Cold Sheets

"You don't wipe the mirror when you don't want to see who's standing there."

I towelled off. Hung the towel on the rail beside Rebecca's. Brushed my teeth. The mirror had fogged during the shower and I didn't wipe it.

The hallway was dark. The bedroom door still ajar, the bedside lamp off now, just the faint grey of the window where the curtains didn't quite meet. I pulled a pair of tracksuit bottoms from the chair where I'd left them that morning and stepped into them. The elastic settled on my hips. The fleece lining was cold for a second, then warm.

Rebecca was on her side, facing the window. The doona pulled to her shoulder. Her breathing had the slow, even depth of someone who'd crossed over into sleep properly — not dozing, not drifting, but gone, the body surrendered to whatever the night was offering.

I got into bed. The sheets were cold on my side. Her warmth occupied her side the way it always did — a concentrated zone that radiated a few inches past the boundary of her body and stopped, the heat she generated held close by the doona and the pillow and the wool jumper she'd fallen asleep in.

I rolled toward her. Fitted my chest against her back. My arm went over her waist, my hand finding the soft fabric of the jumper where it bunched at her stomach. I pulled her in. Not gently, not roughly. The way you pulled a door closed behind you when you were done being outside.

She made a sound. Not a word. A murmur, low in her throat, the involuntary response of a sleeping body registering contact and accepting it without surfacing. Her hand found my forearm and rested there. Fingers loose. Warm.

I closed my eyes.