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HATE THIS by purpleyin
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She lay in the bed, arms raised above her head on the covers. It was a hot night. Only made worse by the fact she was wearing fleece pyjamas and was sharing a bed with Parker. For realism and because she had to admit it would look strange for them to sleep in separate ones, mustn't blow their cover. She had insisted that Parker wear his boxers and his vest. And she'd gone for full length pyjamas, covering about as much flesh as was possible, so as not to give him the wrong idea.
The disadvantage of fleece pyjamas on a humid night being that she was boiling even with just the sheets on top. In the heat she drifted in and out of a dreamless sleep.
Waking up at an early hour of the morning, before light and the chirping of the morning birds, a time when all is silent and thoughts come far too quick and the last thing you expect is to have arms wrapped reasonably tightly around your waist when you know there shouldn't be. It took a few minutes before she'd woken up enough to be able to focus her mind on finding some answers to numerous questions that came to head.
It was Parker. He had his arms around her and was snuggled up to within a few centimetres. She also heard faint snoring, he was sound asleep and blissfully unaware of what he was doing. She thought about waking him but it really would seem strange if anyone knew why she had and she was unsure of exactly how thick the walls were. Besides it wasn't unpleasant, maybe awkward. Awkward could be handled. She hadn't been likely to get back to sleep again anyway, it must have been what, 3am by now?
She lay there still, afraid to move in case she woke him, it made sense that at least one of them got a good night's sleep. She turned her head rounded tentatively to see that he had a faint smile playing on his lips. Soft, the edges curling up gently, wistfully. Like all was blissful in his sleep. And suddenly coiled in tighter, closer to her. She could feel the taut muscles on his chest against her back and his head lay on her shoulder lightly. She didn't move. What would happen if he woke up now? Talk about embarrassing, not just for him but also for her. He probably wouldn't ask why but there would be a question as to why she did nothing to wake him up, why she didn't protest, even if it was never said. She could pretend to be asleep. And she glanced up at his face, peaceful although she could see only a part. Olga closed her eyes quickly and tried to concentrate on something else because looking at him made her want to kiss him so badly. Trying to listen for the first signs of the birds outside did no good either because all she could hear were his slow deep breaths, exhale, inhale, each seeming to sigh quietly, barely audible except because he was right beside her.
She searched inside for that reason, for what it was that stopped her from letting anything happen. At first it had been Joseph, not really that she'd thought he'd come back but instead worried that if she ever got involved with Parker that he too would suffer the same fate, that he could be lost so easily, accidents were bound to happen.
Now there was no fear of Joseph coming back, no one between them. Joseph was gone and for Parker his ex-wife had married and he had well and truly moved on. She had this twinge of worry that ever since Joseph, and the events he caused, that Parker had backed down. There were hardly any comments, come ons. Was he trying to be a friend? Did he think she was uninterested, that she needed time to get over Joseph and wouldn't be ready for a relationship? What was it? Had he given up?
She didn't know what it was, whether she could even say they had any relationship at all. And she couldn't say she wanted one for definite, or what she would want if the answer had been a yes. She couldn't say no though and she wanted something. Just didn't know what. Meanwhile she had nothing, the answer ending up by default as a no to his mind.
Parker dreamed pleasant dreams, full of church pews in supermarkets? It seemed strange to him but of course it made sense. The bit about how Wile Coyote wanted him to catch woody woodpecker had proved at bit of a mystery to him, after he was no good with peanuts. And all his peanuts were in this bowler hat, only he never be able to hang it on the stand if it was full of thirty-three peanuts. He'd have to eat them all up but he'd never liked the hat much anyway, he liked this other one better. It was red and had some writing in but he forgot how to read it right at that moment. He ate the peanuts anyway and found a key at the bottom; it had the word 'JADE' on the handle. He immediately knew which door it was for, problem was he didn't know if it was meant to be used in the door and if he tried without being sure then all the alarms would go off and they'd catch him. He didn't know exactly who they were but it wasn't what he'd want, so he tossed it the air for a while while wondering why he couldn't taste the salt after eating all those peanuts. And his mouth didn't taste of peanuts when he woke up. It had that flavour from when you've not eaten for 10 hours and is of nothing in particular and is not that nice either. And for a little while longer he wondered why it was he was holding a warm body in his arms. He wasn't sure why it felt weird but he had the faintest of ideas that he was about to find out something not good. Better to get it over with then, and his eyes opened. He was staring at a bare neck, Olga's bare neck. And it was Olga he was next too. She was sleeping quite happily. She was the warm body, his arms grasped around her slender waist, his breath catching her hair in a breeze. If she woke up now it wouldn't look good, infact if she woke up while he was trying to get himself out of this predicament it would look worse. But pretending he was asleep until she woke wouldn't have been any better, and he preferred that she didn't know about this. How embarrassing, not to mention awkward, would that be. As he took his limbs from the embrace and inched back, his fingers caught strands of hair. He returned to his side of the bed and sat up and looked over to Olga, staring at her hair and the peaceful look on her face for a little while before she woke up. Just pondering what it was they had, why if they had nothing that she would have that expression on her face when she walked into the motel room the other morning, why she cared and pretended she didn't give a damn.
And why it was the sun managed to light up her hair so brilliantly. Why he cared and yet it got him nowhere.
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