Face Down

Friends and Lovers

What’s wrong with you is good
For what’s wrong with me,
And I think that maybe,
We should stick together,
Because in the end
We are friends and lovers

Alex

Mitchie and I had never labelled our relationship. We were best friends with benefits at most. We slept together and held one another at night, we kissed when we were alone and cuddled during movies but that was it. It was as if we were in a relationship but we just weren’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with her, believe me I did, but she seemed so perfectly content with the way things were that I didn’t necessarily feel the need to pursue anything further.

Looking back, I should have.

It was a few weeks after the bruises incident when we were lying in bed on a Saturday morning. It was hard to sleep late in my house, especially at that time because we’d just had a six year old sent to us who liked to get up at a ridiculous hour every morning and she had definitely taken a shine to Mitchie and I.

I knew quite a bit about the backgrounds of the kids that were sent to live with us; a lot of them had suffered lives of abuse and neglect and had been saved by the system. None of them every stayed with us for much more than six months so I didn’t like to get attached but I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t grown a weak spot for Charlotte.

She was so innocent, so full of life and wonder that I truly believed that had I have known Mitchie at that age she would resemble her almost perfectly.

It was nearing eight AM when I awoke from my slumber and opened my eyes to see my perfect best friend curled up in a ball with her arms wrapped tightly around my neck. Even after the amount of time that we had been sleeping together, my breath still often hitched when I would wake up before her and see her sleeping so peacefully. She didn't sleep a lot so it was something of a rarity for me to see her in such a way.

I couldn’t move because I would wake her and it was unlike her to sleep for so long but I guessed that despite the fact that I had fell asleep at around midnight, she probably hadn’t fallen asleep until recently. Her mind worked on overdrive at night but that was something that I was used to. It had never bothered her before; it was just the way it was.

Her lips were pouted and her face was probably at a push an inch away from mine. Before her I’d always struggled to sleep too close to people because the air became too thick and I struggled to breathe… but not with her. I don’t think that I could ever feel close enough to Mitchie, not even when our bodies were smashed together in her tiny single bed. She always complained about how compact her bed was and how it was nicer to share my double bed. As if we didn’t spend the whole time as close as possible anyway. And disregarding that one time when Mitchie flipped us over in her bed and we landed on the floor, I’d never had a problem with the close proximity that her bed had to offer.

I couldn’t stop myself, not that I really wanted to, from leaning forward and pressing my lips against hers delicately. Her bruises had faded but every time I looked into her eyes they were as prominent as ever. It was as if she carried scars where the previously purple skin resided.

“Kissing me in my sleep again, I see?” Her voice was croaky and her words were rasped; she always hated her morning voice but there was nothing that I loved more. It meant that I’d woken up with her in my arms so whenever I heard it I was generally floating around on cloud nine.

I think that if I had to pinpoint a specific moment in time when I realised that there was no other way that I’d like to wake up in the morning then that was it. Because holding her in my arms and watching as her relaxed facial features awoke, I realised that nobody else would ever be able to make me smile just because she was breathing. Nobody else would ever compare to her and nobody else would ever be able to make me feel the way she did. She knew everything about me and vice versa. Sure, there was something going on recently that had been changing her but whatever it was, I reasoned, I would know about it soon enough. We didn’t keep things from one another, we had no reason to.