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I woke up at 6:58.
At first, I seriously considered getting another two minutes of sleep since I had set the alarm for 7:00 the night before. The sheets were warm and I was comfortable, and I really didn’t want to get out of bed. Then I felt Ashlyn stir next to me and murmur something quietly in her sleep. I reached out from under the covers and turned the alarm off so it wouldn’t wake her and rolled over onto my side.
I could feel my features soften and my face relax when I looked at her; she was beautiful. She was still in a deep sleep, her blond hair fanned out across the pillow and her tan skin flushed from the warmth. One of her hands was pushed up under her head and the other was laying across my chest. I picked it up and tightly knit my fingers in between hers. Even when she was sleeping I could feel sparks fly from her skin to mine and back again.
I sat up slowly, keeping my hand in hers, and crossed my legs underneath me. As I rubbed my thumb in circles across the back of her hand, I reached out and brushed my fingers across her forehead. Her skin was soft and warm and her brow wrinkled against my touch. I smiled as her eyes opened a tiny bit and leaned in. “Good morning, sunshine,” I whispered, kissing her in between her eyes.
She groaned and pulled her hand away, tugging the comforter over her head. A second later, her hand shot back out and felt around for mine. I laughed and gave it to her and she pulled it under the covers and pressed the back of my hand against her mouth. I sighed a little at the contact and almost gave in and joined her under the covers. Instead, I stayed strong. “Ashlyn.”
“What?” Her voice sounded muffled and far away.
“You’ve gotta get up, babe.”
“Nooo.” She started kissing my individual fingers.
“Ashlyn…”
“I love you.” More kisses.
“Ashlyn…” I could feel myself start to melt into the sheets.
“Ali.”
“We have to go, baby,” I said, pulling the covers down and revealing my beautiful, beautiful girlfriend’s head and torso.
She looked up at me. “Call me ‘baby’ again.”
I smiled. “I love you, baby.”
Ashlyn sat up and caught my lips against hers. “I love you, too.” She leaned back a little and studied my face, then her eyes shot to the clock. “What’re we still doing here?” She jumped out of bed and pulled me along with her. “We’ve gotta go go go!”
“Says the one who wanted to stay in bed,” I laughed as she dragged me into the bathroom of the small hotel room we were staying in and turned on the sink for me as she walked past it to the shower. As I grabbed my toiletry bag from inside the cabinet, she turned the shower on and gathered the shampoo and conditioner bottles. I pulled out my toothbrush and put some toothpaste on it. It flattened underneath the cold water. “Besides, we don’t have to leave for the airport until around eight so we should be --”
“Yes but you take forever to get ready and we still have to pack our things and pick up something to eat and print off our boarding passes and double check our flights and --”
“Ashlyn.” She was pacing the length of the small bathroom nervously as she waited for the water to warm up, her bare feet soundlessly hitting the cold tile and her brow furrowed anxiously. We were going to visit my mom and my brother, Kyle, and even though she knew that they loved her, Ashlyn was still convinced that she had to be nervous.
“Yeah?” She stopped pacing and looked up at me, her eyes wide.
“We’ll be fine… You’ll be fine.” I put my toothbrush down on the counter and turned the water off, turning towards her. I walked in her direction and placed my hands on her shoulders and squeezed a little.
She took a deep breath and slumped her shoulders as she exhaled. “Yeah… You’re right.”
I kissed her forehead quickly before I turned back to the sink. “Also… I do not take forever to get ready,” I said, picking up my toothbrush again.
She cracked a small smile and I smiled back just before putting the toothbrush in my mouth. I watched from the mirror as she reached her fingers under the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it up and over her head, revealing a toned stomach and lots of tan skin. She was so beautiful, I couldn’t help but stare. Ashlyn folded her shirt and stripped down even further, revealing even more of her strong, long legs. My eyes raked up and down her naked body, seemingly without my consent. When she straightened back up again, she met my eyes in the mirror and I could feel a blush creeping onto my cheeks. She just laughed lightly at my expression, kissed the back of my neck, and got into the shower.
I could still feel the warmth of her lips burning on the back of my neck when I ducked my head into the sink and spit out the toothpaste. I rinsed my mouth out and washed my face, then grabbed a towel from the rack and pressed it against my skin. It was rough and scratchy, and I started getting a little homesick.
“Hey, Ali.” Ashlyn’s voice tore me from my thoughts.
“Yeah?” I glanced towards the shower where I saw Ashlyn’s arm and head sticking out from behind the curtain.
