Two Loves

Chapter 31

*tosses you a few chapters and descends into oblivion again*

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CYMBELINE

Ada is still sound asleep when I wake up. One of her legs is draped over mine, and her head nuzzles into my side, soft and warm. She doesn't even move when I slowly sit up.
I don't blame her. My muscles also feel weary, and when I stretch, the scratches on my back itch and remind me of last night, and Ada's fingers digging into my skin while she throws her beautiful head back. She sighs in her sleep and traces her hand against my hip. By God, this woman is wonderful.

I feel like a creep when I watch her sleep like that, but the way she lounges in the sunlight descending over the bed sheets, with her tousled hair and freckles and the thin gold chain with a cross lying over her collarbone, wrapped in the sheet like into a cloud - I would give all my days just to wake up next to her for the rest of my life.

A grumble in my stomach pragmatically reminds me that, before that becomes reality, it is after eight and all my strained sinews demand nutrition instead of pining.

I take a last look at Ada, who looks like a sleeping Diana in a baroque painting, with the layers removed and the gold increased - if that comparison can capture the image I am allowed to see -, press a light kiss on her shoulder and swing my legs out of the bed.

Where I immediately trip over the darned corset that gave me so much trouble last night. The whole floor of our room looks like a battlefield.

This, finally, makes me blush.

Clothing, mostly Ada's, is lying everywhere, cast aside in the heat of battle, and even the picture frame that fell from the night table when Ada rather unceremoniously shoved me against the wall beneath it, is still lying where we left it. Luckily, the glass is not broken. I must hide a laugh when I set it up again - it's a small iconography of our Lord and Saviour, who is staring at me with both indignation and bewilderment. Good that he was lying face down on the floor while all of this happened, otherwise a lightning would have hit us.

"Don't tell your dad" I whisper with a giddy laugh and wag my finger at the picture. Jesus stays as silent as a picture. I think I can count on him.

I wrap myself into a dressing-gown, tip-toe out of the room and wash and dress quickly before I go down into the kitchen to prepare breakfast for Ada. Don't tell me that that's sentimental. Everyone likes to be woken up with breakfast in bed, and what kind of lover would I be if I wouldn't do what my girl likes?

The whole house is still asleep, so I keep a watchful eye over the tea-kettle, lest its whistling wakes up the rest. The boys are certainly still sleeping - judging from the sounds that came from their room last night, they must be exhausted.

While I drink my first cup of coffee, I watch how the garden outside is waking up along with me. It's almost grotesquely peaceful - as if we would live under a glass cupola, or inside a snow globe. A side of me is only awaiting a monstrous hand that will pick up this snow globe and shake it to delight in the view of the chaos and storm it can create. But, ah, I am still way too pessimistic, am I not?

Cutting the bread, I save a few crusts to myself - I really am hungry- and absentmindedly hum to myself to distract myself from such dark thoughts. I don't notice that it is the same melody that Atticus played for us the day Isaac woke up from his Sleeping-Beauty-coma until I suddenly hear muffled shuffling and a voice behind me.

"Schubert", it says. "I didn't know that your memory is so good."

I whip around, the bread knife still in my hand. Atticus is leaning in the door frame, in a currant red dressing gown that is tied a bit to loosely and shows a V-shape of more male chest with purple bite marks than I ever wanted to see. The thought that my brother is responsible for this desolate condition doesn't make it better. Seeing the knife, he promptly raises his hands.