All Over Again – The Morning After

The sunlight is poring through the curtains in Ellie’s small studio apartment. She wakes up, and rolls over, completely forgetting that her and Clark had sex the night before until she sees him still lying there, completely naked, and only covered by the small throw blanket that was originally on the back of her couch. She turns over on her side to look at him. Still, almost thirty, he still looks somewhat like he used to. Now, instead of occasional acne, his jawline is starting to show some brown stubble. Those baby blue eyes are still just as beautiful, and so are those full lips she used to trace with her finger when she was fifteen. Everything about him somehow is changed, yet still the same. It’s like meeting a new person, even though you know every single dark secret about them. He’s still in ways the same old Clark, Clark who made stupid jokes that made you laugh, Clark that always tried to make you the bad person in the argument when really he is the main cause, Clark, who cried with you the day you had to leave him to live with distant family when you were teens. I love him, but I’m just happy he’s happy without me.

There’s a faint buzzing sound, Ellie strains to hear it, but after a few seconds, it goes away. Then it’s there again, it sounds like vibrations, a cell phone. She gets out of bed and walks around trying to hear the noise to see where it’s coming from. Next to the front door is Clark’s cell phone. She picks it up, and it starts to buzz again, “Julia”, is the name on the screen.

Oh fuck…. His wife.

Ellie hurriedly puts the phone down and runs to the bed, shaking Clark awake. “Clark, Clark, your wife has been calling you like crazy.”
He opens his eyes almost as fast as he jumped out of bed to answer the phone.
“Hello…….yeah, hey….hey- Honey……I’m okay, the meeting ran a little later than I thought and I had a few drinks, so I just stayed with…..No! Julia, I’m fine….” Clark is pacing around Ellie’s house naked while trying to explain to his wife what he was doing last night and why he didn’t come home.