That Blue Gibson

CH 38

"Dave," he heard Liz's voice through the veil of sleep and squeezed his closed eyes tighter. He was dreaming about her sitting at the foot of his bed, bathed in morning sun, wearing his shirt and drinking coffee from his favorite mug and he didn't want to leave that moment.

"Dave," she repeated, this time he felt her weight on the bed next to him and opened his eyes. She was wearing the shirt he had on yesterday, holding two large mugs and smiling brightly.

"I thought for a minute I'd have to call the coroner to come get you," she held a black mug out to him as he sat up against the headboard, but he took the one she held against her chest instead.

She shook her head as he took a long sip out of her pink mug decorated with 'Mama's Coffee' in gold brush script and set the other one down on the nightstand. He kept his eyes on her as she stood and walked around the bed to the large windows, lifting each set of shades. Her hair was a wild mess of tangles from the night before and his white Sub Pop shirt was just long enough to skim the tops of her thighs.

"You lucked out. It's usually just gales and rain this time of year," she muttered, her eyes still focused out the window.

He followed her stare and felt his eyes go wide. The house had been built on a natural rock seawall, with a short lawn spread before the window that dropped onto the wide span of sandy beach. The Pacific Ocean lay beyond that, sparkling brilliantly in the late winter day.

"Not a bad way to wake up, right?" Liz smiled and climbed into the bed next to him.

He watched her crawl across the bed, the light from the windows revealing her silhouette underneath his white shirt and set his coffee on the nightstand. She stopped short just in front of him when she saw the look on his face.

"Oh Liz," his voice still gravelly from sleep, "I have a much better way to wake up."

She squealed as he lunged towards her, dragging her under the pile of blankets and into his arms.

*

After an extended shower together in which Liz thanked her lucky stars that she had splurged on the instant hot water heater, they sat on the upstairs deck as the tide pulled away from the beach below. Dave angled himself so that he could watch her from behind his mirrored aviators without her knowing, but was still close enough that they could talk over the sound of the crashing waves. She was bundled under a flannel blanket in her own teak armchair, holding her coffee in one hand and the stack of photos he grabbed from Krist's last night.

"Oh my god, I love this one," Liz laughed, turning the photo to Dave.

Liz was seven or eight, standing next to a late 70's orange Kawasaki in a muddy field wearing dirty jeans and a wide smile with several missing teeth. An older man stood behind her, holding the bike upright with an equally proud grin on his weathered face.

"That was the first time I beat Pops around the track," she added, lifting her sunglasses to get a better look.

Dave leaned over to look at it with her, "I had a bike almost exactly like that. Green, though."

"Ugh. I still feel bad about crashing this one," she shook her head and set her mug down on the little table next to her.

"Scrapped it?" Dave felt he had to tread lightly here. Bringing the photos over was risky enough, he had to coax her just to look at them, and he was worried one of them might provoke her to build her walls back up.

"Hit a root ball and sent it ass over end into the side of a metal shed," she laid the photo stack in her lap at stared out towards the waves, "I think the shed took more damage than that tank of a bike, but they were both a lost cause."