Work Text:
I've laid awake since one
And now it's four o'clock
Though I've held on
Can't carry it much longer
On the ceiling dancing
Are the things all come and gone
—from “Heat Lightning” by Mitski
By the time Ted makes it upstairs for Biscuits with the Boss, four people have inquired in a genuinely concerned fashion as to his well-being. It’s a heck of a start to a Monday: he’s gotten a “Whoa. You good?” during his coffee walk with Beard, a “You all right, Coach?” from Liam the moment he entered the club, a “You look even worse than you did at the match” from Roy while he hung up his jacket in the office, and a “The day’ll be over before you know it” just now, passing Higgins on the stairs. He’s pretty sure Leslie meant to be encouraging, but he didn’t sound convinced that Ted would actually make it through the day.
Ted sinks into his seat across from Rebecca as soon as he’s handed over her biscuits. He usually feels pretty relaxed in her office; he can’t think of a tradition he values more than taking a few minutes to chat with one of his favorite people before training begins. But today, just the act of sitting down is a risk: his limbs each become about fifty pounds heavier, and he feels like he might never get up again.
“I murdered the last person who told me I looked tired,” Rebecca says. She flashes him one of those smiles he loves, the kind that just barely moves the corners of her mouth but manages to perfectly elaborate on whatever she’s feeling. “But you look very tired, Ted. Are you all right?”
He’s seen himself in the mirror today. He knows how haggard he looks, how exhausted. The bags under his eyes—he’s pretty sure Ziploc makes that size. He hasn’t slept in two days, and has gotten only a handful of hours in on the nights preceding. It’s been easy enough to deflect this morning’s commentary, but it makes his heart sink a little that Rebecca notices. She’s good at noticing, but she’s also good at ignoring—it’s a quality they have in common, a little bit dangerous, a little bit kind.
Ted attempts a chuckle. If Rebecca’s in noticing-and-acknowledging mode, he can attempt to meet her halfway. As long as it doesn’t involve actual physical movement. “I’m…I’ve been better. Having a little trouble sleeping of late.”
“And what constitutes ‘of late’?” Rebecca demands.
“Well, that would be, uh, somewhere in the middle of 2018”—that summer was when Michelle started needing a whole lot more space—“up until the present moment here in, uh, March 2022, I think it is.”
“It’s the second of April,” Rebecca says.
“Oh, wow, I—”
Rebecca cackles, then immediately puts her face back together. “I was joking. It’s the twenty-eighth of March. But Ted, why haven’t you slept for nearly four years?”
Ted sinks against the back of his chair a little bit more, bringing a fist to the center of his ribcage and resting his other hand over it. He doesn’t know where to start, so he goes with the first conversational foothold he can find. “For all our issues, Michelle and I never slept in separate beds,” he says, hoping this piece of information isn’t far more personal than what Rebecca had bargained for. “Not even when we were in counseling, and arguing more, and starting to talk about separation. Neither of us wanted to be those people, you know?” He cringes. “If you and Rupert had separate bedrooms, I’m sorry, I mean, there can be all kindsa reasons why that might be a good arrangement, I just mean that at the time, for Michelle and me, it would’ve felt like admitting defeat, and—”
Rebecca fixes him with a look that makes him realize he can stop talking. “Our marriages were very different. It’s all right. You were saying?”
“So we didn’t ever sleep in separate beds, and I never martyred myself and took the couch for a night, but it was so hard to sleep sometimes, knowing she was unhappy, knowing her feelings were changing. So that was 2018 and 2019, and neither of us were getting that much rest, and I’d never been what you’d call a great sleeper, and then I moved here and it was even harder because I was physically alone. Apparently even an emotionally-distant bedmate kept some of the insomnia at bay.”
Putting together this many words in a row is exhausting. He has the distinct feeling he’s been talking for twenty minutes straight without meaning to. Or maybe the odd look on Rebecca’s face isn’t about long-windedness but an uncharacteristic brevity, or something else entirely, something unrelated to conversational length. He and Rebecca are friends—close friends, he thinks, and for good this time, after an odd stretch of months in which their closeness felt precarious. Their closeness has always been an immutable fact, nothing that could stop or start existing, but for a while it had felt like a victim of erosion. Not anymore. But maybe he’s misread, on account of being so tired, and Rebecca thinks this whole conversation is an egregious overshare.
