The Simple Reality

Trick of the Sweet

"Björn!" she hollered to wake the man on the tenth attempt, finding whatever words left her mouth were not even being acknowledged. It was as if he was not even home and the surprise was hers entirely when she'd found the tables were turned for the very first time.

Usually it is her. Usually it is always him that wakes her, and nagging until she is awake. Nevertheless, she always acknowledged his voice calling to her, and she'd always eventually got up. This case was clearly different, for it was already seven the evening and no nap of hers ever lasted so long that it is bewildering to see that he, as a man who rarely naps, would do so for this long.

Agnetha tried everything and that was no understatement. Her frustration had reached a point and gotten he best of her on that September day— her patience had thinned out, exhausting her the more she saw the man asleep and unmoved from where he laid on the couch. She'll make him regret this, that was already perfectly set in her mind.

He'd been laying for three hours like he'd been deprived of sleep for nights. The tall blonde woman hadn't even cared anymore to call out his name to wake him. He was a light sleeper and he'd easily stir just from a gentle move of hers, but today it was just something else. That led her to vacuum for seven minutes in the same 10-foot area around the couch. Nothing. She'd opened the door to the next room and slammed it that it even startled her to where she and Peppa jumped, but it had done nothing like she predicted it would. She'd turned on the television to the maximum volume. Barely a shift. She wailed crying for help in the most dramatic and needy way, and she scrunched her face in judgement after finding he hadn't shifted even a bit.

"Unbelievable," she breathed, watching the restless man, lazy and in the deepest slumber witnessed. She'd given up eventually. It was reassuring to feel his breaths to know he is living, but didn't mean she was not angry. She'd walked away and decided she'd do all the things she wanted to on her own.

There wasn't much joy in that, she'd come to realize just two minutes later. It was spent lazily until she'd exhausted. The time passed and she hadn't noticed she'd gone to sleep, until she was nudged awake from snoozing on the other end of the couch in the living room space. Her eyes stingingly snapped awake, for it hadn't been long that she'd closed her eyes. She'd found his face looking down on her.

"Are you kidding me?" were the first set of words that formed.

"Hi."

"Seriously?"

He stood straighter from his hunched position, shaking his head in question. "What?" Björn watched her turn her back to him and curl into the back of the couch. "Did I miss something?" Björn asked.

"Oh! You're asking me?"

"Should I ask Peppa?" he wondered sarcastically. He had a hint of grin on his mouth, and it turned when she didn't find it funny.

"You've spent the whole evening sleeping and finally now that I'm falling asleep, you're waking me. W—"

"Okay. Why didn't you just wake me up?" He answered her with a question that quickly got under her skin. Agnetha turned a bit to look over her shoulder and Björn watched her blue eyes narrow, thinking of absolutely everything she'd tried. "What?" he'd asked and really worked his mind to remember how he fell asleep in the beginning. "Aren't you going to tell me what happened?" She blinked and thought to herself where to even begin.

12 hours earlier

That morning they had found it in their natural habit to take the day for what it was as now their days were coming towards an end on that long and endless paradise of sunshine. They took the day as if they were home and not on a vacation.