If Only...

IN APPLE PIE ORDER

I only realize I'm awake when I feel the sudden cold on my fingers.

Blinking and squinting through my heavy eyelids, faintly wondering about the odd white light of the sun, I try to move my body, but it is frozen, yet too warm and comfortable.

I stare at my fingers that beg to differ, and find them clutching on to something cold, hard and milk white. The room smells damp too, and I wait wistfully for the sun. But it never comes.

That convinces me that I'm not dreaming--although I still feel far from the shore of consciousness. Maybe I wasn't dreaming now, but I certaintly was before. For a long time in open waters.

The warmth that envelops me right now was not from natural sources. Soon enough my body awakens, and my skin recognizes the rough warmth of the comforter around it. A second more and I realize that I still can't move. Panic overtakes naturally, and I peek over the edge of the comforter around my face for Rosie.

I am met with endless white, shrouded by the brown fuzz of the comforter.

Oh, God.

My breathing starts to accelerate and I manage to drag my body up a little against a reasonably soft surface underneath me, and then I freeze willingly at the breath at my ear.

Turning my face slowly with my own breath held, my eyes widen at the pale skin, the greenish stubble and the deep brown hair.

"Danny?"

I whisper without any intention to, and he stirs, moving his arms around me slightly so I can shift.

Before I can get to investigating how I had gotten here; wherever here is, I drink in all of Danny sleeping with a glum expression with a frown. All of him under me.

I merely breathe out through my mouth and purse my lips in plain realization of my whereabouts and try to sit up, but another quilt obstructions me. I move, little by little, not wanting to wake him up, until I'm seated in his lap and I unwind the comforter wrapped around me like a cocoon after pushing the quilt draped around both of us away.

Danny makes a low sound in his throat, his arms still secured around my waist.

I give him a minute to calm, and then look around; Rosie always in the back of my mind.

I see the mirror. . . the sink. . .and then the bathtub, that I had been sleeping in. With him.

And just to make it more bizarre, this feels familiar.

Déjà vu?

I frown deeper, rewinding, and then gasp when it comes back to me.

The hindsight brings tears to my eyes again and a shiver jolts through me. Danny sighs,

stretching, and I freeze. His eyes flutter open, and he gazes at the blank bathroom wall on his left, and then whips his head forward, like he had just realized it too.

"Alex."

He sits up, holding me with his arms again, as the pillow slides down into the tub behind him, displaced by his sudden action.

"Lexy?"

He says with a softer voice, compelling me to look at him. The thoughts are so fast in motion for so early in the morning that I'm afraid that just the slightest movement of my head will scatter them. I only remember bits and pieces of course; the letter I know by heart. What had come after that is a giant blur.

I look slowly to Danny now, when I know I can't make any progress in my head. I inch forward to him, his face still sporting anxiety and ask him the most intriguing question I can think of.