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The sun shines brighter from above And you're the woman that I love
Their clothes were still strewn about the living room floor downstairs, forgotten, but neither Jake nor Alex seemed to care as they lay intertwined beneath the grey comforter haphazardly thrown atop his king-sized bed. It had been a feverish, frenzied trek to the bedroom, and in their haste, a lamp had been toppled from its place on the nightstand, and many of the pillows had been tossed to the carpet where they remained untouched. At the end of the mattress, the sheets were bunched in an aimless mass, providing neither cover nor warmth. All these things were tomorrow's problem, although the pink and orange hues peeking through the open blinds warned that time was quickly approaching.
It didn't matter that they still hadn't slept because Alex was sprawled across his chest while Jake's fingers ran along her exposed spine.
"Do you think we're rushing things?" Alex breathed out a whisper, not wanting to break the stillness they'd bathed themselves in. She lifted her chin to peer up at him, watching as his head tilted amongst the pillows to catch her eyes.
His hand never ceased in its slow crawl over her skin, raising goosebumps in its wake. "Maybe," he admitted with a slight nod, "but it feels right."
It did feel right, and maybe that's why, for the first time in her life, Alex wasn't fretting over the optics or something equally ridiculous she'd conjured as an excuse in the name of fear. They seemed so silly now, all the rationalizations and justifications she'd created to escape him, to escape them, but maybe, they wouldn't have ended up here without her previous hesitance.
"You know, I thought you were such a prima donna when we first met," she said, letting her fingertips roam over the hard planes of his chest, just as his were doing across her back. The egocentric attitude, the sunglasses indoors, and his atrocious tardiness—those factors alone would never have allowed her to imagine them here, had first impressions been lasting ones.
Jake chuckled at the confession, and the rumbling hum ran through his body beneath her and into her own. "I'm sure my showing up late didn't help," he acknowledged because timeliness was a virtue they hadn't mastered. It still wasn't, in fact, but their persistent lack of punctuality was a tolerance she could now willingly toil with.
"It definitely didn't. Two hours was a travesty," she smiled while pinching his side just to watch him squirm. "And then you had the audacity to call me a brat."
Alex had lied to Josh earlier; this was a walk down memory lane. They both needed it after they'd trudged through the harder parts of their past, to take a second and relive some of the better moments.
"I call 'em like I see 'em," he smarted, adjusting her to rest higher on his chest, his hand moving from her back to idly card through her long brown hair.
