Sweet Dreams, Sadie

FIRST TRIMESTER

It happened in the middle of January, the night before he left, in a darkened room in one of his friends' homes as the muffled and distant sound of a Chainsmokers' song emanated from the speakers of a docked phone in the living room drifted in through the crack beneath the door, a small sliver of light grazing against our feet, and we stood close enough to each other that I felt his chest just barely graze against my own when he breathed, a sound I could hear over a faraway voice crooning about sheets on corners, and he murmured my name. It was another breath in my name, one that I felt brushing against my cheeks and parted lips, and then I felt the strands of my hair lifting away from my shoulders as he ran his fingers through them, something hitching in my throat as the heel of his palm touched the back of my neck, and I tilted my head, my lips bumping against his lips gently before he brought me to him. I had never kissed him before, I had never stood this close to him before, I had never heard him murmur my name like that before, and it was when I remembered that I might never kiss him again, never stand this close to him again, never hear my name spoken from his lips like that again, that I slowly trailed my fingers away from his shoulders and found the hem of his shirt. He was leaving before dawn came.

When I woke up sometime tomorrow after however many hours of sleep I was getting tonight, he would be gone, in an airport or already in the actual plane, returning to where he had come from a month earlier for Christmas. I would see him sometime in March, maybe, for spring break if he hadn't decided to go somewhere else, like Florida with some of his guys from his dorm, and that would be the last time until summer, and by then, maybe this moment in a laundry room in January would be a somewhat hazy, memory in the dark that made less sense each time it came to him. He was leaving in eight hours, and after five years of wondering whether or not he wanted me like I wanted him, he wanted me.

My knuckles grazed against the lower half of his stomach as I lifted the hem of his shirt away from his waist and he broke away from me for a moment as the fabric folded in my hands. The room was barely lit, with only the light slipping through the crack underneath the door and a nightlight plugged into an outlet beside the washing machine, but I could still glimpse his eyes, the searching in the irises I knew were an earthy green, and I bit down on my lip as I continued to bring the shirt away from his chest. He blinked, his lips parted as he breathed, and I heard the soft sound of him swallowing as he crossed his arms and took the shirt from me, lifting it over his head, and then tossing it onto the white surface of the dryer that his hip nudged against. I smoothed my hands over his chest, wondering if it was at all real, being able to touch him like this, with him staring down at my hands as he couldn't believe it either. I had seen him shirtless before, at least a dozen times at various swimming pools and beaches, but I had never really thought that I would ever be standing so close to him, fingers trailing over his torso until his muscles tensed, and he brought my mouth to his again.

I never really thought I would be that girl with him. I always thought that I would be that girl, standing somewhere else, watching him with that girl.

We eventually fell asleep on a pile of laundry that I unrealistically hoped was clean, and we had blocked the door that had no lock with a basket crammed with bottles of detergent after we thought we heard the floorboards creaking outside in the hallway after our clothes were heaped onto the surfaces of the washing and drying machines. I woke up a couple of hours later, my cheek slumped against a crumpled bath towel, and he was starting to stand up, hoisting himself up from beside me, and he whispered to him that he had to go now. He also whispered that he waited as long as he could. And then whispered that his flight left in a couple of hours. I nodded against the bath towel, swallowing down aching feelings that I hoped wouldn't be visible in the dark, and murmured for him to have a safe flight, as if that were something he or I had any control over, and I noticed the outline of his figure hesitating for a moment out from underneath my heavy eyelids.