Nysa had ducked out of the house fairly early this morning. Lauren usually woke at daybreak, a good hour before she even considered opening her eyes and greeting the world. By the time she had dressed herself and ventured down the stairs, her girlfriend had already prepared breakfast and had it laid out on display. Nysa didn’t know how she did it, a thought that she expressed on a frequent basis. If left to her own devices, she would have been content to eat a piece of buttered toast on her way out the door to work. When Lauren stayed over, which was becoming an all too regular occurrence, Nysa typically stayed later to finish the meal completely. However, this morning, her scrambled eggs had come with an ulterior motive. The other woman had wanted to talk more on the subject of moving in, which was a conversation Nysa often avoided when it was possible. Committing to the discussion would mean admitting to Lauren (and herself) certain truths that she hadn’t been open about. Like how if Lauren were living in her house, then it wouldn’t be right for Nysa to ask her to leave her own bed for the couch so that Emilia could be close to her; it didn’t matter that it was already a common event, having Lauren living with her would make everything different. Nysa didn’t like it. So she had shoved her eggs in her mouth and practically ran out the door to her car.
Knowing what was waiting for her at home was another reason why she had decided to stay longer at work. She had had the forethought to set an alarm on her phone to go off at 9:30 to keep herself from spending the night at the college and suffering Lauren’s nagging the next time she saw her. Nysa hadn’t paid the same courtesy to her former girlfriends, but Lauren had earned as much after two years. She had been totally engrossed in her current project when Emilia entered the room. The book had been unbound and the pages lay out before her in organized piles. Currently, her attention was focused on painting tiny floral decorations near the page numbers that had been worn away by time. A few years ago, she had been forced to invest in magnifying glasses, just to save her eyes from straining themselves into uselessness. When Emilia dropped the bag onto her desk, Nysa looked up with a slight jump; once she had seen who had put it there, a smile rose to her face and washed away the sudden fear she had felt at being startled. It didn’t last long. She took her glasses off, setting them to rest on top of her head, as she listened. There were a lot of things that crawled under her skin where her brother was concerned and Emilia’s medication was at the top of the list. Emilia didn’t need any medicine – an argument she made to Doran almost daily.
Nysa kept both her mouth and her mind quiet while Emilia spoke. She pushed away thoughts of how her brother had turned into such a horrible jerk (and that was her putting it as nicely as possible) and concentrated on her belief that the other woman was perfectly fine. Calm, that was how she kept herself when Emilia was upset. She didn’t even cast a sideways glance at the books shaking on her table; the only movement she made was to place a steadying hand on the open ink well so that it didn’t spill on anything of value. “Good. You shouldn’t be taking them in the first place.” Her words were nothing but gentle, despite the definitive manner with which they were said.
It wasn’t until Emilia smiled again that her own returned to her face. “Only every time you ever saw me reading one.” She gave the other woman a playful nudge of her shoulder as she spoke. “What occasion has you dressed up?” The question asked as if Nysa didn’t already know what the answer was going to be.