On the first night, Cloud came home from his deliveries and went straight to their new bed and fell asleep. After closing the bar, Tifa decided to join him. She changed into a tank top and shorts and crawled in bed beside him. She put her arms around him, enjoying the feel of his body against hers. The next thing she felt was the coldness of the floor and the sensation of all of the air being knocked out of her lungs from the impact.
II.
On the next night, quite a few nights later, Cloud came home from his deliveries. He apologized profusely yet again for tossing Tifa out of the bed and went straight up to their room to sleep. A few hours later, she joined him, this time crawling in close, but not too close. Just enough to barely touch, but not enough to trigger his unconscious reflexes. Her body ached to be touched, to be loved. She thought of him as she touched the places that made her hot and shaky. The places that made the loneliness go away, if only for a few minutes.
III.
One night, Tifa went to the empty bed early. Cloud was still out on a delivery that he should have returned from quite some time ago. He had purchased a replacement phone, but never turned it on, making it nearly useless. She thought that maybe it was better for him to be away. It seemed to hurt less than when he was here. How could someone be so close yet still feel so far away? She resigned herself to another night alone and fell asleep.
IV.
Later that night, she awoke to find a pair of arms wrapped around her. She smiled and went back to sleep. They were in the same position when they awoke in the morning. There was only one thing to do. As he started to disengage himself from her, she grabbed him firmly by the arm and tossed him over her and onto the floor. She laid quietly on the bed until she heard him catch his breath, then joined him on the floor. He smiled a rare smile then pulled her down beside him. The ways in which he touched her on that morning and the many others that followed caused the loneliness she had carried for so long to fade and then finally disappear.