Recollections

The Time With Insomnia

The Time With Insomnia
(song of the chapter: Your Body Is A Wonderland // John Mayer)

Erin's POV

Austin went to sleep hours ago. My eyes dart to the screen of my cell and I note the time. Sleep hasn't been a friend of mine these past few days, and I've become all too familiar with the early hours of the morning.

The screen on my laptop is too bright and my fingers don't want to type another word for this God forsaken Economics paper. Saving my work, I close my laptop. Without the light from my computer, the apartment is black and I blindly navigate into the bedroom. Austin is breathing heavy in slumber and I press the door closed behind me. He doesn't wake when I climb into bed and shift close to him.

I force myself to close my eyes, to try and sleep. It's hardly any use. Millions of thoughts bounce around in my head and sleep never comes. I'm unsure if it's been three minutes or three hours, but I roll over and face Austin.

"Austin." I whisper, my thumb sweeping along his bottom lip that's jutted out ever so slightly. He doesn't wake, and I call his name two more times before he finally grunts in response. "We're you sleeping?"

It's dark in our bedroom, but he's close enough that I can see his lids peel apart, blue eyes peering over at me. "I was."

I mouth oops and give him a sheepish smile, feigning innocence. He continues to stare at me, waiting for me to say whatever was important enough for me to wake him at four a.m. for. Instead of speaking, I trace my fingers along his hairline.

Soft as a whisper I glide my index around his forehead starting at his temple, down his nose, along the perimeter of his lips. The movements of my hand are painfully slow, but Austin doesn't protest. He allows his eyes to fall closed again, reveling in the sensation of my gentle touch. But he doesn't go back to sleep, I can tell by his breathing.

My words come out in a gush. "Do you think about your father often?"

He's quiet for so long, that I worry he didn't hear me. Or maybe he just doesn't want to discuss the matter... This isn't exactly something we talk about often, not because he won't, but because I tiptoe around the subject. Avoiding the subject isn't going to make his father any less dead, though.

His voice is gravelly and tired, I feel guilty for waking him up. "I think about him everyday."

The pit of my stomach clenches in despair. Maybe it's a topic we should talk about more.

"What about him?" My whispers fill the darkness.

I feel his shrug more than I see it. "Anything. Everything." I wait for him to elaborate. Finally Austin opens his eyes. He reads my face for a moment and I'm not sure what he finds, but after a deep breath he continues. "I reminisce on my childhood, when we'd go on family vacations or when he'd come home from work and play with me and Laney even though he was exhausted." Austin pauses for a moment, his brows pushing together, so close that they almost touch. "I wonder what it'll be like for our kids to grow up without a grandfather."

I suck in a sharp breath when he says our kids. "We'll tell them all about him, and what a great man he was." I promise.

His eyes focus on something in the darkness. "What if I'm not a good father? My dad, he left some large shoes to fill, he was so--" my hand presses against his mouth and I shake my head.

"No. No. No." I protest. "You are going to be a great father. We have time. We have so much time, you don't need to worry about it right now. Just know, you won't fail our children."

His fingers curl around my wrist and he removes my hand from his lips. "What about your Nana? Do you think about her?" The stab of pain I feel at the mention of my Nana was not something I was expecting. I clear my throat once, twice before I can speak.

"Yeah." I answer hoarsely. "Sometimes, I forget she's gone." I confess. "There's this moment, right as I wake up when I'm slightly disoriented. I don't know where I'm at, who I am, and I don't know that my Nana is dead. Then reality sets in and I remember."

Silence grows between us as Austin waits for me to continue.

"Other times, I'll be having so much fun doing something and I'll get excited to tell her about it. But then it's like I have to remind myself that she's not coming back. I won't be going to her house on Christmas, or telling her about the most recent novel I've read. She won't be back tomorrow or the next day, and she won't be calling to check on me. When I have our first baby, she won't..." My voice cracks and Austin pulls me closer to him.

My face presses against his neck and I hiccup out a loud sob. His hands rub down my back, trying in vain to soothe me. He doesn't say anything or tell me not to cry which is oddly comforting. Somehow he just understands that I need to let this out, and he can relate.

"What is this actually about, Erin?" He whispers into my hair. I pull away from him, confusion on my face. He presses, "You've been restless lately. What's got you so wound up that you can hardly sleep?"

My lips open and then close. I fight off my initial instinct to lie and stick with staying silent instead. I shake my head softly, unable to form words that make sense in a sentence.

His blue eyes gave me face a brief once over then he groaned. One of his palms ran down his face in a movement I can only describe as exasperated. "Jesus, Erin." He huffed. "This is about you moving out."
It wasn't a question. He had hit the nail right on the head with his guess and I didn't have the nerve to deny it. My lips remain sealed, which only summoned another groan from him.

"I'm worried that I won't be able to sleep without you..." I confess, slightly defensive.

"You don't have to move out. We've been over this a thousand times, Erin. I don't want you to go, and you're working yourself to the point of insomnia about the whole ordeal. So why are you so set on leaving me again?"

The trace of hurt in his voice would've been impossible to miss. A soft sigh flows from my mouth and I sit upright in the bed. With the pads of my fingers, I massage my eyelids. "I'm not leaving you." My words are strained.

Austin stays silent and I glance back at his silhouette in the darkness. "This was supposed to be a temporary thing whenever Elena kicked me out, remember?"

"The two of you have made up since then, why don't you talk to her about moving back in for a while? Then you can move back in with me when you're ready so you don't feel like we're forced to be together." His words are reasonable, but for some reason I feel myself getting more and more worked up. 

Both of my hands fist in my hair, tugging unmercifully on my scalp. "This apartment isn't good for me, Austin. I'll never be ready to move back in here with everything being a constant reminder." He didn't need me to elaborate what the apartment was a reminder of. He understood.

"So this isn't about you not wanting to live with me, this is about you not wanting to live here." He presses.

I throw myself back onto my pillow. "Do you really want to fight at four in the morning."

"Actually, no. I want to be sleeping at four in the morning but someone had to wake me up with their dire need to converse." He snaps and I roll my eyes into the darkness.

Without saying another word, I shift as far away from Austin as I can without rolling right off of the bed. One of his hands extends and rests on my arm but I shrug him off. I hear his sigh from behind me as he removes his arm from me and tucks it back against his side.

Moments pass and I listen intently to the rhythm of Austin's breathing. There's always a distinct change in its pattern once he falls asleep, but surprisingly that change hasn't occurred yet.

"I won't be able to sleep without you either." He murmurs into the darkness.

A fierce fist squeezes the shit out of my heart and I roll over slowly. Our eyes lock for a second, then without another word I ease myself against him. Austin engulfs me in his arms and my legs tangle with his beneath out covers. The familiarity soothes the tension that's manifested within me. Not even a full minute passes before I'm fast asleep.