“Could you get me my face wash?” She peeked her head out and silently pleaded to me with her eyes. “It’s the first thing in my toiletry bag…”
I rolled my eyes at my girlfriend’s forgetfulness and smiled in spite of myself. “Sure…” I grabbed her bag from the cabinet and unzipped it. “Ashlyn Michelle Harris!” I exclaimed.
“What?” she asked from inside the shower.
“It is definitely not the first thing in your toiletry bag!”
“Oops…”
I had to dig around to the bottom before I found it. “I can’t believe your bag is such a mess,” I said sarcastically with a feigned expression of shock on my face as I walked over to the shower. I pulled the curtain back a little. “I’m pretty sure most of the things in there are expired, hon… You need to clean that out.”
Ashlyn groaned and stuck out her hand and when I offered her the tube of face wash, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me closer. My heart fluttered. “Come join me,” she whispered against my cheek before kissing me lightly.
I was very tempted and would’ve jumped in there right away, but we were on a schedule. “Very tempting,” I whispered back, catching her lips on mine before pulling away, “but you yourself admitted that I took forever to get ready.” I cast her a sideways smile. “Plus, I showered last night so I’m good to go.”
She groaned and let go of my wrist. “Fuck you,” she grumbled. I laughed at her grumpiness.
“That’s always the goal, isn’t it?” She groaned again and I just laughed harder.
As Ashlyn finished up in the shower (I ended up handing her a toothbrush and toothpaste as well, which were now dripping wet in her toiletry bag), I grabbed everything that was ours out of the bathroom. I pulled our carry-ons out from under the bed and surveyed what we had for clothes. “What do you wanna wear, babe?” I yelled to the bathroom, hoping my voice would be heard over the running water.
“The black pants and the white t-shirt!” Ashlyn yelled back.
“The drop-crotches?”
“Yeah!”
“And a jacket?”
“Black Nike zip-up!”
“Bra?”
“Yes!”
I rolled my eyes, even though I knew she couldn’t see. “Which one?”
“White! Also my beanie, please! And socks and the high tops!”
“Okay!”
“Thank you!”
I pulled out Ashlyn’s outfit plus some boxers and set it on the bed so that it’d be ready for her when she got out of the shower. I put her toiletry bag in her carry-on and zipped it up. Next, I found what I was going to wear - a ripped pair of skinny jeans, running shoes, and my Nike pullover - and packed and zipped my own bag. I rolled both bags to the door so that they were ready for us to leave, got dressed, then flopped on the unmade bed that we had slept in and scrolled through Twitter.
“Bathroom’s yours,” Ashlyn said a few minutes later as she walked out, her hair dripping wet and only a towel wrapped around her body.
“Great,” I mumbled, sitting up and walking to the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror, studying my reflection. Then, I noticed something. “Oh, shit!” I exclaimed, running back into the room and opening my carry-on.
“What is it?” Ashlyn asked as I rummaged through my bag. She was pulling her t-shirt over her head and her voice sounded distant and strange.
“I forgot my make-up!” Where is that toiletry bag…? I just put the little fucker in here!
“Hate to burst your bubble, baby, but I don’t feel like this is an ‘oh, shit!’ moment.” Ashlyn cast me a sideways glance. I ignored it.
I grabbed my toiletry bag from the carry-on and went back into the bathroom. I could just imagine Ashlyn rolling her eyes at me in the bedroom as she got dressed, but I couldn’t care less. I quickly applied mascara to my eyelashes and as I put concealer under my eyes, I noticed how unkempt my eyebrows looked. I sighed and dug around for a pair of tweezers.
I carefully positioned the tweezers just above my eyebrow, clamped down, and --
“Shit!” I had caught my skin. A tiny drop of blood beaded just over my eyebrow.
“What’re you doing?” I focused my eyes in the mirror and saw her approaching behind me. She wore the semi-fitted white v-neck and black drop-crotch pants that I had pulled out for her. Her blonde hair was wet and hung in wavy tendrils that framed her face and her arms were crossed in front of her chest. I didn’t turn around.
“Pruning my face,” I said. I dabbed my finger over the blood.
She sighed. “You know I think you’re beautiful, right?” She came at me slowly, then her hands were on my waist and her chin on my shoulder. She kissed my cheek.
I took in a short breath and put the tweezers down, relaxing a little bit in her embrace. “Yeah,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s right.” She kissed me again, closer to my lips. “Or that I believe it.”
“Well, you better believe it,” she whispered. Her lips caught against mine and everything after that was a whirlwind…
We didn’t leave the room until 8:37.