Waiting for sleep

She could hear her heart thumping still, almost feel the caffeine coursing through her veins. What hospital coffee lacked in taste and quality it more than made up for with strength.

They'd sent her home; he'd nodded his agreement.

"Get some sleep," they'd said, all of them.

As if.

She wasn't sure if she was unable to sleep as much as she was plainly unwilling, vaguely superstitious that her staying awake was somehow keeping him alive.

She thought about reading but the words danced meaninglessly in front of her strained, puffy eyes. Sure, there were magazines, with photos and bright colors and no need to focus, but the glossy smell made her faintly nauseous and probably always would, carrying with them the recent memory of furiously flicking from page to page in a hospital waiting room, as though that would make time past faster somehow, bring him back to her sooner.

She flung her arms behind her head and waited for sleep, but waited with her eyes open. Come if you must, but don't expect to be welcomed.

"Get some sleep," he'd said, the way you might say "be careful out there", or "look after yourself". Meant, fully meant, and yet fully meaningless.

She buried her face in her pillow, and wondered if she might cry, but the pain, the anxiety, the loneliness, the fear came from a deeper place than tears do.

"Get some sleep," he'd said, and she thought about that. She thought about the tenderness in his eyes, his concern for her in the midst of her own emergency. The way he had lacked the strength to squeeze her hand. Their story did not feel finished. There had to be more. Had to be.

She thought about -

A button and a distraction

Her button was undone.

He wished he hadn't noticed, but there it was, he had, and he could not go back and un-notice it.

Just that one button. Just enough so that he could see the little pink bow on her bra, a chaste Midwestern bra, he liked to imagine, because when would she have time to be anything other than chaste? He'd seen to that.

Someone should probably tell her. But how to do it subtly, subtlety not being his strongest suit at the best of times? How to say the words Donna and button without finding himself saying bra and betraying his wandering, iniquitous thoughts?

Through the crack in his door he saw the solution: Carol. Probably coming to pore over the Lemon Lyman website with Donna. He supposed it was an activity best enjoyed with friends.

"Just the person," he said, breezing - hopefully breezing - past the bullpen.

"Hi," said Carol, uncertainly. "Me?"

"Hi." He still didn't know how he was going to word it. "Could you step into my office?"

"Sure." She followed him, then waited. "Was there -"

"Yes. Listen, I know this is going to sound -"

Sitting at his desk, he looked at Carol and then past her: it was a reflex of which he was no longer conscious, this constant glancing towards the bullpen. He noticed, with a little disappointment, that Donna had already, well, rectified the situation.

"Never mind."

"Okay," said Carol, slowly, as if talking to a dim-witted child.

He heard them laughing, her and Donna. He imagined them exchanging rolled eyes. And he felt a little wounded at his thwarted act of gallantry - of selflesness, even, because although the barely open shirt had been a distracting sight it had certainly not been an unpleasant one, just a glimpse of what could be their future, if only, if he only, if circumstances only, the familiar scenarios running through his mind and always the same conclusion, the same defeated conclusion that the little pink bow on the chaste Midwestern bra was a long way out of his reach, years perhaps, forever perhaps, because surely she would get tired of waiting, if she was in fact waiting, waiting for him, and why shouldn't she, he was, after, all the picture of gallantry.

But. Yeah, yeah. He knew the reality of it.

He put his head down on his desk and counted to ten slowly.

Thanks to Judy Reeves for the writing prompt in her Book of Days, "her button was undone".

All her smiles

He rolled onto his side, propped up his head with his elbow, and took in the sight of her. He had always loved her smile, all the versions of it: flirtatious or deeply contented or even snide. Perhaps his favorite was the one that told him she was humoring him, or perhaps it was the one from that night months ago: no. The no that signalled that do you want another drink was not the right question.

"So," he said now, when he'd watched her for almost longer than was polite. "Where do you want to go?"

"On honeymoon?"

He knew she loved that word, with its promise of sweetness. There's going to be a wedding, he'd said, kissing her neck, and whispering into her ear. And everybody is going to be looking at you and wondering how I ever got you to say yes. She hadn't faltered. They don't know you like I do, she'd replied, and he wondered why he'd allowed something so petty and insignificant as his job to delay this moment; he could have been kissing her like this for nine years.

