FEEL

16. Occhiolism

Occhiolism ~ the awareness of how small your perspective is.

~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows ~

~°~

It felt weird, not being at home during the evening. Almost surreal. Mr Pierce had offered to take the couch, even though I begged him against it. It just felt wrong, to be in someone else's house and take the bed while they had to sleep on the couch when I was the one who didn't live here.

“I wouldn't sleep well knowing you had to sleep on the couch, anyway,” he had told me.

His apartment has three bedrooms, but he uses one as his study and the other to store some gym equipment. He must never expect to have any guests in this case. At least not ones that spend the night.

He borrowed me a set of plaid shorts and a white T-shirt to sleep in. I braided my hair into two cornrows to protect them through the night and settled on the bed, not to sleep but to do my homework, the excessive amounts of it thanks to him and a few of his colleagues.

Said man walks into the door right now, around 9PM, just two hours after we'd had dinner. He peeks in through the door. “Sorry to interrupt you.” He says it like I was in the middle of defusing a nuclear bomb and he had disturbed. “I was having strawberries and thought you might want some as well.”

I don't know why, but a warm feeling starts to turn my belly. I speculate it might have something to do with the sweetness of the thought, to be thinking of someone else while having a snack yourself. Or perhaps it's because I'd never had someone walk in while I was studying and offer me anything. It's something you don't really know that you need while buried deep in studies, but there was this overwhelming kind of relief that washed over me when he offered.

I nod my head, having lost my words, and he walks in with a cute little glass bowl filled with strawberries. Gracie follows behind him, so surreptitiously that he doesn't see her until she settles on the bed.

He goes to take her off, but I stop him. “Let her stay. I like the company.”

“Don't let her ruin your books,” he warns.

My books are scattered around the bed, the chaos I always create while doing my homework. Having them out shows me how much I have to do, then when I'm done with each one, I put them back into my backpack one by one. My eyes find Gracie, laying gently on the bed, almost lazily, with no intention of doing much else. “She won't.”

“Oh, she will. Don't let her.”

“You're so hard on her.”

“Eat your strawberries,” he says, patting Gracie gently before heading for the door. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” I call back. And then, he leaves. I don't see him for the whole rest of the night, him probably caught up in his own work and I in mine. The alarm clock at his bedside table reads 11.30PM when I'm done. I pack my away books, then head out to the kitchen to put the empty bowl of strawberries away.

I throw away the strawberry leaves, rinse the bowl out and leave it on the side of the sink, uncertain where it belongs. I felt less awkward about being here now. For a while, the feeling was so foreign, but Mr Pierce has made me nothing but comfortable.

I pass the living room to go down the hallway that leads to his bedroom. Mr Pierce lays peacefully on the couch, his frame a little too tall to fit. I sigh. He really didn't have to offer me the bed. I'd have slept comfortably on the couch. A part of me wanted to wake him up and tell him to go sleep on the bed, that it's okay, I don't mind sleeping on the couch.