Riley eases the anger out of me, at my first sight of her. As she does every morning. It's not real anger, I know--or maybe it is. The kind of low, simmering anger that comes from spending fourteen hours--4pm to 6am in a commercial kitchen. At my first sight of her, sprawled in the sheets of our bed, all of it is forgotten; the sleeplessness, the order-sheets which never arrive quite how I've ordered them, the stomach-deep bonfire that my body has spent the last fourteen hours slowly building, stoking, tending. The anger. The anxiety. The incompetence.
All of it--forgotten, at my first fight of Riley. When she sleeps, she appears perfectly peaceful. One arm resting on the pillow above her head, fingers curled ever so slightly in their spread. How her brown hair spills over the pillowcase and, above it, the curve made between her neck and her shoulders. How the white sheets over her body rise and fall softly with her breathing. The faint parting of her pink lips, how the hand of her other arm hangs off the edge of the mattress.
There's nothing on earth, I think, that shows the same kind of trust as somebody whose willing to let you come home to them sleeping. It's different. Different than going to sleep in the same bed, at the same time, as somebody else. It's a feeling that I've always thought I should be able to put words to, but I can't. Never have been able to. Maybe because I'm a chef--not a writer. Maye because the quality of it is uncapturable; how in sleep the powerful animation of her body becomes something softer, how her liveliness becomes something pretty and still, how the normally fierce features of her face become something serene and demure and entirely peaceful.
Each morning, seeing Riley like this, a small part of me feels guilty. Guilty, because the reaction her softness elicits from me is anything but soft. Like fingers squeezing putty between them as they tighten. It takes everything inside of me not to walk silently to the side of the bed; to stand there beside her sleeping figure and reach down. Not to place my hand around her neck. Not to choke her--not that, but only to feel the soft humming inside of me that comes from
not
doing it. The beating of her pulse under my fingers, to feel her breathing underneath my palm.
Maybe that's the trust, I think. Maybe we all know that there's some small part in each other that wants this, that
craves
it. Maybe that's the sword we all choose to crawl into bed with and sleep beside.
Or maybe I'm just a monster. I don't know. I imagine that most monsters don't think of themselves as monsters.
Maybe I'm just a person. Maybe we both are. Maybe that's the long and short of it.
Easing the bedroom door closed in my hand, so as not to wake her, I quietly make my way across the dark room. On one side, two open doors lead to our walk-in closet and our bathroom. The bathroom is still lit by a low light from over the sink, the one that Riley leaves on for me when I come home after my shift. Without turning on any others, I close the bathroom door behind me and turn on the shower.
Fourteen hours of anger washes off me as I stand beneath the rushing water. The smell of olive oil and grease, natural gas and onions and cleaning chemicals--they all follow my anger down the drain. Turning my head up and opening my mouth, I let the water run over my skin. It patters against my forehead and the top of my hairline, running in small rivulets down my cheeks and my chin and my chest. It clings to the small curls of hair that it finds there, the low light making the deep blonde appear almost black in their wetness.
I squeeze a dime of shampoo into my palm, massaging it through my hair. Taking a bar of soap from the small alcove in the shower wall, I scrub myself from head to toe. Under my arms, under my neck, pulling back the foreskin of my cock and soaping there as well. The dull thrum of the water against it is a familiar feeling, but one strange even after thirty years.
Turning off the water, I step out of the shower and towel myself off. Riley always leaves a towel hanging on the back of the door, before she goes to bed; we have our routine down to a near ritual. I work as a chef and she works doing radio-ads for a couple of the local stations; it means we're rarely awake at the same times, but when we are we make the most of it. We've both changed out schedules to have Wednesday-Thursdays off together. We have a couple of hours, most days, after she comes home from her shift at the station and before I leave for mine in the kitchen.
Leaving my clothes on the bathroom floor, where I'd dropped them, I turn off the light on my way out of the room. As I make my way through the half-light of the bedroom, I pause at the foot of the bed to admire Riley for another moment. She's not perfect, I know--hell, after nearly a decade together, I know that better than anyone--but neither am I. I'm
definitely
not perfect. But here, in this moment, while she's a sleeping tangle beneath the white spread of our sheets, she's perfect to me.
Sometimes I feel it when she's awake as well. When I catch her out of the corner of my eye, the odd time I catch her in deep concentration while working on an ad script, when she replies to somebody in a tone of voice that only I recognize. The kind of voice that's full of dry, private humor and balances right on the edge of being mocking. Every couple of days, when she turns her stare on me and her almost hawk-like eyes catch the light in just the right way and brighten; how they shine keenly, wildly, almost predatory. In those moments too, she's perfect. Maybe not perfect for everyone. Perfect for me.
Crawling as gently as I can onto the bed, I pull the sheets up and draw Riley into my arms beneath them. She draws a deep breath through her nose, snuggling slightly more firmly against my body--bringing her nakedness against mine. Maybe sleep lifts from her for a moment, and maybe not. By the steadiness her breathing returns to, the looseness of her mouth and her hands, I think not.
I don't think she's joined me in wakefulness; I think I've joined her in her dreams.
Resting one hand on the side of her body, just beside her breast, I let it trail slowly downward. My palm is still slightly slick-feeling from the shower, the dampness from my hair seeping into the pillow beneath me. As my hand moves down, over her stomach and the curve of her hip toward her thigh, it brings the light sheet with it.
Leaning forward slightly, I touch my lips against the top of her shoulder. Then lower, to her arm. Then higher, to the hair just behind her ear. Bringing my hand back up, my touch feather-light, I trace my fingers across the curve of her breasts. My fingers find her nipples; slowly, one after the other. My touch lingers just long enough to feel the tiny swelling as they stiffen. Her already slightly parted lips widen a fraction further; she's not snoring, but her breathing has deepened slightly in sleep, taking on a rhythmic kind of hum beneath each inhale. For a moment, I wonder what she's dreaming about as I touch her like this.
Something pleasant, I hope.
For a few minutes, it's all I do. Let my hand move slowly over her body; resting flat against her stomach to feel her breathing, reaching up to trace the faintest of lines down from between her breasts down to her bellybutton and back up. Smoothing over the curve of her thighs. As I reach here, I let my hand slide between them--into the valley created by their openness, hidden from view by the tangled sheet.
As my fingers trace the smooth, lightly-haired skin on either side of her vulva, Riley stirs. She draws closer, head turning on the pillow in a way that pushes her cheek up against the fabric, mouth still open as she breathes.
