The Yellow Book

The coffee was already done and at the table when she came out of the shower.

Jennifer didn't say anything about it. Neither did he. He was standing by just the window with his own cup, looking outside at the street, and she picked up her coffee mug and gave it a taste, and it was exactly right, the temperature, the amount of milk he had poured into it, the amount of sugar she had only told him about once, she had known him for exactly three years, some will probably just let that small detail slide. But he didn't, just as she expected, in which she smiled, not caring about the fact that he wears an unknowing look at her wondering what she was smiling for.

She stood just beside him at the window then drank their coffee while watching the street without talking to each other for awhile, it was the most comfortable silence she had ever felt. She looked at him without him knowing, a thought coming right out of her, For the love of god, I would love this man a hundred times over.

"It's going to rain." he said.

Jennifer looked at the sky. "Probably." she replied.

He nodded in response. She looked at his face for the second time, he held his cup, both of his hands around it even though it was already warm in the apartment, the line between his eyebrows that appears when he was thinking about something he wasn't planning to say out loud. She even had branded it in her mind, that line without meaning to. She actually had kept a lot of things about him without meaning to.

She did not know then that he was thinking, I want to remember this. Exactly this. The morning light shining just right and the coffee and her wet hair from the shower. She did not know he was already memorizing her, he had always done it multiple times.

She finished her coffee and put the cup in the sink and said she was going to be late, and he said okay, and she grabbed her bag and left, and the door closed behind her, and he stayed at the window with his cooling coffee and the grey sky pressing down outside and something unknown in his chest that he cannot name was pressing down from the inside.

The rain started sometime before she woke up.

Jennifer became aware of it slowly, she squints her eyes, a ray of light coming from the sun piercing through the curtains, that one light just made the whole room, felt like it existed outside of time, she even wondered if things could go on like this, quiet, cold yet warm at the same time, she loves this.

She lay still for a moment. The rain. The bright light. The weight of him beside her, still asleep, his arm loose around her waist, her hand just around her stomach, warm, with his breathing slow and even.

She turned carefully so she wouldn't wake him up and she looked at him the way she rarely let herself look at him when he was awake, it was open, without his usual self-consciousness. He looked a little younger when he slept in which she smiled at for some reason. It was probably because of the tension that has been bugging him during waking hours, something careful and really guarded that she had never quite been able to pinpoint, it looked like everything that's weighing him down wemt away when he was sleeping and left behind someone who looked vulnerable. She noticed it and felt a tenderness so sudden it embarrassed her. She was never open about this and she was never the compliment type of woman, but he was just as good-looking as the first time they met.

She went around out from under his arm and went to the small shelf by the window where she had always kept her books she was currently reading. The yellow book was there, she's been trying to get him to read it for three months already, leaving it in conspicuous places, reading passages aloud unprompted, and he had smiled and deflected every time in that way he had.

She climbed back into bed with it, settled on her stomach with her feet in the air, and opened to where she had left off.

She had read perhaps four pages when she felt him shift behind her.

"It's raining." he said. His voice was slow with sleep.

"I know."

"Is that the yellow book."

"It is."

"You're still reading that."

"I'm always reading it. It's very long." She turned a page without looking up. "You would know that if you read it yourself." A reply that almost looked annoyed but more like a “hmph” in reality.

He made a sound that was almost a laugh. She felt him settle, and then she felt his eyes on her, that kind of attention he had that she had never quite been able to describe to anyone. Not staring, and wasn't intrusive. It was more like being in a room with a fire. You were always aware of the warmth without having to look directly at it.

She read another page.

"Read it out loud." he said.

She looked up then. He was lying on his side while he watches her, his head on the pillow, and his expression was the one she had the most trouble with, open in a way he usually wasn't, something in his eyes that she could never quite understand, some feeling so large it seemed to be pressing against the inside of him looking for a way out.

"You want me to read it to you."

"I want to hear your voice," he said simply. "While it's raining."

She looked at him for a moment. Something tightened just right at her stomach, her chest tightening and her face burning.

"Okay." she said.

She went back to the beginning of the chapter so he would have the context and she read to him while the rain came down outside, neither of them checking the time. She read three chapters. He reaches out and then tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear in the second one without interrupting her and she just kept on reading like nothing ever happened even when her heart was fluttering on it's own, it was never the first time that he had done this. He's done this before, and she'd always felt like it was the first time.

Somewhere in the third chapter she glanced up and found him watching her with that expression again, the open one, the one she could or never would've understood, and he didn't look away and neither did she for a moment, and then she looked back down at the page.

She did not know then what he was thinking.

She did not know that he was thinking, this is it. This exact thing. This is what I would want more of, spend the rest of my days of.

She did not know that he was memorizing her. The angle of her reading. The way her feet moved slightly when she encountered a sentence she liked. The sound of her voice in a grey-lit room while it rained, the shape of her face when she smiles, how she whines like a baby when she cries.

She just read to him while the rain came down, and when she finally stopped and looked up at the clock it was almost noon and neither of them had noticed.

"Good?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. His voice was quiet and a little rough. "Really really really good."

She smiled and closed the book and set it on the nightstand.

"I told you." she said.

"You told me." he agreed, smiling

She lay down beside him and he put his arm around her and they listened to the rain for a while longer, not talking, not needing to. She thought, I could do this forever. She thought it easily and completely and without any idea of what forever meant or didn't mean.

Outside the rain kept on falling, soft and steady and completely indifferent to the things they weren't saying, and the morning held them both a little more longer.

She noticed it first on Tuesday.

He was supposed to meet her at seven. He arrived at seven forty, he was late. He was never this late everytime they went out early, in fact, she was always the one to arrive later than him, now it's been happening for god knows how long. He was slightly out of breath, he apologized, that was complete and sincere but explained nothing. She had looked at him over the restaurant table and thought, you were somewhere else again. You have been somewhere else for weeks.