241. Silent Night

I blinked. He blinked. I looked at his right eye, then his left, before focusing on the tip of his nose. I felt him scan my face as well. I looked at his lips. He licked them. 

We were lying in my bed on our sides, face to face. His nose was inches from mine. The lights were off, but my eyes had adjusted enough to see him clearly. We weren't touching. Just observing. 

Being in a long-distance relationship, we'd spent so much time talking. Even if we didn't have anything to talk about, we'd talk about not having anything to talk about. We filled silences with overused phrases like "I miss you," "I wish you were here," and "I just can't wait to see you again." We talked on the phone. We talked on Gchat. We talked on the webcam.

But for a moment that night, we stopped talking. We listened to each other's breathing. When I held my breath, I thought I could hear his heartbeat. Or maybe that was mine. Maybe they were beating at the same time. 

He yawned and I watched his big round eyes squeeze shut so tightly that his eyelashes disappeared. He covered his mouth with a giant hand. I tried to fight the urge to yawn. My nose flared. My jaw forced itself open and I gave in. I wished my hand were  as big as Cayden's so I could cover my entire yawn face. There's nothing cute about a yawn face unless it's on a puppy or a baby. Flared nose, double and triple chins, elongated face. And sometimes it's accompanied by a stray gleek or that awkward inverted burping sound. 

We both had watery eyes from our yawns. I wanted to reach out and touch his face, but I loved the tension of not touching. So many times in the past, I'd lain in that same position, facing nothing but an empty bed, trying to use mental powers to make him magically appear. I didn't need magic that night, but it was still there, surrounding us in the room. I felt like I'd chugged Love Potion or eaten sugar cube-shaped sparkling fairy dust. 

"Tonight felt like home."

He broke the silence. I watched his lips move before I realized he was talking. The words didn't make sense at first. Eventually my brain realized it was a sentence. I smiled, not wanting to break my silence just yet. 

"Coming home from work with you, Monday night football, Joey's chili, falling asleep next to you," his voice trailed off. He wasn't whispering, but I had to listen closely to catch every word. "This is how it's supposed to be. This is home."

If we were in a movie, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' song 'Home' would start softy and grow louder as the scene faded to black and the credits rolled. 

  Home, Let me come Home

Home is Whenever Im with you
Home, yes I am Home
Home is wherever Im with you  

Movie watchers would turn to each other with confused looks. "Well?? Do they end up together or not??"