The Last Sleep

I remember lying beside you in bed while you watched sports recaps and answered emails on your laptop.  It was a Sunday night in June and I had just returned from a friend’s going away party where I had drank and danced off most of what I had drank and left early to come home to you because I thought maybe that would be the night when the two months of you ignoring me in bed would end.  I thought you would see how happy I was, how well I was finally doing at establishing myself a life in the city.  I hoped that if I could be happy, then maybe you would be happy to be with me.  I remember I tried to kiss you but you said you wanted to finish what you were watching first.  I wrote in my notebook: We are beautiful, broken things.
That’s how we were then.  If we were in bed, you were on your laptop.  Sometimes I was on mine, sometimes I just sat there wishing you would close the screen and kiss me.  But each time you finally closed the laptop, you went to sleep and I would lay beside you in the dark, my body just barely touching yours. 

When those nights first began to occur and then reoccur, I would align my body with the back of yours and wrap my arm around you, laying my hand over yours, just the way I knew you liked and I would hope that you loved it. 

I remember the last night we slept in the same bed.  We met for dinner after work at what had become our go-to place that we went to almost every night.  And then we walked home in the pouring rain.  Inside your bedroom, I set my bag down and changed into one of your t-shirts that had become mine.  I remember that you kissed me, really kissed me for the first time in over two months.  And I thought that everything was going to get better.  You fell asleep first, with your head on my chest.  I watched you for a while; the way you looked when you slept like that had never ceased to mesmerize me.  There had been so many times when I had awoken in the middle of the night to find that you had moved in your sleep, trying to get closer to me, and I would smile at you and kiss your bare shoulder.  And sometimes I would whisper, “I love you.” And you would mumble it back, even though you were still deep inside your dreams.  That last  night I woke up a couple hours after we first fell asleep.   You were sitting up and your laptop was open and your headphones were on.  Suddenly I was up and fumbling in the dark for my clothes and my bag, trying to pack and leave right then in the middle of the night.  And then I was throwing my clothes at you and crying. 

In the end, I didn’t leave because it was late and it was raining, but mostly because I loved you and I wanted that to be enough.  I wanted me loving you to remind you of how you had loved me in the beginning, of how you couldn’t wait to get into a taxi together so you could kiss me and then get home and into bed so you could really kiss me. 

The last morning we woke up together, you slid closer to me, aligned your body with mine, wrapped your arm around me and lay your hand over mine.  We lay like that for a little while, but eventually I got up and kissed you on the forehead the way I had done every other morning that I had woken up next to you and then I got ready for work.  You got breakfast, as usual.  Coffee and a cheese Danish for me.  Coffee and a bagel for you.  And you held my hand when I walked to the door.  I still thought things were going to get better.