A few nights ago, watching Clone High reruns, Nikki fell asleep on my bed. It was in a horrendously adorable way, curled up in a circle, like a cat, with armfuls of down blanket pulled up under her head as a makeshift pillow.
Utterly unable to fall asleep around this, and without willpower to destroy something so cute to wake her up and send her off to her own room, or even re-arrange herself, I wandered off to her room to crash on her bed. About a half hour later, just as I was on that special verge of drifting off, she was wandering into her own room, and flipped the lights on. I shrieked unholy fury at the ceiling, as it's champion lightbulb sent forth vast armies of searing, soulless 75-watt agony towards my pupils, quarters in diameter for all the pain they'd just learned they could absorb.Fortunately, I was half asleep, so it came out more of a frustrated mumble as I rolled over to block it out. I vaguely remember her apologizing, as she flipped the light off and climbed into the bed next to me. For whatever reason, it occurred to me that my bed was now free, so I got up and went to it, promptly falling asleep.The next day, as I cruised the kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee, Andrew was webcrawling on the living room computer. "By the way," He'd said, without even looking up from the monitor, "Next time Nikki falls asleep in your bed, you're not allowed to go to sleep in hers." "Why not?" I was confused. "It's more comfortable than the couch."It was at this point that his eyes tore away from the monitor to affix me with the look that was right and proper for the event. The "You're such a dumbass" look.And then it occurred to me. A beautiful, incredibly awesome girl had fallen asleep in the same bed as I was occupying, twice. And each time, I had gotten up and gone to a different one.Considering I've stated on many an occasion that one of my greatest pleasures in life is waking up next to somebody, this did not make sense.So I thought about it. Andrew grinned and told me he was just giving me crap, and not to worry about it, but in my head the thought process was worth following through.Here's eventually what I came up with. I think I'm on an introverted wave. I've been getting less time alone lately, people have been showing up a lot the past several days, and I haven't been sleeping as well. And they're not people I wish I could get away from, but rather, that I'm willing to suffer a little burnout in order for the opportunity to spend time with. But all of this adds up to serious need to recharge. As cool as Nikki is, the truth is, she's still a person, and that person had been inside my bubble... And without conscious thought processes, I had rectified the situation.Today, I got my recharge time, but then I got a pounding headache while on the road to help Crow out, who'd been stranded on the I-10 about halfway between here and Pheonix. I'd come home and fallen onto the bed, and Nikki had poked me until I got up, and we'd gone outside to have a cigarette. As I'd sad there, head throbbing, waiting for excedrin to kick in, staring vacantly at the moon and listening to the Andrews tell sordid tales of of the speech and debate team, she'd poked my knee and looked at me. "You okay?" I remember her asking, because it had been so earnest and scary-perceptive, "You look homework burnt out."Hours later she fell asleep on my bed again, but this time left me a space. Then she got up, left for a bit, came back, looked at me through the doorway, and left again. Confused, tired, and with the caffeine from the Excedrin just starting to kick in, I had a sudden urge to write.This, this is just sorta what came of it. -Alex
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