… ✦ …
I have never in my life woken up somewhere and not wanted to leave. I don't know what to do with this.
The light was grey and early, the kind that hasn't decided yet whether it's morning. I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling and tried to be analytical about it … tried to break down the sensation into components I could file somewhere useful.
I couldn't.
Derek's arm was across my waist. He was still asleep, breathing slowly, face turned away. I watched the ceiling and waited for the familiar pull … the one that always came eventually, the need to be somewhere else, to be the one who left first. I waited for it the way you wait for a word that's sitting right behind your tongue.
It didn't come.
That was the part I couldn't catalogue.
I slipped out from under his arm by deg
