She hated nights like these. Nights when she laid awake in bed, staring into the dark, rehashing, reworking, reliving until her brain was too exhausted and too wired for rest. But the exhaustion wasn't the worst, nor was the restlessness. The worst was the deep, pervading loneliness. She wished, not for the first time in recent weeks, months, that she could roll over and reach for someone. Someone warm and inviting, who would tell her to let her mind be still, or who would nudge her into spilling all her thoughts and fears in a moment of terrifying vulnerability, or who would ask no questions as she pulled him close and let the electricity of the body quiet the rioting of the mind. But no. She was alone, again.
She missed Jake. He'd have pulled her on top of him and let her ride until she was too tired to think. Would have told her how hot she was, how good she looked and felt, and the words would have been shallow but enough to distract her from her thoughts.
She thought of Eric, thought of what she'd read in his therapist's file and sighed heavily into the quiet of her bedroom. If only. If only she wasn't too scared to act on it, he'd be here right now. Laying next to her, warm and inviting. He'd listen, and he'd understand, because that's what he did and why he scared her. Letting someone in again, letting someone in as deep as Eric would go without demand or permission, was just... not a risk Calleigh felt she could take at the moment. It would leave her too raw, too shaken. Too open. He always left her too open.
Her heart twisted, ached, and she rolled onto her stomach and buried her face into her pillow. The soft, familiar smell of fabric softener and shampoo was comforting, the slow burn of lack-of-air oddly enticing. Still, she wasn't that far gone, so after a moment she turned her head, puffed out what was left of her breath, then sucked fresh air back in. She needed to sleep. It was late. Turning her face to the clock, she found out just how late. One thirty two in the AM. Her eyes were grainy, and her head was starting to feel cottony. And yet, she was wide awake. Totally awake.
Rolling onto her back again, she stared up into the dark, 1:32 burned into her retinas for a few moments before everything faded black again. A car drove by outside, the sultry rhythm of blaring salsa music invading her silence for a moment before it turned down the next block. Who was blaring music at 1:30 in Bal Harbor, she wondered. When would her brain be quiet? When would she stop missing Jake? When would she stop dancing around the issue with Eric and just talk to him like a grown up?
With another sigh of frustration, she shifted toward the middle of the bed, sprawling out until she made a frustrated, over-tired, under-sexed, very female Vitruvian Man. Except she only had the one set of limbs, and she was ringed not with a perfect circle but with melancholy and misery.
She hated nights like these.
Who would believe this, she wondered. Who would believe that the ever-sunny Calleigh Duquesne spent nights lying awake, brooding and feeling miserable about herself? Hell, half the time she barely believed it. Was this really her? Was she really someone who stayed up nights thinking about how lonely she was? But that was just it – she was lonely. Painfully so. Even more so the more she and Eric grew apart as they grew together. Which made no sense to her, because how could she be lonely at night for a man who never spent nights with her? Certainly not here, in her bed, the way she wished he was right now. Maybe it was just the feeling that their friendship was fading, that whatever this new relationship they were heading for was creating a gap in their intimacy. Jake had certainly put a wedge between them, and even now that he was gone, things just didn't seem quite right. There wasn't the same connection there, the same… no.
No, that wasn't right. He was there. He was right there. Waiting. He wanted to settle down with her, for God's sake! How much more "there" could a man get? She was the one keeping a distance, making sure not to let him too close, lest she be forced to admit that she'd fallen desperately, helplessly in love with him. It was a secret she would share with only the dark of her bedroom on nights like these. Nowhere else would she admit that her heart did a little flutter when she saw him, that she smiled every time his name came up on her cell phone, that his bottom lip drove her to distraction. That when she'd read his file she was stunned silly, so spun that she had lain awake all night thinking about it. About what he wanted. About what she wanted. About how she could make those two things interlock without them destroying each other.
Calleigh groaned, shaking her head hard. Why? Why was she laying here at… 1:46 AM thinking of him? Wishing he were here, wishing her pillowcases smelled of him, wishing his warmth was seeping into her sheets, into her skin, into her body. What would he be like in bed, she wondered.
