Leaps and landings

16

Jess and Odette lingered in bed on Sunday morning, basking in a mixture of afterglow and just outright laziness of not really needing to get up. Jess pulled up a crossword, and Odette really didn't mind. She liked looking at him when he worked or tried to concentrate. Jess' face made these tiny expressions as his brain worked, and she found it enjoyable to watch and try to guess what he was thinking.

"Do you have another pen? This one is not working," Jess grumbled, trying to scribble with the one he had been holding onto the corner of the paper.

"On the desk," Odette gestured, not bothering to get up herself. She was still naked, just a sheet around her waist. Jess loved how relaxed she felt in her own body - she could easily walk around the entire day like that without feeling self-conscious and there were never any discussions about whether she looked fat in a particular outfit like he'd had with almost every one of his girlfriends before. She worked out a lot and was well toned, but she wasn't stick thin, embracing her small love handles, which made her even more real to him.

Jess got up and looked through her desk, a folder of papers, her Financial Times, her notebook, water bottle - no pens, just unipins.

"Why do you have so many unipins?" he asked, bringing one of them to bed with him.

"I like to doodle when I listen to podcasts sometimes," she said.

"Huh! I never noticed," he commented. He figured he didn't know everything about her, and in a way it was fun discovering her bit by bit.

"You want to see?" Odette asked.

"If that means you'll get out of bed, of course," he smirked, hoping she wouldn't bother putting clothes on.

Odette replied with a playful smile, and made a deliberate walk towards her desk drawer, curving her body just right, teasingly. While over the years she'd gotten quite tired of men eyeing her like that, mostly out on the street when she wore a tight outfit, when Jess did it, she just loved it, and his expression. It was anything but cheap, more like eating her up bit by bit, not just the oversexualized bodyparts either, but everything.

She returned to the bed with a folder and lay next to Jess, both on their stomach leaning onto their elbows, a pillow positioned under Jess' chest for support. Jess placed his hand over the small of her back, pulling her a little closer and kissed her shoulder.

Odette opened up the thick cardboard folder. The papers inside, were of different shapes an sizes, torn pages from her notebook, even a few post-its. There wasn't really any one particular style - patterns, mostly inanimate objects and vegetation, lots of it. The drawings ranged from lifelike to abstract, full of detail.

"These are pretty good," he commented. "I always wondered whether you had that creative side. I knew you have an eye for art but...," he added gesturing around the room. Just like downstairs her bedroom had an interesting selection of paintings, here mostly abstract water colors.

"Ah, it's nothing, just doodles, and the art thing - well this is just something I guess I've picked up from my family. Roughly half of them are art dealers," she explained.

"It doesn't have to be nothing you know, you have your life open to you. You certainly have the possibility to try to do what you like to do," he suggested, as he eyed one of the larger works, a page full of different leaves.

"I guess you are right, I just never really considered it," she sighed.

"You know what? I think we're going to have to start building you a character," he shared a thought that had been forming in his head for a while now.

"Jess?" Odette frowned her eyebrow, hoping he wasn't going back to the book idea he'd began writing a while back.

"Hear me out," he pleaded.