A Surprise Guest Appearance Of Purest Love

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Eric said.  “I never sleep well when my wife’s not in the room with me.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I haven’t slept next to Gini in two weeks.”
Gini is having some fairly serious back issues, and as a result the big floofy bed we bought is hurting her.  She’s sleeping in the guest room with the firmer bed, which is a) much smaller, and b) in a room flooded with light when the sun rises, which doesn’t bother her but does wake me the heck up.
So we’ve been sleeping apart.  And that worries us.  We’ve got our own personal rule that “When couples start sleeping in separate beds, they’re in trouble” – which, yes, I’ll probably hear from a hundred people that they sleep in separate beds and they’ve been married for seventy-billion years, but we know of at least three couples where moving into separate beds led to moving into separate houses and then into separate relationship statuses.
And for us, that sort of late-night reconnection is a strength of ours.  We don’t really cuddle all that much – the floofy bed is a fucking quicksand pit – but hearing her next to me, her scent filling the room, being able to reach out and feel her, is just a pillar of reassurance for me.  I sleep sketchily without my sweetie, twisting and turning, but her back is in dire straits and until we get her chronic pain managed (which we hope we can and soon), we need to be in separate locations.
Without Gini, I go to bed later, because I need to be exhausted before I can drop off.  My friends have noted my later-night texts.  I play Civilization 5 until I’m practically nodding off, and even then sometimes I’ll just pop awake and be unable to get back to sleep because this empty bed is lonely.
It’s pathetic.  It’s loving.  There’s not a contradiction here; we need each other, and are so adoring of each other that we work at home and feel isolated if Gini has to go work in a separate room.
And so, last night, I finished up putting the finishing touches on my early-civ American empire, having just built a University in every township, and slogged to bed wearily.
And there was a Gini.
“I’m going to try to sleep here,” she said.  “I need this.”
And she did.
And I dreamed that David Bowie had visited my house, and was hanging around singing songs for me, and that things were going well and when I woke she was there and I had work to do but by God my sweet love was next to me and the day was going to be better.
Nearly fifteen years, and still that in love.