Passionate. Skilled – he'd had plenty of practice, she reminded herself. He'd be attentive, she thought, and maybe even patient. Wouldn't that be new? A man who was patient with her. Jake had been many fabulous, wonderful things, but patient he was not. He'd much rather drive things fast and furious to a blistering, mind-blowing finish line that left you wondering if you still had toes and fingers. John had been… adequate. She flushed with embarrassment at even the thought, wondering if it counted as speaking ill of the dead when the words never left your mouth. But it was true. He was… in love. He tried. He wasn't half-bad. She almost always came. She made sure he thought she always did. He'd had the uncanny ability to lose it right before she was about to whenever he was on top, which, she thought, may have had something to do with her penchant for taking the reins ever since.
Eric would wait, she knew. He'd consider it a point of pride to make sure she came. Not ego, like Jake making sure she came, and then came again, and then maybe even a third time before he'd finally let himself go in triumph that he could make her body his over and over and over until she forgot her own name. No, Eric would just make sure she never went unsatisfied, because he'd know he had the skill to bring her over. Confidence and pride, not ego. Well, maybe a little bit of ego. Just enough, she thought, and then she wondered if she was trying to conjure Eric into the perfect lover in her brain, and if she was, what kind of a let-down would she face when they inevitably ended up in bed together? He had to have flaws, she reminded herself. Everyone does.
He'd be too clingy, she thought. Not like John, but still. He'd want her to give when she needed space. He'd want to spend nights when she wanted to be alone. He'd want to – what was she doing? Why was she doing this? This was ridiculous. This whole thing was just…. And it certainly wasn't making her feel any less lonely or depressed. God. What was wrong with her? And why – why – couldn't she just fucking sleep??
Groaning and exasperated, she rolled and reached for her phone. She didn't know what possessed her, but she grabbed it off the nightstand and flipped through her address book until she got to the Es. Eric Delko. It was late, almost two AM, but he was a night-owl. And maybe if she talked to him, she could stop thinking about him. Stomach twisting with just a little bit of anxiety, she pressed send. It rang once, twice, and she punched the end button. What in God's name was she doing calling him at two in the morning? He had to be asleep, like any normal person would be.
But then her hand was vibrating, his name flashing on the screen and she swallowed hard and pressed talk. "Hello?"
"Hey. What's up?" His voice was low and sleepy. Shit.
"Did I wake you?" She wished inexplicably for an old landline phone with a cord she could wrap nervously around her finger while she talked to him. Silly. Immature.
"Nah."
"Yes, I did."
"No, I just laid down. Wasn't asleep yet."
"You didn't answer right away."
"…I may have just dozed off," he admitted, and though his tone was still soft and sweet, he sounded more awake now.
"I'm sorry. I should let you go."
"No, hey… It's fine. I'm awake. What do you need?" Always worried about her, wasn't he?
"Nothing." You. Here.
"You called me at two AM for nothing?" She could hear him smirking, could almost see the doubtful look, the raised eyebrow, the boyish smile.
"Do you ever…" No, she couldn't say that.
"Do I ever what?"
"Nothing."
"Calleigh."
"Do you ever get… lonely?" She swallowed hard, waited for… she didn't even know what. What did someone say to a question like that?
"Yeah." Oh. That.
"For no reason, just…" She wasn't quite sure how to articulate it, and thankfully, he didn't make her.
"Bed feeling a little too empty?"
"Yeah."
"Feel disconnected from everything around you?"
"Yeah." Her voice trembled, and she hated it. She would not cry, not over this.
"Do you want me to come over?"
God, yes. "No. It's late."
"I don't mind."
"It's far."
"It's not that far."
"I'm fine."
"Yeah, you're always fine, Calleigh. Even when you're not." She hated when he was right. In fact, she hated it so much that for a while she didn't even dignify it with a response. She watched the minute on the clock change. Twice. He waited for her, the sound of his breathing lulling her.
"Do you still have your key?"
