Sunday after the Shower: A Fantasy

I can’t sleep any longer. The phone calls won’t stop. Well-wishers wanting to do stuff for my grandmother, my grandmother waking me and ordering me around. The dogs barking at nothing, hoping I’ll give them a bone on my way back to bed, promising me that if I do they’ll shut up.
Once back in bed, I can’t really fall back asleep. All I can think of is you. Of the times spent in this bed. It’s Sunday. I haven’t heard from you since your four line e-mail last Monday. “Talk to you soon.” Hmp.
I have to shower before making my daily visit to see my grandfather at the hospital. As he’s been moved temporarily from the rehab floor to a medical floor while he gets over a bout of pneumonia, he has even more time alone on his hands. I enjoy the quiet of sitting with him in his room. He’s never been much of a talker. Though hard of hearing, he doesn’t turn his tv up loud, mostly because he doesn’t really watch it. We mostly just sit together.
It’s a nice change of pace from my grandmother’s house. If she’s awake, she’s talking to me. Constantly. It doesn’t really matter what I’m doing or where I am in the house. Privacy has no meaning to this woman. I get a special reprieve between 8 and 9 pm, she retires to her room, where she blasts taped episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on her bedroom tv. I can hear the dialogue outside her door. She wakes up at 2 am for a cigarette, at which time she begins to talk to me again. It doesn’t matter if I’m watching a movie or catching up on the political blogs I read regularly or reading a book or just generally attempting to take advantage of the relative quiet of the house in those late night hours. She will begin the non-stop barrage of questions, disregarding the activity I’d previously been engrossed in. I suppose “question” is the wrong word because she isn’t really looking for an answer. She is looking for agreement.
Sleep provides a sort of refuge but, for the past week, I’ve been unable to sleep, thinking of you, conjuring all the ways and reasons that my hot-and-heavy new lover, who said he never disappeared on people, has suddenly disappeared.
My one respite lately has been singing. I’m not a very good vocalist, but it tends to take me out of myself, like a great meditation that I can achieve in only three minutes. The car and the shower are the best places to indulge in this because they tend to create a wonderful echo chamber, making me sound much better than I really am. As I gather my clothes, I also grab the small stereo and a mix cd, so I don’t have to rely solely on songs I know all the words to.
As I undress, I start the disk. Or attempt to start the disk. After a minute of fussing, the first song starts to play. But just as I step into the bathtub, the music stops, though the disk is still spinning. I skip that song. And the next. The third track seems to be working better. In the middle of shampooing my hair, however, that song hits a snag as well. Dripping wet, I dry my hands on my towel, skipping through the rest of the songs on the disk to see if I have any more luck with them. I don’t. Finally, I give up, turning off the power to the stereo and going back to my shower.
I drop to my knees in the bathtub, warm water streaming down my back, my calves flush against the hard porcelain. This seems to be the way my life has been going lately. A combination of life’s downs all happening at once and my less-than-stellar way of handling it. Having a hot dominant lover, full of possibilities, had seemed to take the edge of off a great deal of the stress, but now….
The dogs were barking again. But this time it meant that my grandmother was probably home. Visiting hours on that floor started at 11 am. It was probably 2 pm by now, meaning she was just exhausted. I hauled my body off the bottom of the tub and finish my shower so I could get to the quiet of the hospital as soon as possible. I shaved my legs, just in case. The tech that came on duty at 7pm last night was pretty cute. Maybe I could haul him into a linen closet for a quick make-out session before I left. Goddess, what was getting into me?!?
As soon as I pulled back the shower curtain, I realized my mistake. In my distraction to get the small stereo, I had forgotten to grab my blue jeans out of the closet. So, I had a fresh pair of panties, a bra, and a t-shirt, but no pants. Oh, well. Lotion all over, what clothes I did have, two quick pigtails in my not-quite-long-enough-for-a-real-ponytail hair, and I was ready to throw on my jeans, grab my bag, and go. But, when I opened the door to my room, I was met with a surprise.
The bed covers that I had left in a crazy mess were neatly pulled over a human-shaped lump curled in the middle of my bed. This human-shaped lump was obviously naked, as there was a neatly-stacked pile of clothes sitting on the floor at the end of the bed, the tell-tale Tommy boxer-briefs folded neatly on top. Hearing me shut the door, a blond head popped up from under the covers, a mischievous grin on your wholesome face.
“Your grandmother really needs to be more careful about locking the door when she leaves. Any psycho could come in here.”
“What do you think you are doing here? After nearly a week? No texts, no calls, no e-mails- you just show up like this? Naked and in my bed?”
“If you didn’t know I was here, why aren’t you wearing any pants?” As I don’t really have a good answer for that, I just stand at the foot of the bed and scowl at you.
A shadow passes over your face and you’re suddenly pulling me down onto the bed with you. In one swift move, you are on top of me. There is a strange new look in your eyes, one I’ve heard about but never seen. The one I teasingly call your “dom” look. Your hands are holding my wrist firmly over my head as you lean down, I think, to kiss me. Instead, you murmur harshly into my ear, “You’re going to trust that there is a good explanation for all this and you are going to wait to hear it until I’m ready to tell it to you. But right now, we are both going to get what we’ve both wanted for this whole week.”
I sigh, relax, submit.