Episode 509: Talk To Me

Every move was so familiar, setting his watch on the bedside table, sliding the shirt off his shoulders, and slipping the belt from his trousers. She’d bought him those boxers. Run her fingers through his chest hair countless times, she couldn’t help feeling as though she were transported back to the old days, when no one and nothing made her feel as at ease, as secure as he did.

"You don’t have to keep turning away," he said, collecting the blankets and pillow from the chair in the corner, and laying them out on the floor beside their bed. Her bed. "I like it when you look."

She threw her nose right back into that book, trying not to read anything and trying not to look at him again. She didn’t like it when she looked at him. It was dangerous. He’d hurt and betrayed her. He was the last person to comfort her.

She looked to him again.

His eyes grew achingly soft the longer they met hers.

Michael turned her back to him, set aside her book, and turned out the lamp, plunging them in darkness. She could feel him though. Standing there. Watching.

"Something’s bothering you," he quietly said. "You don’t have to keep anything from me."

Eventually he gave up and settled into his makeshift bed.

For a long time Michael listened to him breathe. "Lucy went to bed really early tonight. Do you think," she swallowed hard, "she’s reconsidering, or something’s wrong with the baby?"

"It’s exhausting carrying around another person all day. She’s tired, that’s all. It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be a mum soon."

She’d told herself the same thing, but hearing them from him loosened some of the knots in her belly, and a relieved tear slid down her cheek. "Thank you," she said after a lengthy silence.

"For?"

"For doing this. For sleeping on the floor. For Lucy. For all of this."

"I love you," he said simply, and for the first time in a long while, she let it go at that, didn’t argue.

Episode 509: You Belong with Me