[b]EARLIER[/b]

[i]Elle sat curled in the corner of the bed, legs pulled close to her chest and covered partially by sheets. She watched him with a delicate stare. 

The screen before them played a muted sitcom. She ignored the two characters sitting in the café, looking at each other blankly while the audience reacted. Instead she listened to the morning’s scattered noise, flowing through open balcony doors. With enough effort her eyes parted hesitantly from his body and glanced over at the screen; the blonde seated at the table was now covered in coffee, jaw slacked in shock. Elle sighed, slid off the combination couch/bed, and slipped into an oversized band-tee that was stuck under Colin’s leg. She shuffled towards the kitchen, adamant on fixing a dark batch of Joe.

Her and Colin had – without a word to any of their friends or associates – been seeing each other for a few months. They met at a nameless bar in District 17, its only real identifier being the luminous glow that spilled down from a nearby shopping complex; he was slinging back shots with his department and she was there out of obligation to a few of her university friends. It had been a sobering night for the both of them. They both woke to a new reality.

The machine bubbled lightly against the half-quiet of the apartment. She relished in the wave that fell upon remembering her roommate spent that night at Richard’s. Trina would have said something. God forbid she recognized him from the bar all those nights ago, or reminded Elle of that lame kid that just happened to be in a fairly decent band. She seriously JUST “liked his music.” Elle had hoped if Trina and him were there when they woke up, she would at the least refrain from slipping in anything about how old he was.

He surely didn’t wear his age like a badge but when you stumble into your mid-thirties there are certain things you just cannot hide, little things, superficial nonsense really: like how his skin didn’t hold as tight as it once did, his slacker ‘five-o-clock-shadow,’ or the smallish ‘barely there’ indent on the right side of his nasion. When they talked about things - the people, the past, the future, the end of their times – they sometimes talked about their difference in age. It wasn’t a conversation that raised either of their blood pressures. They were rather comfortable with their (approximate) ten-year gap. Elle discovered soon in the days and nights they spent together that he provided her directionless life with more structure and authority, if not in actuality, then metaphysically. Sense of self, identity and relative prosperity had then become like her own call to arms. He was a cop, just because he looked a little rough around the edges and was missing work to stay in her bed didn’t mean that the idea of him, the idea of a “by-the-books” detective, didn’t still fill her with an inexplicable drive for structure. Colin found she drew out from him the long lost feelings of youth he had sworn were forever gone. There was an impossibly electrifying energy teeming in her pursuit to have a good weekend, he saw this when she led him through the District at night. In the streets he had come to loath with such a feverish passion, he found new growth.

The metallic coffee maker beeped rapidly. She redirected her gaze from the open kitchen window and the apartment complex across the way to the bubbling machine. She grasped the filled mug before being grabbed by two large hands. The cup was full, and rested on his arm; she began to rise, the counter disappeared from sight and she only saw the open cabinets.

“Babe, BABE. Hot, hot. Stop it.” She laughed, the cup tilted back and spilled onto Colin’s arm. He didn’t flinch or stop. “Colin. OK - fuuunn. Put me down now?”

He grunted like a little baby.

“Shut up. Down.”

He put her down to cold floor.

“I thought you’d be sleeping later.”

“Am I in the middle of some work you needed to get to?”

She walked over to him, and didn’t appear to be amused. “Listen, all I meant was that because your such a badass for missing work, you might enjoy sleeping in for once.”

He was silent, exhaled, and sat up on the kitchen island. “You know NOTHING of how late I am to work.”

Her eyes pointed. [b]“Really?”[/b]

“Really.”

“Fuck you buddy, no coffee for you.”

“What time is it?”

She frowned.

“I really should get to work.”

She sighed and pulled away from him. “Noon, you loser.”

“Gonna use your shower.”

He walked around the island and straight down the hall towards the bathroom; she watched him disappear into the void of the unlit half of apartment. He turned right at the end, and soon light flooded around the corner like a beacon. She snarled and slipped out of the gray tee, pacing down the hall and shaking her head with a devilish smirk.[/i]