Wait For Me
Breathing deeply, I exhaled on a small sigh, playing with a strand of my freshly dried, unruly, curly red hair, which I'd just spent an hour drying after my hot bath. The apartment, I'd decided a few minutes ago, was much too quiet. I'd just been too comfortable to move to fix the problem. When the phone rang, though, I leapt up to answer it. The prank callers just put my mood farther into the pits. While I was still out of my comfortable chair, I turned on the stereo and the last song I had listened to started playing again.
I could picture him here with me now, though he had told me yesterday that he wouldn't be back until tomorrow sometime in the afternoon. Ryan had left before I'd woken up this morning at six for my earliest class. It was very odd not to see him just waking up or showering when I came back from my early History class. Not a good type of odd either.
I hadn't liked the feeling that I had gotten when I had come back and not found him there, a feeling that lingered all day. I was not at all comfortable coming home to an empty apartment and knowing that I wasn't supposed to expect him back until the next day. I'd never lived totally on my family of four others, and rooming with two other girls before renting an apartment with Ryan.
He'd told me two years ago, a few months into the relationship, to listen to that particular song whenever I started missing him. So I started playing it on repeat when I went to bed. Now, if I slept without him, during a day-time nap or when I went to bed earlier than he did, I started doing the same thing. And he would usually turn off the music when he joined me at night after he'd stripped down to his boxers and crawled into bed beside me for the night.
And that was what I did tonight. I curled up in our big, empty bed with my song playing and fell into an exhausted, but light sleep.
I woke up a few hours later with the music still playing. My sigh turned into a yawn as I sat up and pushed away the warm blankets. I shut off the stereo and slowly walked down the small hallway to the kitchen after deciding that a cup of hot chocolate was a good idea.
The wooden floorboards creaked almost eerily under my bare feet as I warmed the milk and dug out a packet of cocoa mix. When I had mized them together, I curled up in Ryan's soft-leather recliner, pulling my feet up and tucking my bare toes into the crease under the arm rest.
I sat there, sipping my drink and watching the snow fall outside, for almost an when I had grudgingly decided to go rinse my cup and try to sleep again, the lock on the door clicked.
My heart leapt into my throat and I looked quickly around for some sort of weapon. Finding only magazines, newspapers, and a few empty cups, I rushed into the bedroom behind me and grabbed Ryan's baseball bat. Peeking around the corner, I saw the door just start to open towards me, so I brought the bat up, readying it.
I couldn't make out a body yet, but I heard keys jungle and fall freely out of the lock into a muffling hand. When they fell into the small bowl that I had put by the door, I jumped. A male sigh had every muscle in my body freezing, even as the light in the short hallway flicked on.
I must have looked quite comical, as he laughed as he hung up his coat in the small closet, letting the front door swing quietly shut behind him.
"And here I thought that you would have been sleeping when I got in, so I could wake you with the drugging kisses and soft love words, like the heroes in those books that you're always reading," he joked, smiling tiredly. "Are you going to put my bat down or beat me with it?"
I frowned, my heart still racing. "I should beat you with it, considering the heart attack you almost gave me! Ryan Thomas Thompson, don't you ever do that to me again!" I chastised, shaking the bat at him like my mother used to shake her finger at a naughty child.
He laughed, grabbing the end of the bat and pulling me towards him. I let him take it from my shaking hands and lean it against he wall. Ryan pulled me up againsthim and brused a soft kiss across my forehead before pressing my head down onto his hard, warm shoulder. I sighed, willing my heart to finish slowing down, and wrapped my arms securely around his equally hard, warm waist.
"I meant to surprise you, not terrify you, Kat. Sorry," he murmured. We moved together to the fluffy mattress in the bedrom and laid down under the blankets, close together.
"So why are you back tonight? You weren't supposed to be back until tomorrow afternoon," I reminded him, stifling a yawn.
He smiled down at me. "I know. And though I also know it's sappy and a bit cliche to say, I couldn't stay there any longer. I missed you too much," he admitted, tucking me in closer to his side. "So tomorrow, before class, I'm going to call the boss and see if I can't get some other kind of non-leaving-over-night-type job."
I nodded, hoping it worked out. "But if he doesn't give you anything else?" I had to ask.
He shrugged, shifting his big body around until he was more comfortable, and moving me in the process. "I guess I'll have to find a job elsewhere." As I opened my mouth to argue, he covered it with a soft yet firm kiss. "Not tonight. You can voice you're objections when I'm coherent enough ot listen in the morning. Goodnight."
Yawning again, I slid into sleep promising him that I would voice many objections in the morning.
Though I never did.