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The thing about being restless that nobody understands, the most minute thing about it that Tessa doesn’t ever really share to anyone is that most of the time, she finds out the sounds that cicadas make at 3 am are the loudest because she would hear a groan and a rustle just by her ear and it just… she’s awake and that’s it.
Most of the time, she’s not the only restless mind in bed. Sometimes it’s him more than her. But the story is that she’s restless because when he’s restless, it’s usually during nights like this:
The bed is colder without the warmth of his body by her side and one half of her slumbering brain wants to force more sleep, to force the memory of content that she gets with his arms around her and their naked bodies skin to skin until she believes it and falls back into darkness, but the part that’s awake, the part that’s aware of what’s happening fights to stay motionless at the wake of his unrest.
She thinks of countless nights like this and how it used to stay in the surreal reality of 3am’s and cicada chirping. His voice would be so quiet that she’d almost think she was still dreaming, if not for the trembling fingertips pressed against the side of her face. They used to be warm when they meet her skin, she would think. And he’d say he’s sorry.
Sorry I woke you up.
And he’d say she should go back to sleep.
Don’t mind me, close your eyes.
And he’d joke about their little inside joke.
Don’t wanna make more restless rumours, eh?
And he’d sigh. And he’d smile.
And her heart would break a little because he used to tell her all about the nightmares that plague his sleep and tell her that if he tells somebody as soon as he wakes up, they don’t become real. You’re my lucky charm, he’d say.
Now, he’d think it’s not even worth it anymore. Lucky charms don’t work all the time, nightmares become real sometimes. He used to leave for the bathroom and she used to pretend to be deep in slumber when he returned half an hour later with red rimmed eyes and wet hair. He used to pull her back into the curve of his body and she used to still feel the residual tremble in his embrace.
When they wake in the morning, there would always be something careful in his eyes. As if the light bulbs broke in their sleep and the floor is filled with their shards.
They used to never address it, the way they used to never address the little fact that underneath all the lies and the denials, there’s a little girl in her heart and a little boy in his that are gullible enough to invest a part of their beings into believing them. Even when they fall into the same bed every night, even when they kiss in the kitchen, even when they would all but say I love you with the way they dance with each other – in public and in private, and everywhere in between.
When, and this is some time ago before his nightmares bled into their real lives, when they talked about his nightmares, it always went like a question in the end.
“I dreamt about me reaching out for you in the middle of the ice and you weren’t there. That’s not ever gonna happen, right?”
“I woke up and your car just wasn’t there. Your side of the closet was empty, which is like 90% of the whole thing, and what’s left was my jacket and the penny I hid in there that you never found. I mean, that’s – not in the near future, right?”
“You’re never leaving, right?”
She would say this before, she would say this now, she would say this always until the end of time: “Never.”
The most heartbreaking thing to witness is the look in his eyes as more and more of these nightmares pass him by and wake him up in the night – the way they just lose light. If stars died and you decide to see them through it until they’re no longer there, do you hope for them to come back or do you cradle their memory until those also fade?
She does neither. Scott’s not a celestial body.
Scott is her best friend, he’s the person she most loves waking up in the morning to even when sometimes their morning breaths battle for top spot. He’s the only person who gets to hear her sing because he never judges her and always judges her for it. He’s the best at math and statistics, and it’s never related to any of their conversations, but she feels proud of that.
She feels proud of the way he'd make a complete stranger smile, of the way he'd speak to a child. She is proud of his best skates, and even his worst ones. She's never going to stop feeling like this, not even as the light in his eyes dim and flicker.
Tonight though, she does not believe in celestial bodies. When she reaches for his hand as he gets up, she doesn’t burn.
There is a subtle shift in the tension of his body when he feels her fingers wrap around his palm in what can only be interpreted as desperation. When he turns his beautiful eyes to meet hers in the dark, she feels the breath he sucks into his lungs like they’re being breathed into her own.
His voice is rough when he speaks. “You should go back to sleep, you have that big thing tomorrow.”
Not tonight, she thinks.
Tessa holds on to his clammy hand and pulls him back, so he faces her, and for the first time in a long while, he lets her see the tears in his eyes. Celestial bodies don’t cry tears like this.
“Scott,” she says into the thick shroud of forlorn between them. “Please, let me.”
It’s when he shakes his head that she holds on tighter because there used to be a little girl with mittens too big for her hands and cheeks so red and she told her mom that she could go skating alone because she wasn’t afraid but she was – and there was a little boy who may have not known that he was driving away the fear in her heart because all he thought about was skating fast and – well, if you’re afraid of this one thing, there’s no room for the other thing. And what Tessa used to fear when she was a little girl was Scott letting go of her hand.
There was no room for fear of being alone.
No room for fear of being last.
Scott made sure of that.
“You don’t have to,” is what he tells her.
“I want to,” is what she replies. “And I always will.”
He lets silence fall like paper to the ground, so soft and final that Tessa thought there are no more words. And then: “No,” he breathes, voice breaking. “Not always.”
She takes his face into her hands and makes him look into her eyes. “Scott, tell me, please.”
His shoulders sag with the weight of the night, and she’s always believed he’s too kind to let others share the load. Tonight, she’s going to take some of it off him. She wants to get him back. She wants her Scott back.
“You were just gone,” he whispers and he falters at the last word. Gone.
“All my things?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “No. No, like we – we never met. And it was just me sitting on this bed and trying to remember how it feels to have you in my life. There was a hole, Tess. In here,” he lays a hand on his chest. “It’s still there. I woke up and it’s still there.”
Tears fall down from his cheeks, making small dark circles on the duvet into a mosaic of his sadness.
“What if it never goes away?”
Tessa feels it in her veins like she had been there in his dreams. The hands on his cheeks go to his chest, feeling his heartbeat thud strongly against her palm, and she wishes she could take that hole and fill it up with all the things he’s done selflessly not only for her but for other people, too.
This heart is too kind to be broken.
Their foreheads meet, they breathe each other’s air, and when his tears subside, she kisses him on the lips and takes him into her arms as she lays them both down.
“Maybe it never goes away,” she tells him, and he clings desperately to her. “But me, too. I’m not going anywhere. Maybe it’s always going to be there in your dreams, but I’m always going to be beside you when you wake up.”
There is an odd calm to the quiet that befalls them when she finishes speaking. It feels like the end of a battle and the beginning of something bright, as if catching the sunrise after an endless bout of darkness without hope of ever seeing light again.
“I used to tell you about them when we were kids.”
She nods against his hair, fingers stroking them with calm. “I remember.”
“I always thought that telling you would make them disappear.” He sniffs and shifts until his face is level with hers. “I’m sorry for not telling you.”
She runs her thumbs under his eyes, feeling the moisture there. “If you never tell me again, it’s okay,” she tells him and it’s true. She doesn’t ever resent his omission. “I just want you to hold me tighter when you wake up. Tell me you love me. Wake me up. I don’t care, Scott. The moment you feel lost, you take my hand and drag me there, too. That’s... that’s us.”
His eyes tear up again when she says this. “I do. I love you so much.”
They lie down.
The battle is over, Tessa thinks, as his heart slows down with hers.
The bedside clock strikes 3:15, and the battle is over.