A lazy warmth surrounded Mindy as she opened her eyes. She was nestled in beside Danny in this cocoon they'd made with the sheets. Spooning. Six months ago if someone had told Mindy that she would be spooning with Danny Castellano naked, she would have checked their temperature and asked what kind of acid they had just dropped. She smiled to herself.
His arm had slipped under hers and was draped across her midsection brushing against the bottom of her breasts. At each point where their bare skin touched a tingling frisson coursed through her. She could feel the hot breath on the back of her neck where his face was burrowed. She shivered.
It was late morning. The sun coming in through her bedroom window was the bright yellow of a clear day. The clock on the bedside table showed half past nine. Ah, Sunday. She could spend all day exactly like this, but currently nature was calling. She loathed the idea of leaving the warmth of this nest, and from the feel of Danny pressed up against her she could tell he was receiving a call of an altogether different kind from nature. But, biology be damned, she had to relieve herself.
She extracted herself from Danny's embrace as delicately as she could. He was a heavy sleeper. The friction of her legs slipping from between his gave her goose bumps. When she left the bed, he rolled over onto his back and drew the sheets up to his chin. Mindy suddenly pictured him as a child hiding from things that go bump in the night. She felt her chest constrict. Vulnerable Danny was something she'd rarely been privy to. He was always so argumentative and confident when they were together. She dragged her gaze away from her bed and turned towards the bathroom.
When she emerged a few minutes later Danny was still snoozing quietly in her bed. He looked at home there. She had frozen in place, caught somehow, staring. The image of him in the bed, his face so open and relaxed, had her frozen. It made her wonder if she even really knew him. She'd been holding her breath without realizing it.
She sucked in a lungful and cleared her throat. She needed water, or something. She started to sneak out into her apartment, but unexpectedly felt self-conscious traipsing around naked. She saw Danny's shirt lying on the floor and scooped it up. It smelled like laundry soap and her body wash. It smelled like Danny. She whipped it around her body and slid her arms into the sleeves.
The crisp material brushed against the tops of her thighs, whispering as she walked. There were few things she found as sensual as wearing a man's shirt after a night together. It was like he was still with her, the unbuttoned panels caressing her skin with each step.
She slipped through her bedroom door and headed to the kitchen. Her apartment looked different. The bright light cascading through the windows illuminated a telling scene. The kitchen was a mess after last night's cooking lesson. They hadn't exactly taken the time to clean up after themselves. Other things had gotten in the way. Mindy liked her messy kitchen. Normally it was this pristine and utterly unused expanse in the middle of her chaotic apartment, but right now it had a nice lived in look.
She pulled a glass out of one of the cabinets and stepped over to the sink to get some water. Just as she shut off the tap and raised the glass to her lips, Mindy's doorbell sounded. She wasn't expecting anyone. Danny was here. The only person it could be was Rishi, but he had a key and made no bones about using it.
She set the glass back down on the counter and quickly buttoned up the shirt as she walked to the door. She crept up to the door panel tentatively. There was always a chance this was someone she really didn't want to see. She didn't want whoever was on the other side of that door hearing her sneak up to the peephole.
She pressed both her palms against the wooden paneling and slowly lifted up on her toes. The second she looked through the hole an audible, "Oh!" escaped her lips. She jumped back from the door, but it was too late.
"Mindy?!" His voice rang clear through the barrier. "I know you're there. I heard you."
She was frozen in place. Her mind was racing, looking for ways to avoid opening the door. She did not want to talk to Casey. There was nothing to say. She'd thought she'd given a clear enough hint by not answering any of his messages.
She would have just yelled through the door and asked him to leave, but she didn't want to wake Danny. She stepped back up to the door and flipped the lock but left the chain on. She opened it the allotted four inches and peered through the slot. "Casey, do you need something?" She continued to gaze at him innocently through the opening.
"Mindy, I need to talk to you, and you haven't been answering any of my calls or texts." He glanced up at the chain on the door and then back down at her face. "What's this? I'm not exactly a burglar, Mindy."
She exhaled, blowing he bangs from her face. "I'm not actually dressed right now, ok? And, I don't think we really need to have a discussion. We've already said what we needed to. Come on, Casey, I don't understand why you're here right now."
Casey pushed his head closer to the opening. "Not dressed? It's not like there's anything I haven't seen." He gave her a crooked smile. "Come on, I can't talk to you like this, just let me in for a little bit."
It was true that there wasn't really much to see, especially not anything that he hadn't already seen, but Mindy felt ill at ease with the thought of Casey barging in right now. Danny's jacket and belt were both resting in the floor behind her. Anyone could tell what went on here last night even without the neon sign that she had just buttoned up. "Five minutes, Casey. That's it."
Reluctantly she pushed the door closed to unlatch the chain. When she opened it again, Casey glided through without a second's hesitation. He leaned forward to kiss Mindy on the cheek, but she placed her hand on his shoulder and stayed the motion. "Please, just make this quick. What it is you need to talk about?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short. A puzzled look came over his face as he took in Mindy's appearance. Then he glanced around the foyer, taking in the jacket and what was obviously a man's belt. "Do you have someone here?" The volume of his voice raised a bit.
