Olivia wasn’t kidding. She really is a terrible cuddler.
For the first twenty minutes or so after she curls up at my side, it’s nice. Really nice. Then, about five minutes after her breathing becomes regular and I’m just starting to drift off, her hand jerks, karate-chopping my jugular. I’m still recovering when she abruptly flops over onto her back, hitting my still-sore nose with the back of her hand.
Luckily, I catch her knee before it nails my nuts. Barely. She makes a little huff of irritation before spreading her arms out to the sides as if the king-size bed is all hers for the taking.
Which, of course, it is.
More alarming is that I’m afraid I’m becoming hers for the taking.
I roll onto my side to face her, although I keep my distance from her flailing limbs. For now, it’s enough to be close to her. Never before was I so tempted to tell someone about my dreams. To lay my head against her and just talk. About Alex. About that day. About the godforsaken war that ruined my life and took so many others. About the Afghani insurgents and their lethal knives. About the fact that my best friend, bloody and barely breathing, used the last of his life to save mine.
I reach out a hand, resting my fingers against her palm as she sleeps, and try to let the simple contact with another person take away all of the bad memories. At least for now.
It apparently works, because when I wake up, it’s nearly dawn.
I smile to realize that Olivia’s still in my bed, although this isn’t one of those sexy scenarios where the guy and girl fall asleep only to wake up tangled in each other. Nope. This is more her stretched in every direction while I get a tiny sliver of my own bed.
It’s worth it, though, especially because my fingers linked with hers sometime during the night.
I ease my hand away and sit up, and she immediately scoots over to take up the newly opened space. I smile, and for the first time in a long time, the smile is easy. Genuine.
I pull out one of my workout T-shirts and reach for one of my many pairs of workout pants, but then I pause. I open a different drawer instead, and pull out gym shorts.
There’s this weird thing I used to have about working out in shorts. No matter the time of year, except on the very coldest of Boston days, I liked to wear shorts. After I got back from Afghanistan, that, along with about a million other elements of the “old me,” disappeared. I couldn’t bear to look at the skin of my own leg, much less watch other people’s reaction to it.
But last night Olivia looked. And touched. And there wasn’t an ounce of disgust or pity or morbid curiosity. It was merely an observation, like, Oh, so that’s what that looks like.
I take a deep breath and put on the shorts. Maybe it’s time to let the old Paul back in, even in a tiny, insignificant way.
I sit on the edge of the bed as I tie my tennis shoes. Olivia rolls onto her side, her body sort of curling around me, although she doesn’t wake up. For a moment I contemplate waking her for her morning run. She’ll be pissed that I didn’t. But it’s my fault she didn’t get much sleep.
That, and because I want to be alone for what I’m about to do. If I fail miserably, as I’m likely to do, I don’t want there to be any witnesses.
Gently unfolding her fingers from where they’re tangled in the fabric of my shorts, I slip out of the room with only the briefest of glances at the cane in the corner.
I’m about to head down the stairs when I hear a sharp beeping coming from Olivia’s room. An alarm clock. It makes me smile to know that she’s not naturally an early riser the way I am. It means that she very deliberately sets her alarm to make our daily walk/runs together.
I enter her bedroom. She uses her cellphone as an alarm, and it’s going crazy on the nightstand. I pick it up, sliding my finger across the screen to turn it off.
She has eight new text messages.