One Day At A Time

Chapter Eighteen: Morning

Warm beams of sunlight peak through the window the next morning.

Ava can see light behind her eyes, which stirs her awake.

Her eyes open slowly, letting the light in.

When her eyes adjust to the light, her sense of touch starts to wake up.

She cranes her neck, looking over her shoulder.
Lilly is pressed against her back.

Because of this, Ava's back is warm.
She feels quite comfortable like this, but she also wants to roll over.
But she also doesn't want to wake Lilly up.

Ava waits a little while, counting off minutes in her head.

When she gets to five minutes, she slowly rolls over.
She faces Lilly, who slowly opens her eyes a second later.

Damnit, she'd woken her up.

But before worry can even start to pool in her stomach, Lilly looks at her with a faint, tired smile that makes Ava's heart swell.

"Hey." Lilly says, her voice soft.
"Hi." Ava replies, looking at Lilly while her mind spins and spins.

Somehow, Lilly has never looked as nice as she does now, with her bed head and her dark blue eyes that are vaguely looking into Ava's lighter blue ones.

Lilly is beautiful, laying here with Ava, who can't help the tiny smile that tugs at her lips.

Beautiful, that's what Lilly is, that's what she has always been.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

Ava doesn't know why that word is stuck in her mind so persistently, but it makes her happy.

It's a nice word. The oddly perfect word to describe Lilly in any context, but especially this context of them waking up together.

It's like her dreams, waking up with Lilly, a thing she thinks about more often than she would like to admit.

Lilly rolls over to lay on her back.
Her eyes are stuck on the ceiling as Ava watches her with a different but still very persistent thought in her mind.
It's a stupidly persistent thought.

"Hey, Lilly? Can I, uh- can I kiss you?" She stammers, pushing the words out of her mouth somewhat eagerly.

Lilly turns her head away from the ceiling, squinting her eyes when the sunlight hits her face.

Ava wishes she had the words to say how gorgeous Lilly looks with the sun on her face.

God, it makes her heart go nuts.

"What? You want to kiss me... right now?" Lilly questions.

Ava nods her head.
"Yeah... is, is that okay? We don't have to, but I want to."
The soft smile from earlier comes back onto Lilly's face as she looks at Ava, thinking for a minute.

Lilly's heart doesn't know what to do with the fact that Ava wants to kiss her first thing in the morning.

But she does want to kiss her, she wants any opportunity she can to kiss Ava, even though she still doesn't know if Ava likes her back.

She's started to assume things and make her own guesses as to what the answer could be recently, but she keeps that to herself.

"I want to kiss you, too." She answers simply.

Both of them sit up slightly in bed, leaning towards each other.

Ava's hands instantly go to Lilly's face, holding it gently.

Lilly's hands absentmindedly end up on Ava's back.

The feeling of Lilly touching her and loving her is the best feeling in the world.
It's a thing she wants to never stop experiencing.

This specific experience, kissing in the morning, is something really wonderful.

They're both still tired and half-asleep, which makes things last longer and go slower.

They slowly lean back from each other, both showing each other giddy smiles.

"I love that." Ava admits bluntly.
"You do?"
"Yeah..."

That adds another thing to Lilly's mental pile of ideas and assumptions.

But she doesn't want to ruin the moment, so she keeps her thoughts to herself.

The two of them lay in bed for a long while.

To them, the new year started in the best way possible.