I did not move my hand. I had no plans to.
She did not ask me to.
The hand stayed where the hand was, slow, claiming, no announcement about it, the warm working firmness of her under my palm, and after a beat she pushed back into the hand the small private way she does when she is not properly awake and is letting her body answer for her, and I shut my eyes against the side of her hair because she has been doing this to me on quiet Saturdays since the first quiet Saturday.
She had been getting up early. Six in the morning, in the spare room, on the machines in the gym downstairs. Months of it.
I had not said anything about it because the rule in this house was you do not comment on the woman's mornings, but I had been noticing, the way a man notices the woman he sleeps next to.
