What I Couldn't Tell Him

50 - Pretty Damn Sentimental

The shifting of the sheets drifted on the wind, tempting my lethargic limbs back into them. But the view from the window was too magnetic to move away yet, which is what held me lounged against the yawning French doors (appropriately named in this situation) like a decorative houseplant.

The light here is a little pinker, and the streets have a proud and imperial prettiness. Paris even smells different. It has the elegance of linen fresh fragrances, elderberry and a breeze, along with a sly undertone of wine and sex.

I was different too. Different to how I'd ever been; at least how I've been when conscious to consider the breadth and angles of myself. Since my strength and softness was still spluttering on the banks of where it had been drowned in an IV and bedsheets so starched you could cut yourself, I was attempting to play my sharpened points off as heroin chic. My PJ Harvey thing is starting to slip away, usurped by croissants. I think I'm glad, but I quietly relished the nervous faces when the  ghostly possible relative of David Bowie is asking them for a pain au chocolat.

He's stirring again. One leg creeps back, goosebumps rising and falling like the tide, in and out of the coy Parisian bluster.

I wonder if I look as glamorous as I feel. A long white shirt (Alden's - from the extortionately priced meal last night that still sits inside me like a handful of diamonds and cost roughly the same) tickles midway down my thighs. My hair is windswept, hopefully with a seemingly intentional artfulness, but probably just messy.

Alden is creeping towards the window, trying to be stealthy but he's still clumsy with sleep. I hear him flick the kettle on and the whining of the heating water tinkers inside my head.

He's still radiating heat. It's new sleeping next to him; a devastatingly handsome, oversized hot water bottle drawing you into it. Thankfully, he doesn't snore.

His hand rests on my shoulder, and for once my wince remains internalised as his fingers cross the peaks and valleys of bone. He feels me tense, and then uncoil when his lips find the edge of my jaw. And my neck. And the curve of my shoulder.

"You okay?" His voice is a sultry mumble, sprinkled with the gravel of rest. He rests his hand on my heart. He does that sometimes, as though it Will thump back to him the real thoughts behind my non-answers. I don't mind.

"Yeah."

He doesn't answer again, just hums against my skin, and goosebumps burst outwards like a river out it's banks, dribbling down my arms. My cold balances his heat: equilibrium.

He knows my answer was uncommitted, not a lie but an evasion, "Shall we talk?"

"Probably."

I feel the pull of his lips into a grin, and he lays another kiss on the upward curve of my shoulder like a question mark , "Before or after the morning sex?"

My face burns, redder than the retrospective Parisian glow, hotter than the whining kettle, "I don't mind."

When we make it back to the table, Alden doesn't let his hands leave my skin. He trails them under [his] shirt, gently sexy. I slap him away teasingly, and as soon as we've slid into the iron wrought chairs on the balcony he seized my hands in his across the table. He fidgets, stroking then like he's trying to restart the circulation. Oh sh*t, another heart reference.

"So..." the silence is becoming a noose, tying itself painfully slowly until I just burst out and confess. His hands slip away, but then he reevaluates and interlocks his fingers with mine.

"You don't love me, do you?"

The world stops dead. Everything, midway down my throat, clings to the sides to stop itself from falling like the air is suddenly aware I'm going to strip it from its oxygen and it is frightened. A toddler in tantrum refusing bedtime.