Golden

                I wake to a noise, not loud, overly scary, or even alarming, but I can’t recognize it. I shriek, falling out of bed when a bird flutters its wings over my window. A sheet sails gently to the floor and I see a young woman, dominating dark blonde curls falling in abandon and violent purple eyes bearing crazily into mine, in a long, rectangular frame on the wall.  I scramble back, standing shakily on my thin legs, and, when the unknown woman again makes eye contact, I sling the table at her. The table blocks my view of her legs and I suddenly make the connection. I rip my eyes away from my reflection, angry tears welling up in my eyes at my lack of sense. A sigh, world weary and tired, makes me whip my head around to the door where a man in a faded brown t-shirt and boxers leans against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.

                Fear clogs my chest and it’s all I can do to grab a book off the bedside table and sling it at him. He knocks it from the air and raises one perfectly formed, arching brow, his cold-as-ice blue eyes boring into me.  Anxiety and discomfort makes me lunge at him, attacking his face with my fingernails, jerking away when I realize my nails run down scars, not fresh skin. I hold my hands away from me, staring at them in minute horror as he picks me up, cradling me in a familiar warmth as he unconcernedly carries me down the hall to a table, where a first aid kit sits, open, as if it was only waiting for another incident.

                He sits down, pulling me into his lap but refusing to let my arms go. He looks at me with his ice eyes, framed in a golden yellow that, like his warmth, reminds me of something. His brow furrows and his eyes bear into mine, seemingly searching for something.

                That golden yellow, so familiar, and yet so foreign, calms me and I relax against him.

                He obviously doesn’t care about me, but I realize, as his tan fingers gently wrap my fingertips in Bandaids, as his golden eyes peek at me before darting back to his task, that I care for him. I don’t just care for him. My eyes fall on two silver bands on my left ring finger. On the one closest to my palm, sapphires spiral off the center. He murmurs tender words in my ear as he finishes. As he strokes his fingers down the back of my hand, a flash draws my attention. A silver ring, simple and thin, matching the second ring on my finger, rests comfortably at the base of his finger.  I don’t just care for him.

                I love him.

                Sleep suddenly enwraps me in its jaws, but I manage a glance at his face before my eyes droop closed. His eyes, unlike his hands and his words, are hard, uncaring while he looks down at me.

                He doesn’t love me.

                I whimper at this realization. He shifts me in his arms, letting my legs drape over one arm as I curl against his chest. He takes slow, easy steps until he lays me in bed. The bed dips as he settles on the edge. He mumbles words under his breath, and I recognize them from a silly tune we’d sing each other when our love had first blossomed.

                I ease into an uncomfortable rest, barely noticing when he leaves the room.

                “DADDY!” I sit up with a gasp, freeing my legs from the sheets and creeping to the doorway. A little girl, with straight golden yellow hair falling down her back, meets my gaze with hers as her nanny wrestles her down the hall.

                “Wait.” My voice is weak, but the nanny pauses, looks back at me, but I’m hardly aware of that. I only see the little girl, with his lovely light hair, and the purple eyes I hadn’t been able to meet in the mirror when I’d woken this morning. I kneel, opening my arms to her. “Baby.” I murmur as she runs to me, burying her face in the curve of my neck.

                I pick her up, combing my fingers through her hair as I carry her quietly down the hall. I stumble to a halt when I see him, on his knees in the middle of the hall, clutching at his hair as if he hadn’t had a clue what he’d done with his life.

                I fall beside him, pulling one hand out of his beautiful hair, lacing my fingers through his while our baby girl throws an arm around his neck.

                “Mommy. Daddy, Mommy’s back.”