The hand just above my mouth awakens me. It stays still in the air, an inch above my lips and nose, smelling of nicotine and wood oil. The room is dark and warm and the scent of sleep is everywhere. He sits beside me, eyes closed, hand reached to feel my breath. His own is deep and heavy.
During the first years together I thought this was just the cutest and most romantic thing in the world, and it made me feel flattered and loved. On the third year there was long, dark time before and after he told me, painful break-up and tearful reunion, the long weeks I spent in fear and fury and confusion, struggling to understand all the things this man had done and seen and been done to, this gentle carpenter who had spent half an hour convincing my nephew that crushing beetles wasn't cool. And finally came the night when I woke up again to the familiar hand above my mouth, first time fully understanding what drove him do it, and we hold each other and cried for a what felt like hours.
But that was long time ago. These days, I'm a bit annoyed to be awakened for no reason, when both of us have a full day of work ahead. It's been twelve years since anyone he loved has died, and I think he should be able to reassure himself already. He agrees, but sometime caves in, although rarely nowadays. More than I know of though, because he really tries not to wake me up.
He sees my open eyes now and pulls his hand back, hoping me to fall into sleep again, but I'm wide awake now and rise to sit next to him. I take his hand, the same one he held above my lips, the one without the needle marks, and kiss it softly. "Jesse, I'm not dead."
He looks at me closely, the fear that must have been there for him to check my breath in the first place now completely gone, replaced by slight embarrassment and pure joy that's totally between him and himself, happiness that I can never share or understand, because even though I love him, I don't have it in me to feel that kind of sparkling joy on daily basis or even monthly basis just because he is, surprisingly at the age of thirty-seven, still alive. That happiness belongs completely to him.
"I know", he says with a little laugh. He leans forward and kisses my forehead, carefully as if he had never done it before. "Sorry that I woke you up."