“So you lie awake every night?” Rebecca says, schooling her face into something neutral again.
“Not every night,” Ted clarifies. “A drink or two helps, but I don’t wanna rely on a nightcap every night. There isn’t a real pattern, far as I can tell. Sometimes I lie awake all anxious and restless and miserable, and sometimes I go to sleep just fine.”
“And if you can get to sleep, do you stay asleep?”
“See, that’s the problem with whiskey—knocks ya out but you don’t stay down for long.”
“Mm,” Rebecca says. “I know that feeling.”
“What do you try when you can’t sleep?” Ted asks, desperate to talk about something that isn’t quite so focused on himself. But as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he regrets them—he didn’t intend the question to sound suggestive or intrusive or overly familiar, but he’s pretty sure it was all of the above. He attempts to salvage the moment: “Got any tips that don’t involve herbal tea?”
“Well,” Rebecca says, and Ted might be exhausted but he’s not so out-of-his-mind zonked that he can’t detect the way she tries to hide her smile. “I don’t think the bright light is very good for sleep hygiene or whatever they call it, but I watch old movies when I have insomnia. I don’t have a TV in my bedroom, but there’s one in the guestroom down the hall, and I’ll sleep in there when nothing else works.”
“That sounds nice,” Ted says honestly. He’s never seen any of the rooms on the second floor of Rebecca’s house, but he imagines a lot of pillows and blankets as soft as clouds and the soothing presence of a love story—all witty banter and fond looks—playing out in black-and-white. He could close his eyes now, he thinks, and drift away on that image. But as soon as he feels his head start to loll forward, he snaps back to attention. “I gotta get to training. Hope your day treats you right, boss.”
“You too,” Rebecca says, “and I hope you get some sleep tonight.”
⁂
The next morning, Ted feels like a failure as he approaches Rebecca’s desk with her biscuits. She’s going to ask him how he slept last night, and he’s going to have to tell her some version of the truth. Like Rebecca, he has no TV in his bedroom, so he’d stretched out on the couch with the lights off and the volume on a Cary Grant movie turned down low, figuring it would be better to sleep badly there than to risk another sleepless night in bed. The experiment started out pretty well: even without any alcohol, the movie lulled him to sleep. But he woke up just a couple hours later, physically disoriented and startled by the sound of the television, now playing a decidedly unrestful episode of The Twilight Zone. He’d trudged down the hall to the bedroom, where he tossed and turned for the rest of the night.
He’s lonely, is what it comes down to. It’s a different kind of loneliness than the ache he felt lying next to Michelle in bed for the last couple years of their marriage, when his gratitude for her presence was streaked with the anxiety of knowing that the more he clung to her, the greater the risk of losing her became. It’s a different kind of loneliness than the gut-punched starkness of being freshly divorced, struck over and over with the terror that he could feel this alone for the rest of his life. This loneliness is lived-in. There aren’t ghosts at his back and around every corner, shocking him with new information about what his life has become. His days aren’t lonely—he coaches, and he works with wonderful people, and he hangs out with his friends, and he has virtual therapy twice per month, and he talks to Henry nearly every day.
Now that Henry is in third grade, he and Michelle have started experimenting with letting Henry stay home alone while Michelle runs errands so long as he keeps a FaceTime call going with Ted. Sometimes they don’t even talk that much—the FaceTime runs on Michelle’s laptop, and Henry works on homework or plays a game, popping up occasionally with a question or an observation. It makes Ted feel needed to be able to keep an eye on Henry from so far away, to be able to give Henry permission to shoot hoops with a friend, to admonish him to put the cereal box back in the pantry and put his bowl in the dishwasher, same as he would do if they were in the same place. And if Ted needs something, there are people around to keep an eye on him. People who want him to be happy and are happy to spend time together. People who want to know why he’s so tired because they care about him getting a good night’s sleep.
“Maybe you’re just not a falling-asleep-to-movies kind of person,” Rebecca says when Ted has given her the abbreviated version of his latest attempt at sleep.
“Maybe not,” he says. “But I liked your suggestion, and I fell asleep just fine last night. I just can’t stay asleep, and it doesn’t make any sense because—because I’m so tired.” He’s so tired that the phrase “thin-skinned” feels almost literal. Everything he feels is close to the surface, desperate to escape. He’s exhausted. Why can’t his body understand that well enough to let him stay asleep?
