Her hands shake as she tries to uncap the pill bottle. I slide into bed next to her, wearing drawstring pants, shirtless. She’s in a pair of cotton yellow shorts and a tank top that says: Shut the Fucupcakes. I dissed her fucking love of cupcakes three days ago, and I was waiting for her to bring out that shirt. I’m not surprised she chose the last night we have together to wear it. Tomorrow afternoon, she leaves for Paris. Six days later, I’ll be gone to California.
Maybe it’s a good thing we’ll be separated. Connor and my brother think it’s fucking weird that we both haven’t dated in four months, and I guess we’ll finally have the opportunity to change that.
I steal the bottle from her hands and open it with ease. I put two in her palm.
She hesitates. “You know, I didn’t have night terrors or any other symptoms before I started taking these.”
I run my hand through my hair. “Daisy, you’ve talked to your fucking doctor about this.” For fuck’s sake, I was there when she talked to three different sleep disorder physicians about her condition. She’s taken EEGs. She’s been through multiple sleep studies. They all advise her to take the fucking pills. Because without Ambien, she won’t sleep at all. She suffers from insomnia, post-traumatic stress, and the only thing that can really help her is therapy, which she goes to routinely.
“It’s not really sleeping though, is it?” she says, eyeing the pills in her palm. “I mean, it puts me in a half-sleep.”
Parasomnia, the moments between wakefulness and sleep—yeah, I’ve learned all about it. She hasn’t had anything better than that in over six months. “It’s better than no fucking sleep.”
She nods, takes a deep breath, and throws the pills back in her mouth. She chugs half the water before setting it back on her nightstand. I watch her slip beneath the covers and set her head on the pillow, staring straight up at the ceiling. Her eyes begin to glass.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’m scared to sleep,” she admits in a whisper. “I don’t want to have a nightmare.” Tears slide out of the creases of her eyes, too tired to hold them back. “But I’ll be scared all night if I stay awake. It sucks.”
I wish I could take away her problems. I’m not used to being unable to fix things, and it hurts, having to watch her go through this while I pretend that my presence is a fucking solution.
I lean over her so she’s staring right at me. “Daisy,” I say her name forcefully, wiping her tears with my thumb. “No one is getting in this fucking room.” I don’t normally do this every night, but she’s worse today. I reach over to the end table near me and open the drawer. I take out a .45-caliber handgun and show her the ammunition. “Okay?”
I watch her breathe out again, and she nods.
Then I ensure the safety is on and tuck the gun beneath my pillow.
She shuts her eyes, and I near her under the covers so she feels my body heat. I’ve been doing this long enough to know what calms her down and what triggers her fear. We’re a couple inches apart, and I already see a layer of sweat building on her forehead.
“Shhh,” I whisper. “You’re safe.” I rub her arm, and she scoots closer to me. We’re no longer a fucking inch or so apart. Her legs intertwine with mine like it’s the most natural position. She turns, her back against my chest, my arm around her waist, my cock pressing on her ass, but she probably doesn’t hone in on this last fact as much as me.
Do you want to know the kind of restraint it takes to be in this fucking position with this fucking girl almost every fucking night without doing one fucking thing?
More control than I even realized I had.
*
I figured tonight would be a rough one, but I just didn’t expect it to bypass a nightmare and hit on another fucking issue she has. Not sleepwalking. I haven’t caught her doing that yet.
Daisy kicks me awake, which is the normal part. She squirms, her long, smooth legs moving back and forth, up and down, hitting my shins.
I don’t try to stop her. She’ll just be unresponsive until she wakes up fully.
She grips her pillow, her face turned into it, and she moans.
She’s still asleep. This is a fucking side effect of her meds, and it’s happened maybe five times in the past four months. I wasn’t ever planning on telling her that she gets aroused in the middle of the night. She can’t remember it happening, even when her eyes snap open and she looks pretty lucid, like a sleepwalker. I thought telling her that I’ve heard her moan in arousal would embarrass her, so I kept quiet. But during a sleep study, she did it anyway, and so she knows.