Solid Ground

One.

Now

I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, covered in sweat from the suppressed memory that sometimes crept into the depths of my dreams when I least expected it. I calmed my breaths in a slow rhythmic pattern like I had done a million times before and allowed the nightmare to be just what it was, which is in the past.

The room was dark but there were streams of light peeking in from the windows that lit the face lying next to me. I saw one of Noah's eyes starting to open, bringing me even further out of the nightmare.

"You okay?" He looked up at me, clearing his throat as he started waking up to check on me.

I nodded, planting a kiss on his forehead. "Need a minute. Go back to sleep."

He hesitated but closed his eyes nevertheless as I slipped out of bed and walked out of the room, grabbing a sweatshirt from the closet as I went. I had done this routine plenty of times before when the memories of my past made sleeping more challenging than it should be.

I walked into our kitchen and went straight for the pantry. Every time I woke up in the middle of the night, there was a certain thing that always seemed to make me feel better. I smiled to myself as I reached for the box of fruit loops on the top shelf.

Someone once told me there was no better way to cure pain than with Fruit Loops. I really never understood until the first time I was given a box in a hospital bed covered in bruises. Since then, my pantry has never lacked at least three boxes at a time.

"Want to talk about it?" I jumped at the voice behind me. "Sorry." He smiled softly, reaching for the box of Fruit Loops from my hands. I gave him a look and hopped up on the counter.

Noah, my boyfriend of almost two years now, had been through these kinds of nights with me before. And no matter how many times I told him to go back to sleep, I had never eaten a box of Fruit Loops alone since I met him.

I shook my head and he knew to stop the questioning there. He had heard the ugly truths of where I came from and the ghosts that haunted me but he did not know, nor did he need to know, the details that even I had a hard time rehashing. There were big moments that I felt I needed to tell him about but there were also small moments that were too difficult to bring up to anybody.

I stole the box back after he had taken a handful and popped a few more Fruit Loops in my mouth. We did this for about fifteen minutes, passing it back and forth in a comfortable silence that allowed me to calm down and feel the need to sleep again.

I eventually hopped off the counter. He carefully grabbed my hand as I did.

"You're safe, Aspen." He said as he pulled me close to him, taking the box from me and setting it on the counter next to us. "Come back to bed."

I nodded. We flipped off the lights and I followed him back into the bedroom, letting everything painful disappear from my thoughts until the next time my demons decide to pay me a visit.

***

The atmosphere in the hockey arena tonight was exactly what I needed after a long week of work. It was a home game on a Saturday night the Bridgestone Arena was sold out completely and even I had a hard time moving around on the lower levels. Usually I would sit up in one of the boxes to watch Noah but this was one of the biggest games of the season and I wanted to watch it from as close as possible.

Up until about two years ago, I had never attended a hockey game in my life. Noah introduced me to a whole new life of gruesome violence that somehow appealed to probably more than half of the nation. I could not blame them though, it was the most intense and incredible sport to watch and be a part of. At least that it what I thought until I attended Noah's first game.