Rebecca narrows her eyes. “You need a change of scenery. Do you have plans tonight?”
Ted smiles. “I have a little baking I need to do.”
“And after?”
“Free as a bird.”
“Good. Why don’t you come over to mine and we’ll watch a movie. Maybe there’ll be a really boring one on.” Rebecca glances at him, as if to measure whether or not to ask for reassurance. “You obviously shouldn’t feel obligated, but you’re welcome.”
“That’s a real kind offer, boss.” An unnerving thought occurs to him. “I really appreciate the invite, but—what if I fall asleep at your house?”
Rebecca stares. “You must be even more exhausted than I thought. That’s the point, Ted. You need a good night’s sleep. Wherever it happens.”
⁂
It’s a little awkward, standing on Rebecca’s front porch with his backpack stuffed extra full with everything he needs for an overnight. He’s had dinner here with the other coaches a couple times, and he always looks forward to spending time with her, but there’s a big difference between their usual hangouts and a sleepover. Rebecca lets him in almost as soon as he rings the doorbell, and if Ted detects a slight wariness on her face at the prospect of an overnight guest, the expression fades right away.
Before leaving work today, they’d decided he’d come over around ten, so they don’t chat for long before Rebecca shows him to the guest bathroom just down the hall from the bedroom with the TV. By the time he’s washed up and changed into his pajama bottoms and a fresh t-shirt, Rebecca has turned out the lights throughout the house and waits for him in the bedroom, where she sits perched on top of the covers and fiddles with the remote control.
She looks beautiful. Her pajamas are a pale, silky blue. Her bare skin is radiant and rosy-cheeked. He’s so dangerously tired that he almost just says it—you look beautiful—but stops himself just in time. He’s about to get in bed with her for a strangely utilitarian reason, and a compliment right before they’re going to be lying down in close proximity would probably make her feel uncomfortable.
“I can go back to my bedroom after the movie,” Rebecca says nervously. “I realized we didn’t exactly talk about this part.”
“I thought the whole idea was to fall asleep during the movie. You don’t have to go anywhere on my account.”
He wonders if she’ll still be in bed when he wakes up in the morning, but he’s too tired to hold onto the thought. In fact, when he lies down and turns out the light on his side of the bed, he worries for a moment that he’s so beyond tired that he might not be able to sleep. After only about six hours of sleep in the last seventy-two, the exhaustion is so deep in his bones that it insists on itself, clanking pots and pans against his skeleton, no resources available for an override. But then Rebecca turns out her light, and stretches out next to him, and clicks the volume button on the remote until the voices from the TV are like steady whispers, and he’s asleep in almost no time at all.
It’s bright in the room the next time he opens his eyes. Not bright like a television in the dark. Bright like the sun starting to shine through the venetian blinds. Neither of their alarms have gone off, so it can’t be six-thirty a.m. yet, but it’s got to be close. He steals a glance at Rebecca, who’s asleep on her side facing him, a slack, peaceful expression on her face. He looks away almost immediately. Her sleep seems private. She invited him to experience his sleep in her guestroom, but she didn’t invite him to experience hers.
He’s still looking away when he feels her stir awake. “Hello,” she murmurs pleasantly. “You slept, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, still feeling a little incredulous about it. He dares to mirror her position, curling up on his side facing her. “Hours and hours.”
“I’m glad.”
“God, me too. How about you, how’d you sleep?”
“Very well,” she says. “I woke up at one point to turn off the TV, but that’s it.”
Something funny happens, then. They don’t get out of bed. They’ve never had a conversation while lying in a bed before, but they talk about the day ahead and even go over a few details about the away match this weekend until their phones start to chime with an identical tone. “I should get out of your hair,” Ted says just before he stands up. “I’m just gonna throw on my clothes and head back so I’m ready in time to meet Beard for coffee.” As soon as he says the words, he wonders if his phrasing made it sound like he wants to keep the bed-sharing a secret.
By the time he’s dressed in yesterday’s clothes and ready to walk to his flat, Rebecca is in the kitchen making tea. “That thing I said about getting back in time—I didn’t mean it to sound like sneaking around.”
“I know,” Rebecca says quickly, and Ted wonders if she did know. “Probably best to keep it to ourselves all the same.”
“Sure thing.”
Rebecca looks up from the kettle. “You can come back tonight, if you want.”
