The steady hum of the shower slowly awakes my senses as I roll over, trying to get away from the glare of the sun, which is pouring in through the window. Trying to decide whether to get up and close the curtain or to simply lie in bed until the sun forces me to rise, I groan as I hear the shower turned off and the door of the bathroom open.
Lazily opening a heavy eyelid, I see Cat scuttle around the room, holding her towel tightly around her chest as she picks up her clothes for work. She returns to the bathroom to get changed, casting a quick eye over my sleeping figure as she does so, as though she’s scared I might have seen her. It infuriates me when she acts like that. What has the girl got against being naked? It's not like we haven't been intimate before.
Drowsiness takes over me again, until the door opens again and Cat emerges, all pretty and glowly from her shower. She walks over to me and drops a quick kiss on my forehead, giving my hair a slight tousle as does so, before starting to turn away and leave. I wearily try to make my eyes fully open as she looms over me, smiling.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” she says softly, in a sweet voice no one but me gets to hear.
“Hi,” I mumble, hitting my pillow slightly to make it fluffier. “Are you going to work?”
She nods. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Being woken with a kiss is more pleasant than an alarm clock,” I sigh, trying to sit up. “I was waking up anyway.”
“Well, I have to go,” she smiles, dropping another kiss to my temple.
“No!” I moan, like some teenager told they had to go to a family reunion. “Stay here with me.”
She laughs as I grasp her wrist and try to pull her back to bed. “Sorry Justin, but I have to go to work.”
“Yeah, to work on me,” I mutter, grinning as she places a swift smack on the back of my head.
“You’re even cockier in the mornings,” she says, although I can hear the cracks in her disapproving tone. She’s not mad. She couldn’t be if she tried.
“Don’t go,” I whine again, opening the comforter and quickly pulling her under it and on top of me, as she gasps with surprise.
“Justin! I have to go to work.”
“No you don’t,” I reply simply, wrapping my arms around her and burying my nose in to her freshly cleaned hair. “Not when you smell this good.”
She laughs and tries to pull away. “Justin, I really, really have to go.”
“Fine,” I mumble, allowing her to get out of the bed. “But make sure Sean doesn’t come and smell you. You know how little boys’ imaginations are when it comes to nice smelling women.”
“Little boys? He’s older than you, my dear,” she says in a motherly tone.
“Just make sure he knows his place, okay?”
This earns me a swift roll of the eyes. “Justin, we’ve talked about this…”
“Come back on your lunch hour?” I plead, sticking out my bottom lip. There’s no way I’m letting her stay with the conniving little prick. I bet, on the first chance he gets, he’ll dive straight into her pants.
She tries not to grin, but doesn’t succeed. “Fine, but just because I don’t want to hang out in the office.”
“Sure, sure,” I say in a condescending voice. “You know love the Timber-love.”
She laughs and readjusts her skirt. “About as much as I love bikini waxes.”
Wrinkling my nose in disgust, I fiddle with my pillow until they’re upright and I can sit back on them. “Just be back here at one, young lady.”
“Okay,” she replies, turning away again.
“Ahem,” I cough, and she spins around.
“What?”
“No kiss?”
“I’ve given you two!” she exclaims, smiling.
“Well, I want two more.”
Rolling her eyes, she mutters something along the lines of pop stars being the most spoilt people ever to walk the earth’s surface, before bending down and giving me a kiss on the lips.
“There. Pleased?”
“One more,” I say, and she tries to keep the smile off her face as she gives me another kiss. “Thank you,” I reply, as she pulls away, a blush entering her cheeks.
“No problem. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
She tosses a wave over her shoulder before crossing the room to the door. Just as her hands land on the brass knob, I call out, “Love you!”
She pauses and smiles, looking down at her hands. “Love you too,” she whispers shyly.
Grinning, I sling the covers over my head again, burying myself in the depths of my bed as I hear the car start in the driveway. I don’t even contemplate what I could or should do with my time until Cat comes back, because I know that without her, everything just seems too boring.
Feeling myself succumb to a stupor again, I roll over to Cat’s side, inhaling the perfume left on the sheets. Cat would just love it if she saw me smelling her pillow, I can imagine her words running along the lines of, ‘Dear God, he’s more feminine than I suspected’. But she would love it secretly. She loves me secretly, I know it.
I hope things stay like this forever.
--------------------------------------------------------
I tried to wipe off the stupid smile on my face, I really did. In fact, I even got it down to a close mouthed smile, before I just couldn’t resist showing my teeth again.
Yes, I am irritatingly in love; even his horrific attempt to grow a beard hasn’t put me off. Where’s that steadfast feminist of mine gone, huh?
I don’t know. She probably hightailed it out of here the first time Justin bought me a bouquet of my favorite flowers (lilies, and he worked that out all on his own) and I almost started crying. To be fair, it was dangerously close to that time of the month and I was extremely emotional that day because it had just been awful, with all these unmet deadlines and everything, and he happened to have the instinct to do something nice to cheer me up. So, when you think about it, it’s not that pathetic. Sure, it’s semi pathetic, but not fully pathetic.
