Sleeping Tigers by Robinson Holly

Author:Robinson, Holly [Robinson, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-17T07:00:00+00:00

I only had toddler food in my kitchen: bananas, peanut butter, oatmeal, apple juice, and milk. David didn’t seem to mind. He rummaged about in my galley kitchen and slathered a banana with peanut butter for breakfast.

It was seven o’clock. We had only fallen asleep a couple of hours ago and I wanted David to come back to bed so that we could make love again. This surprised me. With Peter, sex was such a rote activity, a task to be crossed off our lists, that by the end of our relationship we were both relieved when it was over.

David, though. Oh, David. With David, sex was the best sort of conversation, the kind of exchange that covers all the bases and lets each of you say what’s on your mind. I didn’t want to miss a word.

Our love making had included actual words, too. Everything from simple questions, like, “Do you like that? Do you want this?” to phrases that would have made me blush if I had read them online. We talked, we moved, we rested, we talked and moved some more, each of us tender and frenzied by turn.

I hadn’t even flinched when, halfway through, David had stopped to touch my scar, tracing a finger along the curve of my breast and then kissing it. “What happened here?” he asked solemnly. I told him, and he kissed my breast again.

“You don’t mind it?” I asked. “It doesn’t put you off?”

“Of course not. It hardly shows.”

He meant it. Still. I had to be able to tell him this one thing. “I feel flawed,” I ventured. “Like a teacup with a chip in it.”

He smiled. “They look more like soup bowls to me.”

I punched him lightly on the arm. “The thing is, I keep wondering if the whole handle will break off next, you know?”

David looked at me with those dark, kind eyes and then kissed me full on the mouth. “We all get to be new once,” he said. “And then we all have to survive the dishwasher. You’re a beautiful woman, Jordan,” he had added, and I believed that he meant it.

“You all right?” David asked now, leaning down to kiss me good morning.

“Sure.” I propped myself up on the pillows, bleary from lack of sleep and cotton-headed with a throbbing hangover. I wished I had a comb and a mirror, or that I could at least brush the sweaters off my teeth before David kissed me goodbye.

I took his hand and held it to my cheek, hoping to persuade him to stay a little, but then the doorbell rang. It had to be Karin with Paris. Who else would appear at this hour?

It was as if someone had thrown a switch from forgetting to remembering. Immediately, I was conscious again of Paris, of how much I missed her. Her blanket was still tucked beneath my pillow, where I’d stashed it after David fell asleep, just to have her smell nearby. Now the waiting was over. Hangover

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