She always sensed his pensiveness in those moments and pulled back, made him articulate his regrets so that she could reassure him again: We're here now, and that's all that matters. One day she would tell him about the letters she wrote him and then tore into a million pieces, about the enormous tubs of ice cream, about the soggy pillows, but not yet, not until he'd learned she wasn't going anywhere.

"There's a place somewhere called Paris," she said, leaning on her own elbow.

"In Wisconsin, I think."

"There are actually two in Wisconsin."

"Well, you pick one, and that's the one we'll go to."

She punched his arm, not much of a punch, really more of a tickle.

"Oh," he said. "Wait. There's another place called Paris, somewhere, no? Somewhere with a romantic language?"

"And amazing shopping," she said, a little too quickly, he thought.

"We are not going on honeymoon so that you can go shopping," he said.

"Even if I were buying lingerie?" She said it, lingerie, with an almost perfect French accent, as though he weren't enthralled already.

"I guess in that case that might be okay," he said, kissing her nose, her cheek, her hair. Thinking about taking her shopping, thinking about the dresses she would wear, thinking how amazing she would look, thinking about her smile when he would tell her so, realizing that was his favorite one of all.

Thanks to Judy Reeves for her prompt in A writer's book of days: "there's a place somewhere called Paris".

Requiem: post ep

He wanted Donna.

After a day like that one, he wanted to go home to Donna. He wanted to sit on the couch with her and reminisce. He wanted to have her hold him. He wanted to rest his head on her shoulder, or to cry into her chest. Nothing seemed so bad when she was with him; just being with her took the edge off his pain.

But he hadn’t been quick enough with his offer.

He remembered that day on the campaign trail, that day in New Hampshire when he’d said to her, you should be with me. But he hadn’t been quick enough, then, either, quick enough to call her after she left, or quick enough to see beforehand that she wanted a challenge, that she needed to get out, to get some fresh air.

He didn’t want for the two of them to keep missing out because he wasn’t quick enough.

He wanted her. For the passion, for the fun, that stuff, yes. But most of all, most of all, he wanted to go home to her.

He realised now that was what he had been feeling for eight years. That having her there was reassuring, the way home is, or a favourite pair of slippers, or the way your pillow moulds to your head. Home, horrible cliché that it was, might be where the heart is after all.

He didn’t know if he was ready for the grown up stuff. He didn’t know if he even wanted it. But this he did know: home didn’t feel like home without Donna anymore.

Are you in love with Josh?

She opens the diary again, flicks through it with her thumb, snaps it shut, allows no emotion to cross her face.

“No,” she says at last, and when she’s sure she can keep her voice steady she turns and meets the interrogation in Amy’s eyes. “No.”

She feels, oddly, nauseous and ashamed, that she is betraying him through her lack of courage. But she has never heard herself say it, nor has anyone suggested it, not out loud, not with words, not so bluntly, though she knows how to interpret the looks that Carol shoots at her on her way past the bullpen, knows that she and Margaret occasionally gossip, suspects it might in fact be more than occasional. One day, one day, she will say it, very quietly, to herself, and on that day she will have some decisions to make, but that day is not today, and this is not the person, and this is not the place.

“Okay,” says Amy, swigging the very last drops out of a bottle with obviously feigned nonchalance. She shrugs, forces a laugh, as though the question had cost her nothing, as though the barefacedness of the lie did not feel like a punch in the stomach, as though Donna’s very inability to admit so much as a fleeting interest did not confirm every suspicion she has had, every moment when she has felt Josh was less than fully present with her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me ask that.”

“It’s the beer,” says Donna, recovering her I love what you’re wearing tone. “It makes all of us ask all kinds of strange things. Of ourselves and other people.” She feels light-headed now, wants to sit down, to disappear, to be away from all of this, far far away with some ice cream in a dark movie theater maybe, she doesn’t want to think about it and now all of a sudden it’s been forced on her, after all these years of dodging and ducking mostly successfully it’s right there staring at her and she wonders if the color has drained from her face, she wonders how much longer she can sound breezy and unconcerned and not at all jealous.

“I guess you have work to do,” says Amy, and Donna doesn’t argue.

