Another spasm jacks my stomach, and I hold the cloth over my mouth and nose as bile stings my throat. I can’t help groaning—but I can leave a wash cloth on the bathroom rug. I can tell myself before I fall asleep that if I wake up from that dream, I’ll run in here and grab the towel, even if I’m stuck in flashback land.
So far, it’s been working. I feel a bolt of pride, even as my shoulders shake, my eyes stream, and I struggle to get air through the towel between retching.
Nothing comes up. I’ve found if I cut out food and water in the two hours before I go to sleep, I just get bile, which burns my nose and throat but isn’t as bad as vomit. So far, Gwenna hasn’t heard me, so when I finish, I’ve got time to kneel here, half lost in my memories: penance. I pay it gladly.
Sometimes in the last few days, I’m even thankful for it. In a fucked up way, the demons driving me led me to her. The circularity of fate—the putrid whiff of nihilism I’ve never been able to outrun—seems to have some meaning now.
Would I change this? Yes. I would go back, of course. I would change our course to spare Gwen, and I would likely lose her. Still, I would. Even as I thirst for her, I know I would do anything to change things. Anything.
In the absence of that option, I press my fingers into my dripping eyes and try to pull the blanket of self-hatred over me—for just a minute. I try to see the awful things I see—try to see Gwenna, as she fits into the dream—and I’m finding that I can’t.
I try to feel that pain, the abject pain that used to leave me gasping in my bed, as I wash up. But all I see and feel is Gwen.
The first few nights, I tried to make myself stay in the bathroom paying homage to the memory, to the truth of who and what I am. And I did stand here for a while. But no guilt, no pain can break through the warmth inside my chest, that addict’s tunnel-focus on the woman sleeping in the room behind me.
I climb back into bed, and Gwenna reaches for me in her sleep.
* * *
Gwenna
I press my cheek against his pec and listen to his heartbeat. His chest expands with a deep breath, and his pulse slows down a little.
That’s right, baby…
I feel his arm come gently down around my back. He never puts the full weight of it on me. When he gets sleepy, he moves his arm down to my hip, and that’s the way he drifts off. He must think I’m much more fragile than I am.
I tell myself that’s why he’s lying to me. Because he wants to shield me, not because the thought of getting truly close to me repels him. For someone as kind and conscientious as Barrett—a guy who won’t even rest the full weight of his arm on my chest—to be unable to share themselves with another person— That would be so freaking sad…
When we wake up in the morning, he’ll tell me he slept fine. He doesn’t know I hear him whimpering my name every night before he stumbles to my bathroom and gets sick. I see the washcloth he leaves on the rug beside the tub, or on the tile near the toilet, so he can grab it and press it over his mouth. And in the mornings, when I wake up after he does, I notice it—and everything else we’d both put in my hamper the previous day—fully laundered, still warm in the dryer.
The night after the one where I showered with him, I woke up when he bolted from the bed. When I peeked into the bathroom and found him over the toilet with a towel pressed against his mouth, I went icy cold—and then I crept back to bed.
He slid under the covers a little while later smelling like soap and toothpaste, quiet, with measured breaths, even though when I snuggled against him, I could hear his heart racing.
The weird thing is, I think he suspected I was awake that time. He didn’t seem to relax until I slowed my own breathing and made my body go limp against his. I wonder where he learned to be so observant…but I guess it’s not a mystery.
Everything else about him feels as though it is.
I wonder what he’s dreaming when he writhes and whimpers my name. I wish I knew what’s haunting him.
But I feel like my hands are tied. He’s trying so hard to hide the nightmares from me, and I don’t know why. I don’t want to pry and send him running. Not yet, anyway.
For now, I just accept that the only thing I can give him is the warmth of my body, pressed against his, when he gets back into bed. I love his breath on my neck, the way his chest expands as he inhales against my hair. I love the way his lips tickle my jaw, and most of all, I love the way, when he succumbs to sleep, his big frame softens subtly behind mine.
I feel his muscles
twitch as he sinks into sleep. For the next half-hour or so, I keep my mind alert by saying prayers and making mental lists. I wait until his body coils behind mine and he groans.
He doesn’t wake when I turn around and wrap my arm around his neck and kiss his cheek. I can tell he never feels the first kiss—because he starts to pant, his muscles tighten, and he often groans again. I take that as my cue to kiss his neck.
And it’s magical, the way my mouth and hands, just kissing his neck and stroking his hair, can pull him from that place and back to me. His hands grip me. He’ll murmur “Gwen”—another good sign; during nightmares, I’m “Gwenna”—and then, after a rub of his erection against my thigh, he’ll drift into untroubled sleep.
It all goes off without a hitch tonight. Except instead of rubbing himself against me and nodding off, his hand sinks into my panties, his finger strokes into my pussy, and he presses himself against my ass.
He makes a low rumble in the back of his throat and whispers, “Gwen.”
I push back and rub against him.