It was overcast. The mornings always seemed to start that way when we were together. No matter if it was here or there. Most people love to wake up to birds chirping and a brilliant sun bursting through the slates of venetian blinds, but not us. We loved the romantic melancholy of cloudy skies. I suppose in retrospect it matched the stormy waters that quietly raged within us both.
I had lay awake for at least an hour, but with no clock in the room, I couldn't be sure. At some point in the night I had peeled out of the t-shirt he gave me to sleep in. At some point, I was overcome by my heat and his. Just thinking about it seemed to raise my temperature again and I kicked his thick comforter away from my skin. I focused on the sound of his measured breathing. His snores ceased which meant his eye were soon to open. I used to love those moments, stolen, quiet and exclusively mine to study the curve of his full lips, the slender bridge of his nose, a stark contrast of African and generations of other races he had yet to chronologically map for me. I would marvel at the size of him, how much space he took, laying diagonally on a queen sized bed that seemed like a twin in comparison to his height and broadness.
Almost as if he could sense me studying him, he turned on his side, away from our window and toward the wall. I would have felt the slow creep of pout had he not slid sleeping fingers along my thigh, under my knee, raising my leg and pulling it over his hip like a breathing blanket with a pulse. It was really too warm, but I never minded. Whatever he wanted. However he wanted. His back faced me, but I knew his eyes were gradually opening to let in our cloudy morning light.
"My back hurts." He mumbled groggily.
I tried to hear what he said, but I was a giddy teenager all over again. Throbbing with the excitement of being desired, pulsing with the wonder of where that warm sliding hand would eventually wander. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. He embarrassed me in the most innocent of ways. Nudity never felt so good.
"Where?"
I used my hands to find the point of his pain, and eased away the knot in the small of his back as the knot within me tightened. Sexual tension, a ticking clock that would nag at me, reminding me there was a flight over twenty minutes away that held a seat for me. I was to return to a place that felt less and less like home...and not even 24 hours after I arrived. Another impromptu flight, a careless expenditure I tossed aside because my grandfather was dying and I was in desperate need of waking up with this man to convince me that I was not going to perish along with him.
"We have to get up soon, or I'm gonna miss my flight."
He sighed in agreement, but neither of us moved. So many silent conversations, between my mind and his. He could care less about that flight time. Catch the next one his hand suggested. I relented by pushing deeply into that ache along his spine. He was angry. With me because I was so far away from him. With himself because he felt an emptiness without me. With his past for preventing him for saying all the things he wanted. With his future for issuing another opportunity for him to push his dreams even further way.
He slid his hand behind his hip and found my fingers. He locked ours together and pulled me closer. The war was beginning. Push me, pull me. I could feel the wall rising and his efforts to tear it down with the same hands that gathered the bricks. Soft morning lips kissed my fingers. I wondered how such a simple gesture could be more intimate than the clawing embrace we used to tear into each other the night before. I couldn't see his eyes, but I blushed from the sentiment found in his bringing my hand to his chest, so I could curl my fingers in the hair there.
He would flutter back into a fitful sleep, his hand wrapped in mine, mine wrapped in him. I wondered if flights could run like trains. There would be no leaving him. Not that I ever wanted to.
Later, we rode to the airport in uneasy silence. I kept my face to the window so he wouldn't feel the additional tug of the sadness pregnant in my eyes. He kept his eyes on the road, his thoughts safely buried beneath a stone-faced expression. safe from the penetration of my intuition.
"Do you think you could see yourself living here?"
His voice startled me. I was busy about trying to read his mind. I turned my face to his and nodded. In retrospect, like a child. His eyes twinkled in that way they always did when he was distracted by my innocence.
"You don't even know anything about this town. Why do you think you could live here?"
"Because you're here."
I suppose my naivete has always made it easy for me to say the things time and wounds teach you to keep to yourself. But I don't regret that wide-eyed honesty. He knew it was as true as anything when I said it. I do too. There is a sweetness in that innocence that hurts me now...but I would never change it. Moments like that are too rare in our lives. Open, blind, free love. No fear to bind it. Not sure I'll ever know that sort of innocence again. But I'm glad in that moment I did.
His eyes soaked up that moment. He said nothing. I suppose he knew better than to believe in the blind utopia that I did. But he let me dream a little while longer.
His kiss before I left his truck held all the fear I knew nothing of. I understand now, the lines around his eyes, and that pained wrinkle at the corners. A wince time would teach me, over time. But as days turn to months and months to years...the sweetness of that morning will remain with me for a lifetime. That...and a love for an overcast daybreak sky.
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