⁂
He goes back to Rebecca’s for the next three nights, and they stick to the new routine each time. On both Tuesday and Wednesday night, he sleeps hard. He’s still tired during the days, but it doesn’t make him feel like tearing his hair out. Tiredness is a thing he can solve for, lying next to Rebecca in the movie-magic dark of her guest bedroom.
But on Thursday night, he lies awake on his back, staring at the ceiling instead of the movie. He listens to Rebecca’s breathing slow down and even out as she falls asleep, and he tries to let the dialogue from the film turn into the meaningless sounds that soothed him to sleep the last few nights, but he can’t quiet his mind. He was naive to think this bout of insomnia was over; he just got to a point that he was so tired he had to sleep a few nights, his body leaving him with no other choice. Now he’s slept enough to survive and he’s right back to where he started. Except this isn’t anywhere close to where he started, sleepless in Wichita, then sleepless alone in his flat on the other side of the Richmond green. He’s in Rebecca’s house. Next to her in bed. And he’s finally awake enough that it feels strange in a way it previously hadn’t.
The last few mornings, the TV has been off when he woke up because Rebecca turned it off at some point in the middle of the night. Since the movie isn’t helping him sleep, he decides to try to reach over Rebecca and grab the remote from her nightstand so he can take care of making the room quiet and dark by himself. But as he makes contact with the remote, he accidentally spins it a little, and it clinks noisily against the side of her water glass. Heart pounding, he grabs the remote more firmly and lunges his fingers against the power button.
“What are you doing?” Rebecca murmurs, a thin thread of irritation in her voice.
“Sorry,” Ted says. “Turning off the TV.”
“Why?”
“Can’t sleep,” he admits. “And I thought maybe you’d stay asleep if I took care of turning the movie off, but that clearly backfired.”
“Mm,” Rebecca says, and Ted wonders if she’s too sleepy to form more real words.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispers.
“Why can’t you sleep?” she says, almost petulant although there’s nothing serious about her tone.
“Because I’m bad at it.”
Rebecca starts to laugh then, just a single mirthful syllable, and the energy she would have used on the rest of the laughter propels her closer to him instead. She shifts so she lies pressed against his side. “This all right?” she mumbles.
It’s heaven. “Yeah,” Ted says. “You cold?” he adds, and cringes.
“If you aren’t going to sleep, the least you can do is warm me up.”
But he does sleep—they both do, because in the morning they both wake up, and Rebecca is still tucked against his side, her arm having snaked around his middle at some point during the night. Normally they start talking right away, but this morning they spend a few minutes like this, pressed together, in silent agreement that they shouldn’t move or talk right away.
⁂
Saturday’s away match is against Leeds United, and on Friday night Ted lies awake in his hotel room. It’s at least two hours after curfew when the screen on his phone lights up with a text.
It’s from Rebecca: Who invented separate rooms anyway?
Ted grins. Are my sleep issues contagious?
Rebecca texts back almost immediately. I knew you’d be awake. And I never said I was a great sleeper.
Ted is in the middle of typing a response, an attempt at articulating how much worse tonight would be if they hadn’t been able to get some decent sleep throughout the week, when Rebecca texts again: What looks worse, you being caught sneaking out of my room or the other way around? And before he can figure out what to say to that, she texts again: Never mind, my room would be worse. I’m coming to yours. Call me right away if you don’t want me to, I’ll understand of course.
He doesn’t call. He spends a minute or so smiling up at the ceiling, then springs into action: he hops out of bed, turns on both bedside lamps, and rushes to the bathroom to brush his teeth a second time. He receives an Almost there text and opens the door just as Rebecca arrives, a fluffy white hotel robe slung over her pink pajamas, slippers on her feet. He’s glad she didn’t have to even consider knocking; curfew or not, he didn’t want her to feel the stress of lingering in a hallway of rooms full of people she knows.
Rebecca doesn’t have her suitcase with her, but she does have a tote bag full of clothes and a toiletries bag, the foldable kind you can hang from a towel rack. “Probably overthinking it,” she says, “but I brought everything I need for tomorrow in case I need to get ready here.” She glances down at the bags in her hands. “You know, better to emerge fully dressed.”
“Very professional,” Ted says. “That’s exactly the kind of thinkin’ we need.” What he really needs is to take a lifelong vow of silence and never break it. “You look nice. Thanks, uh, for coming down to my room.”