Mindy flushed. She stepped closer to him and pushed him back towards the door. "Can you keep it down?" She glanced over her shoulder towards her bedroom door. "Obviously I do. Now, will you just say what you need to say and get it over with?" She was speaking in hushed tones.
Casey continued to look at the jacket and belt in the floor and then back to Mindy. The puzzlement left his face when it dawned on him that he'd seen the jacket before. The smile he'd been wearing when he'd slipped into the apartment was quickly replaced with a grim expression. "I suppose what I'm about to say is going to fall on deaf ears, but I still feel the need to say it."
He looked closely at her. "Giving up on us in Haiti was a terrible mistake. I know things were trying down there, but I bowed out at the first whiff of discontent. That's not how it's supposed to be between two people who love each other." He took a deep breath and continued. "It's not as though the doubts you expressed hadn't passed through my mind at times too. But that's how the lord works sometimes. There are tests, Mindy."
He was becoming impassioned and making grand sweeping gestures with his hands. Briefly, it was as though she wasn't even there. He had that same look he gets when giving a sermon. "Sometimes you don't see them for what they are. The lord tests his subjects, and I failed. I know now that I have to confront these issues."
Mindy tried to interrupt his soliloquy. "Casey, it's not-" He breezed on past her attempt to speak.
"It's not as though I wasn't aware of our differences. I had convinced myself that I was ok with you not believing the same as myself, and that was wrong. It's my duty as a Christian to spread the word of God. When I became content to let you, the person I loved, live in ignorance of God, it was a dereliction of that duty."
He stepped forward and placed his hand on her face. "I can never forgive myself for becoming so complacent. I love you, and I need you to understand this. I need your eternal soul to bathe in the beauty of God with mine."
Mindy was absolutely speechless. This was literally the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. She would have laughed had she not been so astonished. The seriousness in his expression quelled the desire to giggle. Her eternal soul? Really? She was staring up at Casey in utter bewilderment when she heard a throat being cleared.
She sprang away from Casey in what must have surely looked like a guilty manner. Danny was standing there, in her living room looking at the two of them. His features were momentarily marred by a look of surprised hurt. She took a step toward him and his name escaped her lips. "This isn't-"
He glanced at Casey then back to Mindy. His faced quickly smoothed into an unreadable blankness. "I'll leave you two alone." He turned on his heel and disappeared back into Mindy's room.
Why had she took the chain off the door? She was kicking herself. She struggled not rush into her bedroom after Danny. She couldn't exactly leave Casey just standing here. She coolly turned her attention back to the man standing at her door.
"Mindy, there's a part of me that's filled with rage when I see how far things have strayed between us, but there's no place for rage in a tranquil heart. I still love you, and I'm willing to put this indiscretion behind us." He stepped up to her again, but she matched him step for step in the opposite direction.
"Indiscretion? Casey, we haven't been together for six months. This is no indiscretion. This is me. This is me living my life. How arrogant is it for you to think that I would have waited for you to 'come to your senses' and come back to me?" She was getting angry. "And just so you know, you're wrong about me coming around. We have profoundly different belief systems. That's not something you can just get over. I was weak before. I was willing to do anything to mold into what you wanted in a partner, but I am not a fundamentally weak person. I briefly lost touch with myself, but I'm back now. I know what's right for me."
Casey looked taken aback. This wasn't the Mindy he had been used to. He'd had no idea she felt this strongly about them. He supposed if this was the "real Mindy" then he didn't really know her to begin with. Before she had been unerringly supportive in everything he did. Although, there was always a chance that this was just the heady influence of starting up with someone new.
He looked down at her flashing eyes and set mouth. Right now more conversation would get him nowhere. "I understand, but I want you to know, I'm here for a few more days, and if you need to talk about anything, or if you have a change of heart, well… you have my number." He turned around and let himself out.
The door latch quietly clicked shut behind him. Mindy was standing there, still filled to the brim with irritation. The gall of the man. Talking about her "indiscretion" and his ability to forgive her for it. She was fuming. She stalked back over to the counter and grabbed her glass of water. She downed it and went to the sink for a refill.
After she drank another glass and got another refill she leaned forward onto the kitchen island. She'd thought this Casey business was behind her, and there he was sticking his nose in and possibly ruining everything. The look on Danny's face when she'd sprung back from Casey's touch. That look. It tore at Mindy. He'd quickly covered with a blank expression, which worried her even more.
She didn't know what was happening between them, but she was sure that Danny was unlikely to give her much leeway. He'd been burned before. He donned such a tough façade sometimes, but sometimes things crushed him and it slipped. She knew he wasn't made of stone. He was just beginning to be easy with her, to open up a bit. The blank expression was like a door being slammed shut.
She pulled away from the island and headed back towards the bedroom. She didn't really know what she was getting herself into, but the next few moves would either make or break it.