Or maybe she dissolved when I woke up on my birthday and he had written this card which really should have made me vomit because of it’s saccharine sweet words, but ended up making me almost faint when he wrote, ‘I love you, just the way you are. I wouldn’t change you for the world, and I hope you’ll always remember that’. See? I even memorized it. What does that say about that supposed inner feminist?
Perhaps she faded into oblivion the first time Justin and I made lov--sorry, sorry, had sex. I was petrified, but hey what’s new, and spent far longer than I should have making sure the light was off and the curtains were drawn, just so his vision could be skewered by the darkness. He was so sweet, and made this joke about him getting naked first, so if I didn’t laugh at him, he wouldn’t laugh at me. Of course, he didn’t laugh at me, instead he kept whispering how perfect I was, even though I knew he was lying, and didn’t say anything about how awful I must look naked. He must have grasped somewhere along the line that I have no sexual skills whatsoever, so I allowed him to fully take charge and before I knew it…my oh my.
Yes, the feminist definitely took the back seat that night. I didn’t even pretend to be disappointed in Justin’s performance or make any jokes about it, I just lay there and he fell asleep, his angelic body up against me. Okay, okay, so maybe I cried a tiny bit, but it was no big deal! And it was just for a second anyway, it’s not like I was in hysterics…Of course, he woke up and thought he’d done something terribly wrong and I somehow murmured no, quite the opposite.
“Then why are you crying?”
“I don’t know,” I whimpered, clutching at my pillow as I felt him press himself against my back, peering over at me to see what was wrong.
“I thought you hated crying?”
“I do!” I snapped, hastily trying to brush my tears away in the dark room. “I’m not even crying.”
“Yes you are.”
“No I’m not!”
He smiled at me. “I think you are.”
“I am not!”
“Okay, you’re not,” he said, dropping kisses on my naked shoulder as I shuddered beneath his touch. “You know I love you Cat, don’t you?”
I somehow managed to nod.
“And you know I think you’re beautiful?”
“But that’s the point!” I exclaimed, squeezing my eyes shut as I felt the tears build up in them once again. “This is all so…overwhelming.”
He put a hand to my shoulder, pulling me around to face him. He gently wiped away at my tears with his thumbs as he held my face in his hands. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged helplessly. “It’s just…all this; it’s not something I’m used to. And what just happened was…” I trailed off, my wide knowledge of the English language still not enough to express how I felt. “Wonderful,” I completed, for lack of a better word. “I’ve just never felt like this before,” I whispered bashfully.
Before I knew it, I was sobbing into his shoulder all over again. People say that it’s normal to cry after sex, for a “release of emotion”, but I’ve never done that. I’ve always been the type of girl to find some adequate enjoyment, reflect on it for a second (with very little nostalgia, I must add), and then roll over to go to sleep.
So what is this? Why can’t I just stop the tears flowing down my cheeks as I grip helplessly onto Justin? This is so unlike me.
He chuckled slightly and soothingly stroked my hair, “It’s alright, it’s alright,” he whispered, presumably wondering where the hell it was all coming from. Same here, Timberlake.
“This is so stupid,” I mumbled into his chest as he kissed my head.
“No it’s not,” he said, leaning back slightly. “Something amazing just happened; it’s okay to be overwhelmed.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Sex is a big thing. A lot of women get emotional.”
“But not me!” I protest, jabbing at my chest angrily.
“Why not?”
“Because…” I floundered helplessly, “I’m just not like that!”
He sighed, cocking his head to the side to look at me for a moment. “You know Cat, you don’t have to be tough all the time,” he murmured gently, lying back down on the pillow as his hand continued to stroke my hair. “You can let down your guard a little sometimes."
“But I do have to keep my guard up, Justin. If I’m not being sarcastic, or pessimistic, or funny, then what am I? People will just realize that without that stuff, I have no personality, no wit, no good points at all--”
“That’s not true,” he replied immediately. “Why do you care what people think so much?”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”
He sighed. “Cat sweetie, sure, I can see where you’re coming from. I mean, look at me, I have a whole world to please, but you have to make yourself happy before anyone else.”
“I am happy,” I interjected shyly, looking down at the sheets. “I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.”
“So am I,” he said, reaching up and lightly touching my cheek as he smiled at me. “And one day you’ll realize that people won’t look down on you because you’re happy and not talking about how awful the world is.” I blushed guiltily. That was exactly what I was worried about. “You’re funny Cat, you know you are, but you can still be funny and in love at the same time.”
“But I’ve lost all my sarcastic wit,” I joked, a weak smile crossing my features.
He laughed. “Cat, you’re never going to lose your sarcastic wit.”
I laughed with him, wiping away the last traces of my tears, and nestled into bed beside him, his arm automatically going around me.
“I love you,” I said unexpectedly, as his body meshes into mine.
His smile broadened. “I love you too.”
So fine, I admit to being completely and utterly at the hands of Mr. Timberlake.
But can you really blame me?
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