half smiles.

"What the hell happened." Taylor says putting her head on my shoulder.

"That's not what I meant." I say with a smile. "I think we should take this to LA."

"The book?" She wonders.

"Yeah, there's still some blank pages. We'll fill them up with pictures of our family." I explain and she nods.

"That's a great idea." Taylor smiles and I get up to put it in one of the suitcases. "Why are you still up?" She wonders as I crawl back under the covers.

"I couldn't sleep." I admit and I look to her. "What about you? You looked like you were out cold for a while there."

"I uh..." She trails off.

"Nightmares?" I ask knowing she was woken up with them three nights in a row.

"Yeah, I think it's being in this house." Taylor admits but we both know she has nightmares a lot.

"Just a few more hours." I tell her and she nods. "Go back to sleep, Kitten. I'm right here." I say softly.

Taylor lies back down and I wrap my arms around her. Sooner rather than later, I start to fall asleep holding onto the woman I love more than anything else on this planet. I want to fall asleep like this every night for the rest of my life.