Popstar

2:47 A.M. The first thing I noticed was the ceiling fan, turning slowly in the dark like it had all the time in the world. The second thing I noticed was a hand sliding across my chest. I blinked. The red numbers on the alarm clock read 2:47. "Jess?" My voice came out like gravel in a blender. "What's wrong? Is something wrong?" "Nothing's wrong," she whispered, her breath warm against my ear. "I just can't sleep." "Do you want water? Tylenol? Is it the neighbor's dog again?" "Wes." She said my name slowly, the way she does when I'm being adorably clueless. "Wake up. Think." I propped myself up on one elbow, squinting through the dim glow of the streetlight leaking past our blinds. Jess was propped up too, her dark hair tousled, one eyebrow raised, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth that told me everything my sleepy brain had failed to figure out. "Oh," I said. "Oh," she agreed, grinning. Here's the thing about Jessica Marlowe. She's an ICU nurse in Denver who works twelve-hour shifts and has the discipline of a drill sergeant. She sets three alarms. She meal-preps on Sundays. She has never, not once in four years, been late to anything. But every once in a while, usually when she's had a hard week and the stress finally drains out of her, she turns into somebody else entirely. Playful. Bold. Mischievous. And that version of Jess, I'll admit, is my favorite person in the world. "I have a seven o'clock meeting," I mumbled, mostly out of reflex. "You have a four-hour window," she whispered back. "I did the math." "You did math? At 2:47 in the morning?" "I'm very resourceful." I laughed, which turned into a yawn, which turned into her laughing at me. And just like that, the sleep fog lifted. I looked at her properly then, really looked. The soft shape of her in the half-light. The oversized Broncos T-shirt she'd stolen from my drawer two years ago and never returned. The way her eyes were bright and wide awake, shining at me with that look that still, after all this time, makes my heart do something clumsy. "Come here," I said. "Thought you'd never ask." I'll spare you the rest. A gentleman keeps some things between the sheets and the ceiling fan. But I will tell you this: nobody has ever made a cold, dark bedroom feel as warm as she does. We laughed more than we did anything else, which is probably the real secret to us. At one point she got her foot tangled in the comforter and nearly launched herself off the bed, and I had to bury my face in a pillow to keep from waking up the entire building. And at some point after that, with the world quiet and the clock creeping toward four, we lay there side by side, both staring at the ceiling, grinning like teenagers who'd gotten away with something. "Thank you for waking me up," I said. "Anytime," she said. "Literally. Anytime." She fell asleep first. She always does. Her head rested on my shoulder, one arm thrown across my stomach, her breathing slow and even. I stayed awake a little longer, listening to it, thinking about how strange and wonderful it is to be wanted like that, to be reached for in the dark by someone who knows every one of your flaws and picks you anyway. When I was twenty-three, I thought love was supposed to feel like fireworks. Loud, dramatic, impossible to miss. Four years with Jess has taught me it's closer to this. A hand finding yours at 2:47 in the morning. Someone who sees you half asleep, hair a mess, breath questionable, and still says, there you are, I was hoping you'd wake up. The fan kept turning. The streetlight flickered once and held. My alarm went off at 6:15. I groaned and swatted at it like it owed me money. "Regretting it?" Jess mumbled into the pillow, not even opening her eyes. "Not even a little." "Good." She smiled into the cotton. "Because I might do it again tomorrow." "Tomorrow's Thursday." "Thursday's got a 2:47 too."