Home❤️

You brush a stray strand of hair from Mina's face. She looks so beautiful and peaceful like this. Sleeping like an angel wrapped up in a large blanket. Her hair is sprawled out on the pillow, messy, long and oh so gorgeous. There is this serenity on her features that doesn't exist when she is awake. Not that you've had the chance to check recently. Her lips are slightly parted to allow for soft breaths to escape. Her skin is all white and pristine apart from the few freckles that you dearly love kissing. She is beauty and calm incarnate - all in your bed with your ring on her finger.

Your heart swells, you could look at her like this forever and it still wouldn't be enough. You kiss her cheek, careful to not wake her, and she stirs slightly, coos in unconscious appreciation of your affection.

"I love you, Mina. Have a good day at work," you whisper as you do every morning and off to work you go.

Life with Mina was a blessing. Having this woman around, seeing her decorate the couch with her long legs, illuminate the kitchen with her smile, fill the bedroom with her moans, is the best thing a man could ever ask for.

Stress on was a blessing.

Mina is an ambitious woman, it's one of the million things that drew you to her in the first place. But ambition comes with a price. Late meetings, emergency phone calls, weekends at the office, the work never ends.

You wake up early, go to work early, head to bed alone. You wake up wrapped around her, running too hot but smiling like a teenager in love. You kiss her before you get up from bed, when she stirs, before you leave for work and at least a couple dozen times in between. Because she comes home late, goes to bed wrapped around you, hoping to warm up from the coldness of the outside world, and wakes up when you're gone. She probably kisses you just as sweetly when you sleep too. She looks at you the same way before huddling up next to you and sighing blissfully that she is finally home - in your arms.

Weekends are the saving grace. It's when you're together again, like it was always meant to be. You cuddle in the morning, read next to each other while enjoying the hums of each other's breaths, eat meals in pyjamas - together - and finally talk like you once used to. When life was simpler.

Though, lately even that is slipping between your fingers. You aren't exactly sure you can live only off of these quiet mornings and stolen kisses, but every time you look at her you think you'll be okay. You have to be - you love each other so much.

Here is how your day continues after the last moments you get to spend with her in the morning:

You spend the next 10 hours at a mediocre job, away from home so you can provide for your family. Maybe soon it won't be just you and Mina and you'll have to be ready for that day.

She'd be a wonderful mother; you're sure of it. Besides, having a mini-Mina running around with her laugh and eyes, calling you dad, might be the single greatest thing a man could ever wish for.

You get home to a dark apartment that still faintly smells of her vanilla perfume. You prepare dinner for both of you only to eat it alone. The empty dishes in the sink are reward enough - it warms your heart to know she still enjoys your cooking, reminds you that things between you are still fundamentally the same, only with less time to spare. You sit on your chair and stare at the one opposite it. You know she does the same - same longing and unshed tears in her eyes.

You finish dinner and prepare for bed. You read a bit - alone, no one to share funny phrasing or surprisingly sweet scenes with. Mina was always there with a loving, although tired, smile and a quiet voice appropriate for the late hours.

It hurts, it really does, to have her so close yet so far away every day. To look at her smiling face only through your phone screen as you scroll through photos of you together. This one's from your honeymoon in Paris - she had ripped her stockings on the Eifel Tower, you'd think it'd be safer. You wrapped your jacket around her legs then and told her she was beautiful no matter what because it's true and took a photo on top of the world while looking at your whole world, her tiny waist fitting comfortably in your arms.

This one's from your wedding, her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk from the cake. The look in her eyes is loving and sweet as the glaze on her lips, you remember it like it was yesterday. You could never forget her in that white dress, walking down the aisle, taking your hands, looking into your eyes and saying "I do".

So you have to endure these days and nights. You have to put your phone down and wipe your quiet tiers because she works hard for you. For both of you. For the eventual third or even fourth of you. And you have to go to sleep in a cold, large, empty bedroom that was once filled with her warmth and scent.

Only for it to repeat the next day. And every day, for that matter. You find yourself in front of the familiar door to your apartment for yet another night of feeling the key to your home heavier than it should be. All's going according to well-established routine of heartache and hanging on by a thread of hope and blissful memories.

It's torturous, really. That you have to brace yourself with a deep breath when you turn the key to stifle the disappointment that somehow still accompanies darkness spilling from your apartment when you push the door. It has been a year and some change - not that you're counting (is what you keep telling yourself) - and it still hurts. Less, but enough.

Enough for you to rest your head on the door and to lament the -

A feeling hits you. Outright slams into your chest before the rest of your meagre senses could even catch up to the reality you find yourself in. You slam the door open and the rest of your body finally can catch up to what your heart already felt.

First, it's the way your apartment lights up the corridor, which usually goes the other way around. Next it's the smell of spices and the feeling of moisture on your skin. But there is something underneath it all, something you would have missed had you not learnt to pick it out in any room you've walked into for the last decade. It's the sweet scent of vanilla. Just a lick, but unmistakable flowing from your home. You walk in, not even taking your shoes off, turn the corner to your kitchen and freeze in front of the fairy tale spinning before your very eyes.

It's Mina. Just Mina swimming in one of your old T-shirts, humming a song quietly and looking over a pot of boiling water.

Your eyes sting with tears but you can't close them, lest she disappears at once.

"Mina?" You croak out, breathing in every single detail of the scene before you.

She looks up at you, smiles and suddenly all the lights in your home feel dimmer.

"Surprise!" Her voice is sweet and bright.

Gun to your head you couldn't remember how or when you crossed the distance from the door to the stove. All you would ever be able to say is how wonderful Mina's body feels against yours. How sweet her hair smells. How warm her breath is on your neck. How real she is in your arms.

"You're here," you exclaim through budding tears.

"Where else would I be?" But even her attempt at a joke here drowns out in a soft sob against your chest. She digs her face deeper and you gladly let her wet your shirt. You'll drown in tears if you have to before you let go of her.

You do that for a while. You hold each other like the other is made of sand, tears and wishes spoken through sighs. You cry into her hair and she shakes against your torso. You feel where her silky hair reaches the curve of her spine, and it feels real.

You take your sweet time, water boiling behind your back and still infinitely cooler than the sensation of Mina in your arms.

Eventually your breathing stabilises and you pull your head back to look at her.
And she is still there - she's still here - looking up at you with the whole galaxy in her eyes. They are red and glassy, tears still running down her pink cheeks.

You wipe the tears away, savouring the way her skin feels under your thumbs. You press your forehead to hers and whisper into her lips.

"My beautiful Mina."

"I'm here," she sobs again.

"Really here?"

"Really here."

And she is. She really is - on your lips, in your arms - home. Finally home.

You kiss her as if you've never kissed her before. Raw, passionate and maybe too eager, but caution is thrown to the wind when the woman you love more than life itself is finally home.

And that lasts an eternity again. And it is still somehow too little. That water's been boiling for at least two heat deaths by now and Mina will have to add more to cook you that pasta dish, but the whole world could be ending right now and you would not break the kiss.

However, you do need to breathe and actually look at her again. You look down at her, lips now swollen from your deep kiss and scraping teeth, eyes so soft and still housing tears that didn't get the memo about this being a happy moment. At least her smile did because it is doing everything correctly - pointing right at you, dazzling as can be, and most importantly - really here.

"I missed you so much," you whisper.

"You saw me this morning."

"You know what I mean."

"I do. I know too well," She whispers back.

You take a couple more eternities to look at her face in your hands before Mina speaks with a soft smile and noticeably less tears down her cheeks.

"I was cooking dinner."

"I'll help."