“Yeah. Thanks for letting me know about the Wellingtons.” She watches her go, puts her head down on her desk, and she knows she won’t get any work done tonight, at least not until she can stop feeling as though she is shaking, adrenaline coursing through her, fight and flight both appealing alternatives, appealing and unrealistic, like so much else in her life.

True at first light and a lie by noon

At first light when her eyes prised themselves open to the high-pitched insistence of her alarm clock, her first thought was always this: today. Today she would do it. Today, she would walk into his office, close the door, and go to a place called say it. She’d seen that in a TV show and in the TV show it had worked, although it had taken a few episodes for the guy to talk the girl round.

But at first light she always knew there would be no talking round necessary. That he would not speak, and this would be very, very good, because the reason he would not be speaking is that he would pull her close, right up close, that she would feel his breath on her neck and his hand running through her hair and his lips on hers. Or, it would be very, very bad, because the reason he would not be speaking is that he would be sitting at his desk, head tilted, brow furrowed, speechless, silently pleading a God he did not believe in for the ground to swallow them both whole, for this not to be happening.

And always, at first light, it seemed to her that even this unhappy outcome would, in the end, be very, very good, because at least it would all be out there, in the open, un-take-back-able, but they could both breathe again and enjoy the lightness of the cleared air and agree to never mentioning it again and not allowing it to change anything; and it would be done, it would be behind them, they would have survived the moment of truth, and the heavy sense of imminent dread that it needed to happen someday would be gone, vanquished, at last.

And yet, by noon, she’d remembered: experienced afresh the tiny electric shocks that ran through her when he leaned over her to pass her some important files; the unresolved tension that crackled between them and seemed best left undisturbed; the risk, the enormous risk, the terrifying risk of upsetting the balance of their relationship, and for what, in the end? As she sat in his office making notes for a letter or reeling off facts from index cards, she always knew that the pulling-her-to-himself scenario was the unlikeliest of all, and did she want to have to cower in shame and leave this job which for all its grunt-level servitude she adored, the privilege of serving which she adored, this boss whom she adored more, way more, than any of the rest of it?

And so by noon, she was always thinking this: tomorrow. Tomorrow she would tell him.

After Ernest Hemingway (who would, ahem, be delighted, I'm sure, to know that his words were inspiring girlie fan fiction), "True at first light and a lie by noon", with thanks to Janet Fitch for using it in her Writer's Book of Days.

The Cold

She thinks she saw a smile, just the hint of one at the corners of his mouth, but is that supposed to be some kind of consolation?

Even worse, was it sympathy? I'm sorry you got it so wrong?

But she's been replaying the kiss all day and it did not seem then that she had got it wrong. It was unmistakably desire that she read in his eyes. It was unmistakably desire that she tasted, desire not born of a moment of random lust but the kind that builds and builds over years, a decade almost, desire and tenderness and the sense that this is what everything has been leading to, like the climax on the penultimate page of a novel. Unreasonable sense, misleading sense, deluded sense, not sense at all, she now realizes.

She wonders how she will face him tomorrow.

She left everything out there on the table, everything, not just a key in an envelope. Her heart. Her dreams. Her aspirations, so inexorably bound up in him.

And now - rejection. Shame. Deep, deep embarrassment. She thought she knew what that felt like - but silly incidents with old underwear pale into insignificance now. Because this is not just mortification - this is pain at its sharpest and deepest. She's made herself vulnerable, opened herself up, shown her cards instead of clutching them to her heart like she's attempted to all these years. And the result? Just this sense of being repeatedly kicked in the stomach. And her whole body aching for him.

What lies before me? is what she'd think if she were at all able to be coherent when she p0urs herself the last glass of room-service wine, not quite chilled enough to be pleasant even in the best of circumstances, even if, say, they were drinking it lying together on the bed, afterwards,  laughing at their years of playing cat and mouse. What lies before me? Another day of putting up a front. The mask goes back on. Keep calm and carry on, that's what the British say, but she doesn't see how she can walk this one back. Everything else can be explained away - you look amazing is something you can say to your sister - but not this. This is the first time she has been absolutely clear. And it will be the last.

Unless there's magic...

She's pretty sure the magic came and went today. She drains her glass, buries her face in the pillow, and allows the pain to flood her face.

She shivers.

She's cold. So cold.