“Big match tomorrow.”
“Gotta be well-rested.”
“I’ll just hang up these clothes,” Rebecca says.
In bed, lights out again, Rebecca asks how Ted would feel about turning the TV on, and as he fumbles for the remote on his nightstand she settles into the pillows and pulls the covers fully around her body. It takes a while to find an old movie: the first channel he lands on that offers something other than a late night panel show or a syndicated detective show or a cartoon is playing The Wizard of Oz. It’s pretty early in the movie; Dorothy is just meeting the Tin Man. “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me,” Ted mumbles, and the sound of his voice makes Rebecca glance at the screen and snicker. “This feels like a personal attack on me as a Kansan.” He thinks about this movie a lot—every time he plays Oz-themed pinball at the Crown and Anchor—but he very much does not want to watch it right now.
When Rebecca speaks, she sounds far away, the sleepiness and thick bed covers muffling her even though she’s right here. “Well, don’t click your heels three times,” she says. “I need you to stay and keep me warm.”
“That I can do.” Ted finds the remote again and turns the TV off, plunging the room into darkness. “Thanks again for being here,” he whispers, and gingerly reaches out to touch Rebecca’s shoulder through the duvet. “This okay?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Rebecca says. She scoots closer, and the movement results in Ted’s arm resting along her back. He tries to remind himself that everything that just happened might just be an Oz joke, the sort of joke he’s used to hearing whenever he tells someone where he’s from. Rebecca wants him to stay put not because she’s reached into his brain to see all his private thoughts about being pretty sure he’s lost Kansas as a home; she simply tends to get cold when she sleeps and would like to take advantage of his warmth. But there’s something about the casual way she’s said the words that sets him at ease. He closes his eyes and thinks about her next to him, solid and soft and here because she wants to be, and he doesn’t have another conscious thought until his alarm goes off in the morning.
⁂
After the match (Richmond beats Leeds United 2-1) and another good night of hotel sleep with Rebecca (she starts out in his room this time, having already left her pajamas there from the night before), the rest of the weekend evaporates and suddenly it’s Sunday night and Ted is in no way prepared for a new week to begin. When he’s in danger of being truly late to Rebecca’s, he knows a call will seem more serious than a text, and might really startle her, but he isn’t sure what he’d put in a text. It’s easier to see what his mouth will do than try to get his hands to behave long enough to type a message. He’s already having to flex his fingers and work to relax his palms, and he’s sweaty, and his breathing exercises are holding him in a kind of pre-panic stasis.
“I’m sorry,” he says as soon as Rebecca answers the phone. “Needed to spend a little longer talking to Henry tonight, he’s goin’ through some stuff at school and he’s feeling real nervous about this week, and so am I, for no good reason at all, and I’m only just about to get started with the biscuits, and I’m still tired, I think maybe there’s no catching up at this point, I’m just gonna be operating at a deficit for the rest of my life, and—”
“Are you saying you can’t come over tonight?” Rebecca asks, clearly trying to be helpful.
“I don’t want that to be what I’m saying. I just don’t want to make you wait.”
“It wouldn’t bother me if you came over late. Even very late. You aren’t inconveniencing me, I mean, God, you’re making the damn biscuits I’m addicted to, who would I be to complain about the lateness of the hour—”
“Thanks, Rebecca.”
“Ted?”
“Yeah?”
“Be honest—”
“Okay?”
“Be honest about what I’m going to say. Would it stress you out if I came to your flat tonight? Or would it be—nice?”
He doesn’t have the energy to make himself say no. He thinks about what she’s saying. He could stay here, make the biscuits, tidy up, and he wouldn’t have to go out again tonight. Because Rebecca would be here, in his home. “It’d be nice.”
She shows up an hour later. The biscuits are out of the oven and just about cool enough to cut, and the dishes are done, and he’s already wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, and he’s changed the sheets on his neglected bed.
“Jesus Christ,” Rebecca says as he leads her into the kitchen. “It smells so good it kind of makes me want to cry.”
Ted smiles. He doesn’t know what to say when she’s effusive about the biscuits. He knows they’re good biscuits, and he thinks he knows what they mean to her, but even a heartfelt thank you doesn’t feel like quite the right response to her praise. “I’m just about to slice these biscuits up. How about I show you where you can get ready for bed while I finish up in here.”
