bed and blinked. His phone was there, the charger already plugged in. I must have been in the bathroom longer than I thought if he had time to bring his charger in here, shimmy the nightstand out to plug it in, and then put the table back where it was.
J.J. returned with my phone and bent to pick up the charging cable from the floor where it had fallen. He plugged it into my phone, leaving the device on the nightstand.
"Thanks."
He came around the bed and climbed in before he answered, "No problem."
Unsure of what else to do, I turned out the light. Once the room was dark, I became very aware of how close his body was to mine in the bed. We were less than a foot apart, but we weren't touching.
"You okay?" J.J. asked in the darkness.
"Yeah. Why?"
"You were holding your breath."
I released the air in a swift gust. "Uh, I'm okay, just...not sure what to do. I mean, I don't know if you're a cuddler or if you prefer to sleep without touching someone and..." I trailed off. I had no clue what to say next.
"I sleep like the dead so it doesn't really matter," he answered. His voice was soft and a little groggy as if he were minutes away from drifting off again.
I didn't say anything, not wanting to wake him up if he was about to fall asleep. I gasped when he reached out and pulled me into his side.
"You were holding your breath again," he murmured against my temple.
We were facing each other, his arm around my waist. My arms were between us with my hands pressed against his bare chest. I shifted my right thigh so that it rested between his and he sighed.
"This is nice," he whispered.
It was.
I tucked my head under his chin and closed my eyes.
"Night, Jay."
I felt his lips on my hair before he said, "Night, Lee."
And that was the last thing I remembered.
18
After that night, my life with J.J. felt more like a real marriage.
We got up together in the morning and did our usual things—him going for a run or to the gym for a quick workout and me working in the garden, tending to the fall garden I'd planted.
Then, we'd usually shower together and most of the time we would end up making love either in the shower or on the bed after.
Sometimes, we made love before the shower because even sweaty from his workouts, J.J. was too sexy to resist.
After the shower was breakfast, which we usually cooked together, and he would head to the office while I either studied, went to a house cleaning job, or logged on for one of my online classes.
If I wasn't working, we would meet at the house or one of the few restaurants in town for lunch and then I would usually go to work at Crave. If it was one of my days off from the shop, I would usually spend the afternoon reading up on pregnancy or re-learning how to crochet. My grandmother had taught me when I was younger but I'd forgotten quite a bit. I wanted to learn so I could make some things for the baby. I also dug my sewing machine out of the storage shed, which irritated J.J. because he was worried it was too heavy for me to be lifting.
On my nights off, we would have dinner together and either watch TV or talk after.
It was what some people would probably call a normal existence, but it felt like bliss to me.
The only mar on those days was how I had to fight the urge to tell him I loved him.
Maybe it made me a coward, but I wasn't ready to deal with any possible negative fallout.
And it was too early. We'd only just made the transition from roommates to lovers and I didn't want him to feel pressured to return my feelings.
Okay, so that was my excuse but I was sticking to it.
I wasn't ready to say it, even though I wanted to every single day.
For his part, J.J. didn't change much except that he was more physically affectionate than before. He would come up behind me when I was washing dishes or cooking dinner and wrap his arms around me. Or if he was the one cooking and I was helping, he would tug me closer to kiss me.
When we sat on the couch to watch TV, he always had an arm wrapped around me or