Unexpected Item

...and then I really did dissolve. Instead of leaving to clean up, Halley stretched out beside me and we just...lay there. Unable to distinguish where I left off and the mattress began, I felt empty and limp, but in a good way - curiously complete. So peaceful, flat calm, so thoroughly exhausted I couldn't even turn my head to look at him. Not that I needed to. His face - his nearly-cumming face - was etched in my mind, and would be for a while...

Slowly, slowly, my senses returned, and with them words. And with them, worries. The awareness the world outside, the week upcoming, of that bag of mine in the next room, open and spilling clothes. That bag I'd need to zip up and take away from here with me. Soon.

I swallowed, and the sound of it was loud in the stillness of the room. "What...what happens now, do you think?"

Halley shifted so his hands were linked behind his head. "We-ell," he said, slow, grave, like he was weighing each word, "it feels kinda hard to say at this point..."

Truth...I bit my lips to control their quiver, but Halley didn't see - he was looking up at the ceiling.

"Seems like there's a ton of possibilities," he continued musingly. "Maybe we just wear out our tires up and down that highway? Maybe we decide that's not the way, and throw all our things in a van and go explore the big smoke - or the big wide world? Or...maybe the business grad and the pastry-chef pool their talents and open the cutest little cupcake store in all the midwest?"

He turned on his side, and his lips were against my temple. "I mean, I don't know. But what I do know is that this one is our story, and we can write it any way we want."

Any way we want...I smiled to myself the whole way home. I think I was still smiling the next morning as I faced down a week of work.

Any way we want...If I tune out the background noise, the drone of voices, of people and machines, I can hear him saying it. It...and all the other things. If I take a moment to close my eyes I see him there, watching me back, waiting...

Halley...I was hooked on him from the very first episode - and the plot twist? Yeah, it was unexpected...but good.

© Sarah-Jane Riordan, 2023