Page 211 of Across His Line

Tessa

Rafe sleeps like he owns the whole mattress. That’s what wakes me up. Not the light. Not the house, which is quiet. It’s that I’m hot, and pinned, and about four inches from the edge of the bed because sometime in the night Rafferty Waleska rolled over onto his stomach and took the middle and most of my side with him, and his arm is thrown across my waist like a bar on a ride at the fair.

My eyes find the trophies shoved together at one end of the shelf. I look up at my phone on his nightstand with its little charging light. I can’t believe I slept here all night in his bed, and he asked me to.

I’m smiling at his ceiling before I can do anything about it.

I turn my head and look at him.

His face is mashed into the pillow, so one cheek is pushed up toward his eye. His hair is perfect, and his mouth is a little bit open. He’s breathing slow and heavy. Every few breaths, there’s a small catch at the top that isn’t quite a snore.

This is the person I spent four years rearranging my life around. The boy who made the whole cafeteria lean. He sleeps like a dog in a sunbeam, and he drools a little.

I look at his hand where it’s lying flat on my stomach over the comforter. It’s massive. I put mine on top of it. Mine looks terribly tiny in comparison.

Then I have to pee, which is the least romantic thing that’s ever happened to anybody on Christmas morning. I try to slide out from under his arm without waking him up.

I get about two inches.

“Where are you going?”

His voice is wrecked. Low and rough and full of gravel, like it came up from the bottom of something. He hasn’t opened his eyes.

“Bathroom,” I say.

His arm loosens. That’s all. It just goes slack on my stomach and lets me out.

I’m sitting up on the edge of the bed when he says into the pillow with his eyes still closed, “Come back.”

Not an order. I know what his orders sound like. This is just a sleepy Rafe asking for something.

“I was planning on it,” I say.

One of his eyes opens. Just the one. Green and blurry, looking at me over the pillow. Then it closes again, and the corner of his mouth goes up, and I go to the bathroom with my face hot.

I brush my teeth with my toothbrush, which is in a cup next to his toothbrush on his sink. My hair looks wild but pretty. I’m wearing my big gray T-shirt, the one I brought across the hall last night, which comes down almost to my knees.

I catch myself in the mirror, and I’m smiling again with a mouthful of toothpaste like an idiot.

I make myself stop.

Then I start again.

When I come out, he’s awake on his back now with one arm behind his head, looking at the ceiling. He lifts the edge of the comforter without looking at me, without saying anything.

I get in. I go straight to his side into the warm spot against him and place my head on his shoulder, without thinking about it first.

He puts his arm down around me.

Neither of us says anything for a while. Outside, a bird is going off in the bare tree by the window. Somewhere downstairs, a cabinet closes.

“So,” I say.

“So,” he says.

I wait. He waits.

“I think it’s Christmas.”