He calls her name softly, and she doesn’t respond.  As he reaches to touch her shoulder, she mumbles something unintelligible and rolls away from him. 

He had been laying on his side watching her for awhile now and there is so much he wants to say to her and it seems he can only get the courage to try when she is asleep, when the walls that always seem to be around her fade a little. 

He rolls over, flips the covers off of himself, swings his legs out of bed and sits on the edge of mattress.  He holds his head in his hands wondering what the hell he is going to do. 

He hears her stir, he looks at her hoping he will see her looking back.  Instead she has pulled the covers tighter and seems to be even deeper into whatever it is she is dreaming about. 

He searches the floor for his clothes and takes them with him to the bathroom.

***

She hears him call her name, feels him reaching for her so she mumbles and rolls away, pretending to be caught in a dream. 

She lays there with her back to him, her eyes shut and a lump in her throat.  She feels the coolness of the night air on her backside as he flips the covers off of himself and sits up. 

She shivers and rolls over towards him.  She opens her eyes and starts to reach across the bed to him, changes her mind and grabs the covers instead and pulls them tightly around her, lowering her head to her chest. 

She listens to him get his clothes and pad to the bathroom, knows he leaving and that he is sad and she wants to be able to talk to him.  She wants to be able to tell him what she is thinking.

That she is glad he is there for the time he is there, but that she is also glad for the time he is not.  That there is a relief is in his absence and she knows telling him this would be cruel, so she just pretends to sleep, tears squeezing out from under her closed eye lids.

She doesn’t know how to tell him she wants only a small part of him, that she only has a small part of herself to give, that she will never be able to commit to him, not in the way she knows he wants when he lays there in the dark and tries to talk to her.  She will never be able to need him, never be able to reach out to him as he is leaving and ask him stay.