Page 65 of Come Back to Bed
She rests her head against my shoulder. “Matt McGovern. I know your secret.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re even more handsome on the inside.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
She sneezes into her hands. I grab an antibacterial wipe from the packet she has by the bed, to wipe her hands for her. She pushes her lower lip out, pouting.
“So sweet…I’m sorry I wanted to slap you. I don’t anymore.”
“Thanks. You wanted to slap me?”
When I touch her face to see how warm her skin is, she puts her hand over mine. “Why are you here?”
“To make sure you don’t have any weird side effects.”
“But why areyouhere with me?”
“Because I like you.”
She sighs. “I like you too,” she whispers. Like that’s a secret we’re keeping from the world. Although, I suppose it is. We’ve been keeping it from each other too. “This is where everything makes sense. In bed. With you.”
I know exactly what she means, but it makes me sad. I’ve come to love the time we spend together in our apartments, but there’s an awesome city out there and I have a feeling it would feel even more awesome to be out there with her.
I stay with her until she’s fast asleep, write a bunch of work emails, and then watch a movie on my laptop in the living room with the volume turned way down. I take Bernadette’s keys with me when I walk Daisy and then bring a dog bed and chew toy as well as my own toiletries and a change of clothes back to Bernadette’s for the night.
I’ll sleep on the sofa.
I set up Daisy in her dog bed on the bed with Bernadette.
I lay back on the sofa and stare at the painting on the fireplace mantle, the one of the forest edge.
I don’t usually look at a piece of art and say “I want that,” but I just want it. If I hadn’t known that she was the one who painted it, would I still have such a strong impulse? Maybe not. But she did. She had the impulse to make it, and she made it beautiful, and I want it.
Maybe I just want a piece of her, because I know I can’t have all of her.
I don’t know.
I just want it.
I get up and look around. I’m never going to be able to fall asleep this early. I can smell the candles and soaps and dried herbs from the care package her mother sent. I’m so curious about her parents. She hardly ever talks about them. I’m so curious why Bernadette is so hesitant to leave her executive assistant job, and yet her favorite book is about two young artists who live to make art in New York.
I see a sketchbook on top of the coffee table and pull it to my lap. Surely this isn’t a journal. Surely she wouldn’t mind if I looked through it.
Or maybe she would mind it. A lot.
On each page, I see drawings of a man, and of a man and a woman together. It’s not obvious, but I recognize myself in those hasty sketches. I recognize us, and how it feels when we’re together. I get a full-body chill. Maybe I’m coming down with something too. Or maybe I can’t believe she was able to capture what it’s like for us to be together with lines and shadows, when neither of us seems to be able to say it with words.
* * *
When I wake up, Bernadette is standing over me, staring at me with pink-rimmed glassy eyes.
“Hey.” I sit up. “You okay?”
She starts to say something and then has a phlegmy coughing fit. When she’s done, she sneezes and then curses. At least she’s moving through the symptoms fairly quickly. She touches her throat and pouts, and I can tell she means it’s sore.
“Don’t talk. I’ll make tea. Do you have eggs? Should I order breakfast?”
