30: The Anticipation-1

September 2011 C H A P T E R    T H I R T Y T H E A N T I C I P A T I O N "Morning." Colin whispered in Katie's ear, his voice was graceful, like a symphony filling her ears as she gently awoke from the long sleep she had. "Good morning." She groaned and turned from having her back to this stomach, rolling closer into his arms for the first time since he had gotten his cast off the day before. He kissed her on the forehead and smiled as she remained lying there with her eyes closed. He moved his lips from her forehead then, down to her lips and around her jawline, but she still would not budge. A small smile crept up onto her face and once he noticed this, he burst into laughter. "Are you going to pretend like you're still asleep even though you just said good morning to me?" he asked, humoured by her lack of reaction. "Of course not." She cracked her eyes open then, a mischievous look written all over her face. "Good, because I'm making breakfast and if I'm not enough to get you out of bed in the mornings, surely my food will be." He needed something to do, he felt exhausted yet full of energy at the same time. After the day he came back from the hospital, Katie had spent many nights with him in his apartment. She would come over after work and leave the next morning for work, two weeks had passed already and it was a Saturday, which meant she could spend the entire day with him. While spending most of his time with her was exactly what he wanted and needed, in the back of his mind, he was counting down the days until rehab, dreading when the day would finally come. Katie was the perfect distraction, but as he stood in his kitchen whisking eggs together for their breakfast, the words "two more days" repeated over and over in his head. He only had until Monday before he would have to leave for three months, only seeing her weekly was going to kill him. Colin doubted himself a lot, he doubted whether rehab was even going to work out for him, and he doubted his strength that would allow him to get through everything, but then he thought of her and remembered why he was doing all of this. He was haunted most nights by nightmares, always very strange, the kind that made you wake up in a cold sweat. And once his breathing had calmed he would turn and find her lying there beside him in bed, fast asleep. Her presence made him feel so much better, she was his safe haven that he never wanted to let go of. "Want some help?" Katie padded out from the bedroom to the kitchen. "No, you can just keep me company." He smiled at her before he began cooking again. Katie sat on one of the stools at the breakfast bar and began tapping her fingers on the countertop along with the music he had just turned on. "It smells amazing already." "Of course it does, it's my cooking." Katie rolled her eyes at his statement. "No need to rub it in even more than you have already Colin. I can't cook, there, I said it." She raised her hands up in mock defeat, to which he grinned. There was a short silence, the pair looked at each other and no words were needed for that small minute until Colin asked a question. "Are we meeting Andrew at one or two again? I forgot." "Two." She said dreamily, taken away by everything about him in that moment. She had her head propped up with her hand while she stared at him a little longer. "I need to go pick up some stuff at my apartment on our way too though, so we should probably leave a bit earlier." She said it as if it was a chore, and it definitely was beginning to feel like it was exactly that although she didn't want to admit it. The look on Colin's face made her realise she should have used a different tone, because she know what was coming next. "Maybe if you moved in here you wouldn't have to keep going back and forth all the time?" he smiled, his features lit up with a kind of hope Katie couldn't agree to, not yet anyway. The undetermined look on her face did not stop his thoughts from clouding with pictures of her being permanently there with him. His apartment could not only be his home anymore, but theirs. The thought made him want to smile even more, but he suppressed it then once she spoke. "Colin..." she warned him. She didn't want to have this painful conversation again. "What? C'mon Katie. Think about how great it would be if you lived here with me, if we lived together." "I practically already do." "See? You just agreed with me, so why not move in?" "I didn't agree with you, I just don't think it's the right time yet." She hesitated, not wanting to give her reasons. For today, she just wanted to pretend he wasn't going away in a few days, she wanted to pretend that everything was perfect and that Colin had no vices, only virtues. But he had some things to do before she would agree to take such a plunge as moving in fully with him- one specifically being- finishing rehab and getting clean. "Why not?" she let out a deep sigh once he asked the question he already knew the answer to, the question that had been answered so many times in the past few weeks they had spent together. Yet he asked again anyway. "Maybe after you're finished in rehab we can talk about it then." "But it's closer to your job, more convenient for you." "You're going to be gone on Monday anyways Colin. I'd be here on my own for months?"