Page 182 of In Somnis

Which probably means I should.

Instead, I sit up.

That’s when I notice my feet. They’re dangling off the end of the bed.

I look at them, still processing, and then the full weight of it lands all at once. My boots are where I kicked them off, exactly where I left them, beside the bed. My sleeping bag is at home, just like my mittens. I fell asleep next to her without any of it, without the zipper, the routine, and the exhausted calculation of how to make my body stay where I put it, and I’m still here.

Right where I fell asleep.

I keep staring at my feet.

I have not once, not in years, not since long before I figured out what was wrong with me and started building the routine around it, never woken up where I fell asleep without the sleeping bag. I always end up somewhere else.

Three years ago, I woke up in the logging yard, standing there in the dark at two in the morning, marker in hand, the word

USELESS

written across the side of a truck I’d seen every day of my adult life. I had to scrub it off in the cold with the solvent I found in the equipment shed, alone, before anyone showed up for the morning shift. I never told anyone. I just went home, climbed into the sleeping bag, and slipped on the mittens, then started setting the alarm for the breakfast service an hour later.

But I’m here. In her bed. Where she was.

In bed with her. That’s the thing. I was sleeping next to her, and I didn’t go anywhere.

Holy shit.

I sit up, and my phone is on the pillow beside me, which means she moved it there from my pocket. A folded piece of yellow paper sits on top of it, so I pick it up, and the handwriting is clear, round, and neat, exactly what I’d expect from her.

It still takes me four tries to get through the full sentence. The letters do what letters do to me, sliding and swapping, and I have to press my thumb under each word, holding it there before it’ll stay still long enough to mean something.

Wanted to let you sleep. Come find me at the inn when you’re awake. — L

P.S. Mr. Muffin is in charge until then.

I look at the plushie, still sitting exactly where I left him, embroidered smile unchanged and entirely without judgment, which is more than he deserves given what he witnessed a few minutes ago.

“Mr. Muffin.” I point at him. “We’re not talking about what just happened. Are we clear?”

He stares back at me.

“Good,” I say, and check my phone for the time.

It’s two in the afternoon.

I don’t ever sleep past five.

Shit, shit, shit.

I’m off the bed in one motion, feet shoved into boots without untying them, her key grabbed, dropped, grabbed again. I’m out the door before I’ve fully decided to move, taking the stairs two at a time, skateboard tucked under my arm.

The air hits me cold in the face as I push off hard down the path toward the inn, and somewhere between the second push and the third, the panic settles enough that the other thing surfaces underneath it.

I slept. Properly. Deeply. Right where I fell asleep.

Next to her.

I push harder, the wheels loud on the uneven path, and I don’t look at that thought directly because if I do, I’m going to have to figure out what it means, and the inn is three minutes away. I don’t have time for whatever that is right now.

Later.