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Our backs were pressed face to face.
I could feel him. Thinking. Deliberating. Hot behind me.
He moved away and then rolled, turning to face me. Head on.
I could feel his breath on my neck, prickling each hair one by one.
I could sense sense his calm heartbeat, steadying even further as he studied me and I watched him in my mind.

My heart began to race, speeding, beginning to lift out of my chest as I felt him trace the outline of my left shoulder with his fingertips. Hairs standing up, my skin populating with goose pimples.

"I still remember. I wish I didn't but I do."

I winced gently at his words, curling inward.
"I'm sorry." I was truly sorry.

It is not in my nature to be purposefully hurtful; I don't mean to. I never mean to.

"You know, if you hadn't told me I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have suspected a thing."

I saw him move before I could sense it. Slowly, prising himself from beneath the warmth. I turned my body, moving until I was facing him, my head resting along my arm. He was sat on the edge of the bed in his green boxers, back hunched over, his head having disappeared beneath his shoulders.
His spine was defined beneath his skin. Each vertebrae asserting prominence, asserting meaning.

"What are we going to do now?"

I had committed.. I had.. been unfaithful. And he was asking me for answers.
"I don't know. It's up to you."

He spun round his face emblazoned with a red tint. I rolled back gripping the sheets like a vice.

"What do you mean it is up to me?"
"Just that I think that you should make a decision as to whether you want to stay with me?"
"Oh , I see. So.. should I?"

He was being difficult. What am I supposed to say? Yes? Then he's gullible. No? Then I lose him.
But I'm not weak. Most of all, I'm not weak.

I remember this exact feeling, all of a sudden I knew what to say, to make it seem like his decision. To make him want to stay with me. To make him remember that he loved me.
Then, I broke.

"Yes. Stay with me."

My mouth shut abruptly, I couldn't follow on from that. My award-winning speech had been destroyed with a Freudian slip. I had managed to betray myself. My heart had gone from an organ scaring me with its infrequent beats to becoming the symbolic centre of my love and future fidelity.

"Grace.. that would be so much easier then I wouldn't have to stop loving you."
He was thinking aloud.

I removed the covers from my body and walked to the wardrobe. I took down the duvet atop it, picked up his pillow and walked to the door. I paused for effect, then slipped out gently.

But he didn't come and tell me to come back to bed. Or that I shouldn't sleep on the sofa.
That I shouldn't move my stuff out. That I shouldn't find another apartment. That I shouldn't try to move on. That my life would feel like it was over.

That I'd know I'd have to stop loving him.