Before he knows it, the pink boxes are folded and assembled and the next few days’ worth of biscuits are packaged up and Rebecca is back from the bathroom. There’s nothing to do but lead her to the bedroom, where he’s fluffed the pillows and turned down the duvet and tried to make the small double bed seem inviting. “Obviously there isn’t a TV in here,” he stammers.
Rebecca looks a little panicked. “We’re too old and too tall for the couch.”
“Yeah,” Ted says. He clears his throat. “You know, I don’t think the movies are what’s helping me sleep. Pretty sure it’s you.”
He expects Rebecca to laugh, or deflect, or say she’ll share the credit with Katharine Hepburn or something. He doesn’t expect her to tuck her chin and look down and lift her lips in a close-mouthed smile. “The movies make my house less quiet,” she says. “But you do a perfectly good job of that.”
She’s new to this room, but right away she climbs into the side of the bed she always sleeps on. It’s the correct side for this bed, too—the nightstand is empty but for a tissue box and a lamp. It’s just waiting for a stack of her books, and Ted realizes that if she already had books here, it wouldn’t feel like the first time she stayed over. This flat is and isn’t home, but the mere fact of her presence is settling.
“Goodnight,” Rebecca says, a little subdued. She plugs in her phone and shuts off her light.
The bed is small enough that the usual tentative choices—to roll closer, to hold each other loosely—aren’t really choices here. They’re already right next to each other, and they’d only be able to establish more distance if they wanted to sacrifice comfort for the sake of avoiding each other.
“Goodnight,” Ted replies, and shuts his eyes and begs himself for sleep.
He wakes up in perfect darkness, having turned away in sleep to face the wall. The streetlights are out and the moon is new. Rebecca is pressed against his back, her arm slung around his waist. The lack of light makes the air feel like velvet wrapped around them.
“Ted,” Rebecca says softly. “It’s early. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” he says, but he doesn’t try to close his eyes again. He rolls over to face her, hoping the movement is gentle enough that he won’t dislodge Rebecca’s arms. He doesn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the embrace. “Rebecca, can I hold you?”
She sucks in a shaky breath and shifts her arm so she can slide a hand from his shoulder down his bicep down to his forearm, which she wraps in her fingers, pulling until he’s holding her in a loose grip, then—because she wedges herself against him—a tighter, more unequivocal one. She feels around in the dark, walking her fingers back up to his shoulder, his neck, his jaw. It’s as if she’s mapping him in the dark, learning his features by feel alone. “There you are,” she mutters, so quiet he wonders if the words are meant for him, then, a little louder: “You aren’t just a warm body to me, you know. I like not having to sleep alone, but it isn’t only—”
She cuts herself off, but the sentence doesn’t feel jagged or broken. She ends the sentence with her body, settling more fully against him, her fingertips still stroking from his cheek to his jawbone. “I feel the same way,” he says, and he can feel the way the words make his mouth move, the way the movement of his mouth in turn moves her fingers. “I’ve slept alone for months and months. You being here isn’t a replacement for something I’ve lost. It’s—it’s something new.”
He’s thought the past was haunting him, and it has. But he’s been missing something in his present moments, too, and all of a sudden he isn’t.
“You can kiss me,” Rebecca says plainly, and he’d be a fool to do anything but exactly that.
⁂
In the morning, Ted’s exhaustion is refreshing—an oxymoron made possible only by the magical power of kissing. Things didn’t escalate much the night before, which they spent in a series of catnaps interlaced with some very memorable making out. When their alarms go off, they stay in bed for a couple cycles of snooze, aware that every minute they linger will necessitate more hurrying later on. Finally, it really isn’t possible to steal a second longer. “I have everything I need with me,” Rebecca says, glancing at the bedroom door, and at the rooms beyond it, “but I can head out before it’s time for you to meet Beard.”
Because it’s a secret, Ted realizes. Because they haven’t talked about anything but sneaking around. Suddenly the warmth of the bed is just a reminder of the chill everywhere else.
He looks in her eyes. “Or you could walk with us,” he says. “Only if you want to.”
Rebecca smiles, and nervousness Ted hadn’t entirely detected fades from her face. “I think I’d like that.” She quickly adds, “I promise I won’t intrude every single morning.”
Ted kisses her, then, and it’s just one answer of many. One way of telling her she isn’t an intrusion at all. When they pull apart they smile at each other, ready to greet the day.