A Glow Of Happiness

Chapter 8. William

Hello :) I hope you are having a nice day! What do you think of my story so far? 

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She's so close to me as she's fidgeting on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position while her laptop rests on her legs. She's typing quickly, writing what I just told her. She smells of coconut and honey, and even though I never have been obsessed with this scent, it feels like now I am. She's wearing one of my hoodie, which even though she's not small, looks enormous on her. The bottoms of the sleeves are rolled up, and since the hoodie is too big for her, it covers her short, which leads me to imagine so many things, wrong things. My mind goes crazy just at the thought of her wearing my hoodie with nothing underneath, and I have to mentally slap myself to stop the lust that is taking over me at that simple idea. Her long black hair is up in a bun, and she's biting her lips, something she seems to do often when she's focused. She wrinkles her nose before erasing aggressively what she wrote and starting over. I need to stop staring at her before she realizes, but I simply can't. It's been minutes now since I've started staring at her, my laptop on my lap still waiting for me to continue the graphic I had started at her demand. My hands are lingering over the keyboard, frozen, as my eyes are taking in her every feature.

"Are you going to finish the graphic at some point?" she asks without even looking away from her screen.

"Yeah," I clear my throat, "I was about to."

"What about a little break before," she yawns.

"Sure," I respond.

She puts her laptop on the small glass table in front of the couch before stretching her arms out. She gets up and runs around the living room which makes me chuckles.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"My father always told me that when your brain becomes like jelly because you work too much, moving around helps," she laughs. "Pretty sure that isn't proven scientifically, but anything is worth a try."

"What about your mother," I blurt out.

She stops running and is frozen on the spot. What have I just done? I am so stupid to ask her a question like that, so personal, so deep. I don't do personal; I don't do meaningful conversations. I just asked her a question I wouldn't even want to answer myself.

"She's dead..." she whispers. "She died giving me birth," she says a little louder.

I gulp down. Fuck. Shouldn't have brought that one up. She must see the expression on my face because she gives me a small smile.

"Don't worry, I can talk about it without being too sad. I never got to meet her though, that's hard. Let's just say we don't celebrate my birthday a lot, since it's also the day she died..." she trails off.

"I'm sorry I brought it up," I admit apologetically

"It's fine... You didn't know," I see her look at me, hesitating to keep going on. "It's hard though, knowing she died because of me," she whispers the last part.

"That's not – "

"It kind of is," she cuts me off.

She gives me a small smile, and then I see it in her eyes.

"What about your parents?" she asks.

My whole body tenses up and I jump from the couch.

"Do you want coffee?" I blurt out, "My eyes are getting tired looking at my screen for so long."

She seems taken aback. She looks at me quizzically, like she's trying to pinpoint what she did wrong. I get it, I asked about her mother, it's normal that she thought it was fine to ask me about my life, but it's not. I walk towards the kitchen and get two mugs out before starting my coffee machine. She follows me in silence, I can feel her eyes staring at me from behind. When I turn around, she seems sad, or pissed, or a mix of both. She walks towards me; I can see emotions clouding her features. She keeps on walking towards me before giving me a hug. My body, which was tensed, suddenly relaxes under her touch, my muscles loosen up, and my heartbeat quiets down. Her scent overwhelms me once again, and I find myself hugging her back tightly.