Chapter 52: The Soft Weight of Ordinary
The morning light found them slowly.
It filtered in through the gauzy curtains, casting long, pale beams across the floor, the tea table, the edge of the couch where a book had fallen the night before. Outside, a bird called gently into the still air, and somewhere far off, someone was sweeping leaves with soft, steady strokes.
But inside, all was still.
Anya stirred first, eyes fluttering open not with alarm, but with the calm of waking somewhere safe.
Somewhere loved.
Oriana was still beside her, breathing evenly, her face pressed into the pillow, a hand resting loosely between them. Her hair was mussed, her lashes soft shadows against her cheeks. She looked, Anya thought, like peace had taken shape in a person.
And for a long moment, Anya didn't move.
She simply watched her, her heart full of something not loud enough to be called joy, but not quiet enough to be named anything else. It was contentment—the kind that comes not from grand declarations, but from presence. From knowing that someone stayed.
That someone chose you.
Anya's gaze drifted down to Oriana's hand, the curve of her fingers, the pale lines across her palm like paths in a hidden map. She wanted to trace them. To memorize every quiet part of her.
Instead, she whispered: "I'm here."
Oriana blinked slowly, still half-dreaming. Her eyes met Anya's, soft and unfocused. "You're still here."
"I didn't want to leave."
A smile curved at the edge of Oriana's lips. "Good."
They didn't move much for the next few minutes—just lay there in the quiet warmth of morning, their bodies angled toward each other, their breaths slow and matching.
Eventually, Oriana sat up, pushing her hair back. "Do you want coffee?"
Anya nodded. "Only if you make it."
Oriana's feet brushed the wooden floor as she rose. The hem of her shirt—one of Anya's, borrowed and oversized—swayed gently as she moved. Anya stayed on the floor, pulling the blanket around her like a cocoon, watching as Oriana padded into the small kitchen.
There was something sacred about watching someone you love do something so ordinary.
Boiling water.
Rinsing a cup.
Opening a jar of beans and inhaling the scent before grinding them slowly, rhythmically.
Every gesture Oriana made felt like a poem being written without words. A rhythm Anya never wanted to forget.
"I like mornings with you," Anya said from the other room.
Oriana called back softly, "Mornings are usually so quiet. But with you, they feel full."
By the time Oriana returned with two cups—hers dark with no sugar, Anya's sweetened just a little—the sun had fully risen, warming the room like a slow embrace.
They sat at the table, cross-legged, knees almost touching.
Anya cradled her mug with both hands. "Do you ever think," she asked, "about what we'd be doing if we'd never met?"
"I try not to," Oriana said. "Because I know it wouldn't be this."
Anya nodded. "I think I'd still be pretending."
"Pretending what?"
"That I'm fine."
Oriana's eyes searched hers, then softened. "And now?"
Anya hesitated, then said it honestly: "Now I know what fine actually feels like."
They didn't need to say "I love you" just then. It was already in everything—in the space between their mugs, in the small smile Oriana wore, in the way Anya's foot gently nudged hers beneath the table.
It was in the silence.
It was in the stillness.
After breakfast, they didn't rush to dress. They didn't plan anything grand. They just stayed in that lazy, sacred slowness.
Oriana pulled a blanket from the couch, and they curled up together on the floor with a single book between them. Anya read aloud, her voice low and soft, and Oriana leaned against her shoulder, eyes closed, just listening.
Every so often, Anya would pause—not because she forgot the words, but because Oriana's closeness made them unnecessary.
"I love how you read," Oriana murmured once, eyes still closed.
"I love that you listen," Anya replied.
Later in the afternoon, they opened the windows wide and let the breeze drift in. Oriana played her music—old jazz, soft guitar, gentle piano. They folded laundry together without talking much, but each shirt passed between them felt like a small act of care.
It wasn't dramatic.
It wasn't cinematic.
But it was real.
Anya folded one of Oriana's cardigans and held it up. "This still smells like you."
Oriana reached for it, then changed her mind and stepped forward instead, wrapping her arms around Anya's waist. "Then maybe you should keep it. For the days I'm not there."
Anya's eyes fluttered shut. She leaned into her. "Will you always come back to me?"
"I don't want to go far enough that I have to," Oriana whispered.
They stood like that for a while—just two people in a small room, held together by something quiet and deep.
When evening came, Anya helped Oriana prepare dinner. They chopped vegetables side by side, their arms bumping occasionally. Oriana sprinkled salt into the pan like she was casting a spell, and Anya tasted things without asking what they were.
They laughed, they hummed, they danced around each other in that narrow kitchen like it was a stage only they knew how to move across.
After they ate, they sat on the balcony with their legs dangling over the edge. The city lights flickered beneath them like tiny stars that had fallen and made a home on Earth.
"Will it always be like this?" Anya asked quietly.
Oriana leaned her head against hers. "I don't know. But if it isn't, let's promise to remember that it was."
Anya nodded. "And let's build new days like this one."
They didn't talk much after that.
The night sky opened wide above them, the kind of deep blue that makes you feel small but also seen.
And as they sat there, hands resting together, nothing dramatic happened.
No confession.
No heartbreak.
No sudden storm.
Just two girls, breathing the same evening air, wrapped in the soft weight of ordinary love.
And in that quiet, Anya understood something she hadn't before:
Love doesn't always ask for grand gestures.
Sometimes, it just asks for your presence.
For your stillness.
For your hand resting gently beside another.
And that, she thought, she could always give.