Chapter 17
Sunday morning Michael woke up feeling one hundred percent different than he had the previous morning. On Saturday morning, he had awoken along in his cold bed with only his laptop beside him, but on Sunday morning, when he woke up, he had a girlfriend who he loved sleeping in bed beside him. With that, nothing else mattered. The world could have been falling down around him but, as long as he had Sydney, he didn’t even care.
Reveling in that second time they had woken up together, Michael forced himself to stay awake and watch Sydney sleeping beside him. He watched her eyes flutter gently and her chest rise and fall slowly for almost an hour before she groaned and began to move around from her comfortable spot beside him. A wicked smile crossed his face as Michael slipped a hand under their covers and began tickling Sydney’s waist. “Nooo don’t,” she groaned sleepily, batting his hand away. “Too sleepy…”
“Sorry,” he laughed softly. Then he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close, kissing her temple gently. “You’re really beautiful when you sleep,” he told her softly.”
“Stalker!” she gasped fakely. “Get out of my bed you freak!” she said, though she made no attempt to move herself or him in anyway.
Michael laughed loudly. “You’re crazy in the morning.”
“I’m crazy in general,” she corrected.
“Good point…so what are we doing today?”
“We? What are ‘we’ doing today? I dunno what we’re doing today but I’ve got my weekly Sunday brunch with my sister and mother,” Sydney told him.
“Ahh yes… oh I forgot to ask last night – how
is the strip club these days?”
Sydney laughed. “Oh she quit thank god.
Apparently the owners of the club weren’t very respectful towards women.”
“You’re kidding!” Michael gasped in fake shock.
“No,” Sydney laughed. “So she quit. Now she’s managing some clothing boutique at the mall.”
“Well that’s an improvement…”
“Tell me about it,” she sighed. They snuggled in bed for a few minutes before Sydney forced herself from Michael’s embrace so she could shower. After her shower, she returned to her bedroom to change, expecting to find Michael gone but, instead, found him still in bed, asleep. Smiling softly, she pulled her towel tighter around her and walked over to the bed, shaking his shoulder gently. “Wake up sleepy head,” she said softly.
Within a moment, he stirred and looked up at her with a smile. “Well now
this is a nice way to wake up,” he said before yawning.
“Ha, ha,” she said dryly. “What happened?”
“I dunno,” he mumbled as he sat up and stretched. “I was just thinking ‘oh two more minutes and I’ll get up’… and the next thing I knew you were shaking me.”
“Uh huh, well you’d better get going before you fall asleep
again,” she said with a playful grin. She leaned over and kissed his forehead before walking over to the chest of drawers in her room and retrieving clothes to wear that day. Knowing he wasn’t moving she said without looking at him, “If you think you’re going to see something,” she paused to slam a drawer shut, “you’re sadly mistaken.”
“Darn,” he laughed.
~*~
“Oh Sydney, I forgot to ask, how’d you meeting go with your internet rapist killer boyfriend go?” Nadia asked just as casually as ever during lunch with her mother and sister. Sydney gave Nadia a death glare as their mother nearly choked to death on the water she had been sipping.
“SYDNEY!” Irina gasped, once she had regained the ability to breathe properly. “You met some… some
man from the internet?!”
“No, Mom, it’s not like how it sounds,” Sydney defended while still glaring at her smirking sister. “I’d been talking to him for six months through this internet dating thing Nadia set me up with and-”
“You set her up with?!! Do you know how dangerous that is?!” Irina demanded of her younger daughter.
“Mom, chill. I never expected Sydney’d meet one of those creepy people…”
“Well, as it turns out, the man I was going to meet is Michael,” Sydney said with a proud smile. Confusion crossed her mother’s face as she tried to confirm whether that Michael was the same Michael she had been dating and broken up with the previous year. “Yep,” Sydney confirmed with an even larger smile.
“So… this schmuck is stupid enough to go out with you after you ripped his heart out
twice?! Talk about a glutton for punishment…,” Nadia laughed.
“Nadia,” her mother sighed heavily. “Could you at least
attempt to be supportive for once…”
“Besides, I’m not letting Michael go this time… at least…I don’t think so…,” Sydney said slowly, casting her eyes down towards her plate. Nadia groaned loudly. “It’s not my fault!” Sydney defended. “I’m… confused… Michael says he loves me…”
“And… you don’t love him?” Irina asked after her daughter had been silent for almost a minute. Sydney mumbled incoherently and shrugged. “Well, Sydney, if I recall correctly you only dated him for a month. Perhaps you should go on a few more dates before you pass judgment,” her mother suggested.
“She’s just being stupid,” Nadia chimed in. Both her mother and sister gaped at her. “Well she is!! She’s been depressed and lonely, wishing she was with Michael for like… a freakin’ year and now that she’s with him she wants to break up-”
“I never said that!” Sydney defended herself.
“Whatever,” Nadia rolled her eyes. “You have commitment phobia.”
“I do not!”
“Uh, yeah, ya do,” Nadia told her.
Sydney ‘hmph’-ed under her breath, annoyed. “Well if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black….,” she muttered.
“Excuse me, I am younger than you – I can be commitment phobic without my ovaries shriveling up and wasting away all my child-bearing years alone in my apartment with my TV.”
With this comment, Irina snorted with laughter. “Nadia, your sister’s ovaries are not
shriveling up. My goodness, she’s only thirty!”
“Old maid,” Nadia shot at her sister.
Sydney restrained herself from shooting less than appropriate retorts at her sister, at least while their mother was in the room. “Whatever,” Sydney sighed. “I’m with Michael and that’s… well, that’s that. Besides, thirty isn’t that old…,” she said in an attempt to sound casual but, really, sounded fearful.
“Of course it’s not,” her mother smiled at her. “Don’t pay any attention to your sister, dear; you still have plenty of child bearing years left.”
“Thanks mom…,” Sydney said with a sigh.
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