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Once, you wake up to the blaring of music from the kitchen. It is Saturday morning and you’re still well-screwed from the night before, delightfully full of ache, and you don’t have to open the new shop until ten.
So. It is eight, and your boyfriend is blasting some electronic non-melodious stuff from the other room.
You can’t be too mad, though. Peering around the corner, you see that he is shirtless (a look that always has your vote) and dancing a little while stirring up…
“Whatcha making, babe?” you ask, maybe somewhat cautiously, biting back a smile. When he grins at you, it is sunlight, just like it always is.
“Hey, Becks!” he says, as though the two of you haven’t been living together longer than you’ve been living together, that surprised wash of light that always comes over his face when he sees you. He is surprised by a lot of things. You, too, are surprised, almost constantly, that this long-dead dream somehow resurrected itself and became healthy. Like, came back from the dead and started eating zombie-salad.
Not a perfect metaphor. Anyway.
“Is that muffins?” you ask, incredulous, noting the cupcake pan filled with beige slop, the dollops of blueberry protruding.
“It is!” he says. “Or, they are!”
“Oh,” you say. “You’re sweet.” When you lean over to kiss him, he tastes like a person and also a little like salty muffin batter. He doesn’t taste like a dream anymore, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Once you wake up to notice that your husband is snoring and also late for work.
It’s not like he’s going to get fired, since he owns his own business, but you still want put in that extra effort to make sure he’s living his best life, being his best self. Sometimes, your effort is too much, and he has to put a hand on your shoulder and say your name. Just your name. Slightly sardonic, all kinds of observation in the one word. Rebecca. It grounds you.
Still.
You snuggle close to him. “Wake up,” you sing into his ear, trying to sound sexy but also practical.
He groans. “Don’t wanna.”
“There’s a restaurant out there with your name on it.” You pause. “Literally.”
“And you know how relaxing that is,” he murmurs, turning and pressing his face to your shoulder.
The observation rings true, but still. “It’s almost noon,” you say finally, and he jolts awake. You can see the jolt before the calm sets in again.
“Ah,” he says, reaching for his phone and texting with impressive swiftness, “who needs lunch, anyway?”
You say, “You’re texting one of your minions to open, aren’t you?” while peering over his shoulder, trying to confirm the hypothesis.
“I told you to stop calling my staff—“
“Well maybe someone shouldn’t have bought his waiters yellow uniforms—“
“They were supposed to be ivory, you know that.”
You kiss the annoyed grin off his face. He presses you closer, dropping the phone, pulling away a good two minutes later.
When he looks at you it is evaluating and almost painfully vulnerable. No one else gets to see that. “You can’t win every argument by being a succubus, you know that, right?”
You grin like a cat, stretch. You have an empty afternoon. A group counseling session tomorrow, an improv class tonight, but now? Now it is nothing but this togetherness, this continued journey in being still and flawed and hopeful with another human.
“Watch me,” you say.
Once, it is Monday morning, a bank holiday, and your fiancé doesn’t have to go into the office. So he wakes you up in that way that you’ve agreed on and consented to, and you crash into consciousness with his grin between your thighs and his hair still mussed with sleep.
“Good morning,” you say, after.
“Oh, was it good?” he says, trying for aloof. He can’t pull of aloof, not anymore. Not with you.
“Very good,” you say, and watch him get out of bed, admiring his long body, the way he moves. When he comes back, it is with a pile of DVDs.
“I know you have rehearsal later,” he says. “But I thought we could, you know. Before that.”
“Continue our marathon?” you say, excitement tearing away any remaining sleepiness.
“Well, we can’t leave off with the end of Goblet of Fire.”
You squeal a little and jump out of bed, not bothering to throw on pants. “I’ll get the snacks!” you call from the kitchen.
“Snacks are not a healthy breakfast!” he calls back, spoilsport that he is. When you return, it is with a box of Lucky Charms for you and a box of boring healthy cereal for him. Also a bowl of popcorn and the last of your chocolate frogs.
Halfway through The Order of the Phoenix, you start annoying him with the chocolate frog. “I want you to eaaat me,” you say in a low frog voice, making it hop from his shoulder to his nose. “Eaaat me.”
“I thought I already did that,” he says, batting it away with a laugh.
“No, I’m being the frog.”
“Are you sure?” he says, very seriously, and you realize he’s addressing the frog. A moment passes and he shrugs. “Okay,” he says, almost reluctantly, and takes a bite, grimacing as he swallows.
“Wow,” you say, after you eat the rest of the chocolate amphibian, “eating chocolate in the morning? For me? You must really like me.”
“Something like that,” he says before you snuggle into one another and pay attention to the movie again, allowing the morning to turn into afternoon. Every so often his finger traces your arm, and you turn to catch his smile, which is so young, and warm, and free.
You understand.
Once, it is a solitary morning. It is a year from when you told the three of them you needed to be alone for a while; the store has spread to two other locations, and you’re getting into Chekov. Non-musicals are an easier sell for your performance skills, but you still drag your friends to regional productions of Ragtime and West Side Story and whatever it is passing through California. (You’re taking voice lessons, too, and learning something called speak-singing.)
This kind of morning: where you roll out of bed, sort out your day like a pile of medicine, and take a moment to yourself. The paperwork is sorted, the lines are memorized, and you have half of a new workbook to fill out. With a cup of coffee cooling in front of you, you open it up.
Once, you wake up alone and shuffle into work, happy under the new and strange weight of three open relationships.
Once, it is someone else knocking at the door, and flowers by your sink that you forget to water but they’re still so pretty they make your heart ache.
Once, and eventually, you get older and find more pieces of yourself that are missing. You learn that there are always pieces missing, or rather, pieces that don’t seem to fit. You still focus, you still obsess. You’ll be learning until the day you die, and that’s okay.
Once, you tell your best friend this. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning how to be happy,” you say, sipping iced tea and watching her scribble notes into her notebook, all of her glorious brain able to focus, miraculously, on so many different tasks.
She looks up and laughs, catching your eye. “Cookie,” she says, “I’m so proud of you.”