"Yeah. Don't wait up." She could hear him shifting, hear the rustle of fabric and imagine him pulling the covers back, slipping out.
"I can't sleep, remember?"
"Right." She could hear the smirk again, closed her eyes against the dark and imagined it. "Still. Don't do that Southern hospitality thing that you do and have tea and cookies waiting for me or something."
"I'm depressed, and you're teasing me?" But she was smiling. Finally.
"You like when I tease you."
"Do not."
"I can hear you smiling."
She scowled intentionally. "That's not true. You can't hear facial expressions."
"Sure, you can. And your voice changes when you grin. You get… brighter. I like it."
"Yeah?"
"Mmhmm. See, you stopped grinning."
She had. She was still smiling, but softly now. That he knew her so well he could predict her expression when she was miles away both terrified her and comforted her. After all, she was pretty sure she could do the same for him. "Not bright enough?"
"Nah. Smiling maybe, but not grinning. Don't wait up."
"I'll be awake."
"I'll let myself in."
"Okay."
"Goodnight, Calleigh."
"See you soon, Eric." This time when she hung up the phone, she set it on her nightstand and shut her eyes. As much as it pained her to need someone, she'd been right. Talking to him made her stop fretting. Knowing he was on the way made her feel less lonely. She hadn't expected him to offer, but who was she to say no? Well, okay, "a smart person" would probably be the proper answer to that. Inviting him over to spend the night with her, in her bed – because obviously that was the plan if she wasn't supposed to wait up – wasn't going to do anything to ease the growing tension between them, or to keep the professional distance she was working so hard for.
But it was done now. No use fretting over it; she'd done enough fretting for one evening. She looked at her clock again, studied the numbers again until they changed. Her eyes were heavy, but she wasn't tired. Settling, but not quite tired. In fact, she was hungry. She had a rule of never eating after 8 PM, and that had been hours ago. She shouldn't eat, not right before bed, but she wasn't going to sleep until he got there anyway and that was another twenty minutes… and she didn't want to be in bed when he arrived. That just seemed far too intimate, him crawling into her bed in the middle of the night, her in nothing but a tshirt. She could get up, find some pants, maybe put on some tea, have an apple, maybe a cookie. Brush her teeth. Get scolded by a Cuban scuba diver who was coming to her rescue in the middle of the night, like she was a pathetic, needy puppy.
'Oh self esteem, you are always a friend,' she thought with an inward sneer and a heavy sigh as she pushed the covers back. Five minutes later, she had a kettle on the stove and a bag of chamomile tea tucked into an empty mug. She had changed from the tshirt into soft, cotton pajama pants and a tank top. She refused to dwell on the fact that she knew full well her cleavage would draw his eye more in the strappy tank than the old tshirt. It was practical, she insisted to herself. Their combined body heat, coupled with her long pants would make her unbearably warm if she didn't leave enough bare skin to vent some of her own heat. It had absolutely nothing to do with wanting him to want her a little, or with wanting to feel him against her skin. Absolutely nothing.
She was digging in the cupboard for a box of shortbread cookies when the teakettle began to whistle, and she nearly fumbled the package to the floor when she wobbled on her tippytoes at the distraction. Setting the box, unscathed, on the countertop, she returned to the stove and filled her mug with steaming water, bobbing the teabag to help it steep. On impulse, she plucked another teabag that she knew would go to waste, pulled down another mug, and filled it to steep. So it turned out that he found her exactly as he'd asked not to when he arrived ten minutes later – curled in a chair by her kitchen table, with tea and cookies.
She looked up when he walked in, and neither spoke. She studied him now, his pajama-clad form a welcome break from her clock. Eric just raised an eyebrow and nodded toward the tea.
"I was hungry," she murmured, munching a cookie and gesturing for him to join her. There was a small bag slung over his shoulder – work clothes, she figured, and it charmed her some that he hadn't even bothered to put clothes on before he came over. She had to fight not to giggle at the realization that his pajama pants had little scuba divers on them. What a lady-killer he was.
