The Waitress

Begin Again

He woke in the early five am dawn of Sunday morning, a stranger in a strange bed.

Alone.

He was always alone.

Even when he was part of something, he was still alone.

And yet he wasn't, not really. He had her. He had a family, here and in the UK. Here it was the Blue Wave crew because, despite everything, they had stood by him. They had been there for him when he needed them most. Yes, somehow, since he had met them late last year, one of them had always been there. Yes, one of his new friends was always there (when he let them).

But obviously not this morning!

He reached over but the bed was cold, and he wondered, wondered. He wondered if he'd hurt her if she'd run off to escape him in horror at what they'd done last night. It had been rough and fast – not too rough but certainly not the gentle lovemaking of their earlier encounters.

They didn't plan it, or maybe she thought he did and now she needed to get away from him, their actions and a pile of regret?

But though his body had taken relief from hers, he sensed that she had needed it too. That connection to another person – it hadn't been about the sex for either of them. It had been about the connection. They had used each other's bodies and it had been sweet relief, for both of them, well that's what he'd thought.

So where was she now in the five am world?

He followed a hunch, pulling the sheet from her bed and slinging it around himself, toga-style, his long torso barely covered, and the sheet slung low on his hip. He followed that hunch down the hall and up to the next flight of stairs. There he found her, hunched over the keyboard, her fingers moving like lightning. He was loath to disturb her. Happy to watch from behind to see her arms move, her shoulder, her head. To watch her in some creative voyeuristic way.

He'd done this.

He knew it.

Felt the seismic shift.

It eased his conscience a little.

Last night had not been all about him.

It was them. Both he and Melody.

Not in a lover's kind of way but in the way of muse and writer, the confidante and the broken, friends.

"I know you're there I can hear you breathing," she said quietly not bothering to turn around.

"Sorry," he mumbled still feeling, despite obviously doing the right things between her legs last night, that he was a fuck-up.

He had to be.

He'd ended something that felt like it worked.

And she'd.............

She'd.............

And the world and the press................

"Stop thinking so loudly you'll break my flow," Mels sighed.

"I came up here to let you think and sleep and not wake you up. I wrote in bed to start with but it kept flowing and flowing and I couldn't stop."

He smiled, then and opened his mouth to speak.

"And if you say sorry again I will come over there, put you over my knee and spank you," she said with a louder groan of discontent.

"But you'd probably like it too much," she added quietly, finally turning her swivelling chair around to face him.