When he awoke and sauntered from the bedroom he could already hear running water. The slap-slap of his feet on the freezing hardwood was drowned when he entered the kitchen to find her washing the dishes from the night before.
He shivered and pulled on the sleeves of his loose overshirt, balling them up in his fists, as he gazed on her bare back. She arched forward to hand-scrub a lipstick smear from a wine glass (one of a seemingly endless pile) -- his eyes pinballed down the freckles on her back (as they always did). He approached slowly and wrapped his hands around her naked waist, kissing the back of her neck until goose bumps formed. She tensed, didn't speak.
Exhaling and stepping beside her he leaned against the yellowed counter, washing a hand over his face, through his matted hair, anything to avoid eye-contact. She stared and kept scrubbing. He was relieved at how calm she sounded when she finally spoke.
"You're going to have to keep trying, here." She reached to turn off the water for emphasis. "I'm not ready for this to be who you really are."
He furrowed his brow a bit and glanced up at her ponytail, pulled haphazardly, ringlets and waves tickling the what she called her “dinosaur bump” at the top of her spine. She was a statue, wine glass stem consumed by a nervous fist.
Drip, drip, drip.
"I know."
He heard himself say it and all anger washed from his body, down through his cold, numb feet. He found the one crack in the glossy counter top and scraped his fingernail through it, back and forth, digging at the slick blackness that lay beneath. "Okay. It's okay."
He kept on scraping until the tap rushed back on in a hiss, fresh steam reaching upward to her freckled face. Watching the cloud swim over her features for a few seconds he turned and left the room. He walked towards his shoes, towards a front door, towards his cellphone... before tucking his chin and heading to the shower, instead.
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