"You don't eat before bed," he reminded as he crossed the kitchen, but didn't sit. Instead he lifted the mug meant for him and took a shallow sip. He'd figure she expected it, she knew.
"It's a little past my bedtime," Calleigh pointed out, snatching up another cookie to busy her hands. Now that he was close, she suddenly itched to reach out and touch him, to feel the heat of him through the thin cotton tank he wore, to tug him close so she could press against him and feel like the world was back under her feet. She hated nights like these.
"It's a lot past your bedtime," Eric corrected, setting his mug back down and reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. Calleigh could have purred at the contact, and her own sudden neediness made her scowl. She hated needy. Hated clingy. Hated especially when it came from her. As such, she deliberately did not tilt her head into his hand when he began to draw it away. "We should get some sleep. Unless…"
"Unless?"
"Do you want to talk about something?"
So many things, she thought, but she shook her head. "I just need to brush my teeth."
"Okay. I'll clean this up; you go."
Her protest died on her tongue as he circled her arm with his hand and tugged her up gently, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. When he insisted again that he had it, and she should go, Calleigh just nodded and padded out of the kitchen.
By the time she finished brushing her teeth, he was already in her bedroom, laying his clothes out on a chair in the corner so they wouldn't wrinkle. There was a tension in the way he moved now that wasn't there moments before, and it took until she sat down on the bed for her to realize where it came from: he'd never been in here before. He'd spent plenty of nights on the couch, sure, but never here, never in her bedroom. Never in her bed.
He settled on the side opposite her, ran his palm over the smooth fabric of her comforter. "I like your room. It's very you."
"Yeah?" Calleigh slid back until she was sitting propped against the pillows, and tugged the covers back over her legs.
"Mmhmm. Feminine and practical. Sexy."
She flushed just slightly, and reached over to kill the bedside lamp in an attempt to hide her blush from him. In the darkness, she felt the bed dip as he moved, felt the covers shift as he slipped underneath them. "You think I'm sexy?"
"Yeah." The way he said it was so simple, so honest, and she wondered again at his ability to express himself so openly. It was a skill she envied.
All she could think to reply was, "You too." It fell flat even on her ears, and she wiggled down further under the covers, wishing she could burrow all the way down and hide herself.
"You smell good," he murmured a moment later, and she could hear that he was already sleepy. She'd kept him up by asking him to come here, but then… he'd offered. And she refused to feel guilty for accepting.
"What?" She itched for him to touch her again.
"The bed smells like you. Like flowers. Smells nice."
"I wish it-" She stopped herself, wished she could undo the words that had already past her lips. The bed shifted again as he inched closer, their bodies still separated by a chasm of empty mattress.
"You wish what?"
It was her turn to shift closer now, but she didn't answer him. In the silence, she heard him breathe, felt the heat of their bodies gathering beneath the covers and it was somehow even more heartbreaking than the empty bed. Pulse tripping, she moved closer again, just by inches, until she could feel the warmth radiating off his body nearby. She felt twitchy and nervous, and silly. He was so close and yet still untouchable, but she knew again that it was only her who put up the boundaries. Still, she couldn't do more than scoot just the tiniest bit closer, and finally, finally, she felt his hand reach out and slide over her belly. Embarrassingly, her whole body seemed to go limp.
As if he'd been waiting for her cue – and of course he had; she set the boundaries after all – his body was moving again, nudging her onto her side until he could spoon against her. In silence, they readjusted, legs tangling, one of his arms cushioning her head, the other wrapping around to caress her belly in slow, soothing strokes. She felt him press a soft kiss into her hair, then another, another, another. "Get some rest, Cal. I'm here now."
And surrounded by the smell of him, by the warmth of him, by the comfort of his body against hers, she finally, finally let herself shut her eyes and rest. It was almost surreal, the feeling of sinking slowly, floating just between awake and asleep. The last sound she remembered was his voice, muffled against her hair, murmuring something soothing and unintelligible. The last sensation the feeling of his skin against hers, his warmth cocooning her. No longer alone, no longer lonely, she finally surrendered to sleep.