“No, I don’t want an alarm. I just want to sleep in and snuggle you. I love waking up with you.” I burrowed my face in his armpit.
He lifted his arm and scooted away from me. “I will get out of this bed at nine and not a minute before. It can wait until morning.”
“Ugh, fine.” I rolled away to the side and sat up.
“Where are you going?” he called after me as I padded to the door.
“I think I saw it in your desk in the library.” It would drive me crazy all night thinking it was still missing. The contractor was coming with his team to finish alterations on the home theatre. Neil had wanted a set up closer to what we’d had in the Manhattan apartment, with a comfy bed we could lay on to watch movies. That had been one of the things I’d missed most from the apartment, so I was happy to have it copied here.
It was weird walking around the house naked, because it was so big. It felt like I would bump into someone, even though logically I knew we were alone.
Because he was ridiculously afraid of the loft where I’d made my office, Neil’s desk was in the room he’d designated as the library. I think it was supposed to be some kind of morning parlor, because it always had a lot of sun. Except for now, when the full moon illuminated it. My bare feet slapped on the wood floor in the darkness, and I knew I was close to the desk when my soles landed soundlessly on the Persian carpet. Holding my hands out in front of me, I walked until I bumped into what I was looking for. I pulled the chain to the little desk lamp with the prairie-style glass shade and opened the long drawer that spanned the front of the desk.
Neil’s office in London had been a nightmare of clutter, and his desk was no exception. I shifted through random pens, empty pill bottles, tape, a spilled box of staples—when on Earth did he ever need staples, for Christ’s sake?—and pricked my hand on loose thumbtacks, but I did come up with the checkbook. I thrust it triumphantly in the air, even though I was the only one there.
I was about to run back to the bedroom with it, to gloat about finding it and tease him about the mess in his office, but when I shut the drawer, the computer mouse bumped and the screen lit up with the purple northern lights of Mac OS X.
I’d been checking my email obsessively, hoping to hear a reply from Holli. A war started in my brain, between just check really quick and you can check in the morning. The latter was technically correct; anything in my inbox at the moment would still be there when I woke up. But the former seemed to know that I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep, now that the thought had entered into my head.
Plopping my bare ass on Neil’s leather desk chair, I entered his four digit password—six-nine-six-nine, because he was apparently twelve—and chewed my fingernail nervously as I opened Chrome.
My fingers hovered over the keys when I was prompted to enter my email address and password. Then I took a breath and typed in the information.
I couldn’t stop holding it when I saw “RE: I miss you” in bold black at the top of my emails. My hands shook as I guided the cursor to the subject line and clicked.
Holli and I had always been pretty spare in our communication to each other. We didn’t need a lot of words to get our points across to each other. So when I read, “K. Meet somewhere?” my heart swelled with hope. I leaned over the desk, my head in my hands, and cried as hard as I would have if someone had died. They were happy tears, though, and fearful ones; what if we couldn’t make up? What if it ended up being a disaster?
I wrote back:
I’ll be in the city on Thursday. Meet at Dinicio’s, 9pm?”
When I went back to bed, Neil had dozed off, but he rolled over to spoon me. I pulled his arm tighter around me and held onto it, my fingers playing idly in the coarse hair on his skin.
“Did you find the checkbook?” he mumbled sleepily.
“Yeah, I found it.” I paused, unsure if I should tell him now, or in the morning. What the hell? “Holli answered my email.”
Neil was fully awake now, shifting up on his elbow behind me. “What did she say? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I knew my relieved tears had made my nose stuffy, I could hear it in my voice. He was probably taking that as a bad sign. “She wants to talk to me.”
“And how are you taking that?”
I shrugged. “Cautiously optimistic? What else can I be? I want my friend back, but I’m not blind to the difficulties we’re going to have to overcome.”
He said nothing for a long moment, and then, “I very much hope that those difficulties are easier to overcome than you anticipate.”
“Thanks.” I rolled over and peered at what I could see of his face in the blue light of the alarm clock, and reached up to kiss him.
He rubbed my back and lifted his head. “And if it doesn’t work, I am always here for you. I am always on your side.”
I blinked away my grateful tears and lay back on the pillow. I’d never doubted it…but it was nice to hear.
* * * *
By the time we left Dr. Ashley’s office, I was a wreck of nerves. My whole body was shaking.
“Will you be alright?” Neil asked gently. “You’re trembling all over.”