Damn U

2 hours, 7 minutes.

That's how much sleep Olivia managed to steal before her phone started ringing at 6:40am, a caller she didn't need to ID to know who was trying to summon her at this hour. She missed the first call, the deep sleep she was engaged in not willing to release her so easily, but the second call came in demanding, impatient, dogged. She wanted to be annoyed because she was having a good dream, but quickly shrugged it away so that she could catch the call before magic number three came in, louder and more persistent than before, she was convinced.

"Good morning." she answered, pulling her phone to her ear and her forearm over her eyes to shield from the light of dawn.

"You're still up?"

"I was trying not to be, Julien, but here we are."

"I'm sorry to wake you. I couldn't sleep at all.." he said, sighing. "Can I come over so we can talk this out?"

"Ah, now we're ready for talking things out?" she said, her exhaustion and exasperation seeping into her tone.

"Liv.."

"When?"

"In an ideal world, now."

"Well nothing seems to be going ideally lately, so.." she quipped, rubbing her eyes.

"Is that your final answer?"

"If you're going to come, then come. You have the key. I'll be here."

"Right, Liv. You need anything?"

"Nope."

"See you soon?"

"See you soon." she said, hanging the phone back onto the receiver and burrowing back into her pillow topped queen bed. As much as she wanted to hear whatever her lover's latest development was, she was overstimulated from the events of the last evening, and their whole affair in general. After 7 months of loving hard, living fast, hopping from his place to hers, night after night, finally the fiery impassioned foundation of their relationship was beginning to settle and the structural kinks were beginning to show themselves. It began with little things; minor insecurities and hushed conversations, that sort of thing. Over time this evolved into harder to pin down triggers and nearly impossible to control spirals, that culminated in this particular instance in a storm-out from her apartment from Julien, with questions about what would be next for their chapter lingering in her living room when he left.

Olivia spent the rest of the night talking to the first friend who answered her 1am SOS message and trying to comfort and catharsis her pain away through music and Gelato, ignoring the feminine psychosomatic urge to feel his chest against her back like her own heaven sent weighted blanket. When she ran out of things to distract and distance her mind from the ugly feelings their quarrel had unearthed for her, she finally allowed herself to drift away, chasing the last slivers of moonlight until J thwarted her rest with his call.

The night hadn't been anywhere near as restorative for Julien, and he wasn't quite sure what he expected next when he walked out that door. He thought maybe he could make sense of why his nerves were bundled up so tightly and why his frustration with not being able to articulate himself was boiling up like toxic reflux in his chest, and the only way he knew to make the noise and stimulation stop was to get out of the woman's house at that very fucking second, but it only took about two sets of steps getting out of her building to realize that he had probably just made things worse by a number of measures, probably for her, but definitely for him. But he had already committed, so into the still of the night he went. His love for Liv was growing and consuming him by the day, and he couldn't make sense of the fact that the same things that made him want to dive and burrow into the deepest, stickiest, most secret and sacred parts of her and pay mortgage there made him want to slip out of her life without a trace and never look back. He didn't know what to do. He knew that sitting alone in his apartment like an asshole wasn't going to help him find out. So there he was, on her front steps, buzzing her door because the keys she referenced him having were on her dining room table where he left them. As he traversed up the steps, he let a grin crack his sullen tired expression trying to imagine the line she might come up with to throw at him when he got to her doorway. A knock and a beat later, there she was in the doorway, a silk robe adorning her delicate frame and a quizzical grin on her face.