Keesha couldn't sleep. Curled up into her boyfriend's side, his steady breathing should have had a calming effect, but now it just kept her awake. She was half an hour into counting how many times he breathed when she decided to get up. She could tell how long it had been from the annoying bright green lights from the couple's shared digital clock. According to the clock, it was 4:38AM, and according to the single red dot, there was an alarm set to go off, and she knew it was set to go off in about two hours.
Lifting his arm, she rolled away from him. Legs hanging over the bed, she felt around for her house shoes, (House shoes, she had scoffed, I'm twenty-six, not sixty-two, when her boyfriend bought her a pair. Now she found her feet were too cold without them.) Slipping on the fleece lined slippers, she stood. Padding down the hallway, she held her hands out in front her like a zombie.
Pushing a door open, she shuffled into the small den that doubled as the small apartment's living room, tripled as the room where the cat slept and quadrupled as the home office where she did the case-study reports that she didn't have time to do at work. Curling into the couch, she kicked off the house shoes and grabbed for the blanket that was folded up besides the couch. Finding it, she tossed it over herself and reached around for the television remote.
She turned it on to a brightly colored cartoon, the small guide at the bottom of the screen telling her it was an episode of-- something with the word Flapjack in it-- she had to squint to read it.
Soon, after a few minutes of the babble and psychadelic colors, she drifted off to sleep.
--
Tim awoke with a start, feeling around the bed for the familiar form of warmth that wasn't there. Sitting up, he groggily rubbed his eyes of any sleep that remained and squinted at the clock. 5:06AM. Somewhere else in the house, a high pitched voice let out a yell of happiness, something he could only assume was a cartoon. Running a hand through his hair, he turned and pushed himself out of the bed, cursing himself for having left his slippers in the bathroom.
Shuffling, much as Keesha had done before, down the darkened hallway, he grabbed his slippers from the bathroom, and followed her path into the den, where she was asleep on the couch.
Stepping over the cat's bed, oddly absent of the cat, he went over to the recliner. Watching the show that his girlfriend had fallen asleep to, snickering at a few of the jokes as they were funny and he was very tired.
He, too, found himself falling asleep to the hypnotic tune of the themesong.
--
They both missed the alarm, waking up at 2:14 in the afternoon, Keesha let out a shrill "fuck!" and raced to the phone. Quickly explaining why she wasn't in, the receptionist just laughed and told her to come in. It wasn't as if she had been late before or like she had an important meeting.
She left in a rush, not bothering to wake up Tim or feed the cat.
--
Tim woke up at exactly three, when the cat jumped on him. He, too, let out of swear and rushed to the phone.
Luckily, he remembered, he wasn't actually scheduled to work that day, fed the cat, and went back to watch some more cartoons.
Life was pretty sweet sometimes.