My Kind of Woman

40. Your Tiny, Tired Soldier

AN; Wow! This is the fastest I've written a chapter in awhile. It's been a full day of writing and revising, forgive any mistakes, I am super tired and when I get the chance, I'll give it a third proofread. So... two chapters left. The end is in sight now.

A week of summer storms came, keeping us indoors in a basic motel at the edge of that coastal town, off of a main road. We kept the curtains drawn back and the windows closed, watching the rain beat down in sheets of blurred silver and grey. I tried to paint again, but I often got frustrated with it. Mio slept a lot. She was so tired, and that exhaustion seemed to rub off on me too. Her tiredness stressed that running away from your problems didn't get rid of them.

Oh, how my life had changed. There were many things I'd stopped needing to do; I stopped needing to wake up early in the mornings, I stopped needing to allocate laundry days, I stopped needing to masturbate, to study, to make coffee. In fact, I had not had coffee in days. And despite being there for two nights, we hadn't done much unpacking. Our suitcases were still sitting against the wall by the bed, half unzipped, clothes spewing from the side of mine where I'd messily pulled from it.

The covers were not as rough as the hotel room before, and we spent most of our hours on the bed, reading or talking or sleeping. Her favourite position was to lie with her head in my lap whilst I read, dozing or rubbing my hip. I always thought she looked so tiny like that, so tired, like she was withering into herself and close to giving up, clinging on. I wanted to keep her afloat, like she said I could. I was afraid of her worries overtaking her, but for the most part, she was calm with me.

The floor was often scattered with socks and bras and the day's clothes, the room was often hot, our breath often came shallowly and struggled. But even in those moments, she was tired. And then it was calmness, pink blush and warm skin. I held her, then woke up with her holding me. I was preparing to miss her a great deal. Not that I thought she was going anywhere, but I knew when classes started at college, we wouldn't see each other as much as we were then. But I held the idea that one day I could just run home to her. One day. And it wouldn't be a shitty motel, or a lifeless hotel room, it would be our home; a house with pieces of us, decorated however we pleased.

But newly, we'd started expressing our love in the evenings. I would roll over to turn out the lights and roll back over to the sound of, "I love you." We'd progressed from needing, though I was sure she still did need me then, she mumbled it occasionally whilst I read or before my head bowed between her spread legs. Even sweeter, I sometimes heard "I'm so in love with you." The honesty of that statement was winding and always left me slightly wordless for a few moments.

One night was rainier than the rest. Earlier in the day there had been thunder and flashes of startling white lightning that made the dull room bright for split seconds at a time. We had sat on the edge of the bed and watched that, counting the beats of quiet between the lightning and thunder, learning how far away the storm really was until it was too close to measure. But lying in bed hours after that, the thunderstorm had passed, leaving only the heavy rain and the lulling patter of it against the windows. It was sending me to sleep. Mio was curled into the crook of my body, head pushed against my chest, legs entwined with my own. My fingers were absently brushing at her hair, smoothing it around the shell of her ear, feeling how soft the skin was there. She was falling asleep against me; I could feel her hand becoming limp on my waist. But I was giving it time as we hadn't exchanged our nightly 'I love you's yet.

Through the slit in the curtains, I saw two sets of headlights filter into the room. The motel was right off a main road that continued on down towards the highway - each night we'd stayed there, we'd been roused from sleep by road noises. But Mio didn't stir, most likely used to it. The flash of light was just a reminder that I hadn't drawn the curtains close enough after watching the thunderstorm.