First Chapter in the Novel I Will Never Write..

..because fiction, I am not so great with.

*

She watched through the spaces between the open blinds, segmenting the world as if it were notebook paper, a flipbook of early morning wakings. A squirrel scampers in little spurts over the paved parking lot and over a recycle bin, pausing to perch on a glass bottle before hoping onto a neighbor’s porch railing. She feels slight déjà vu. But the scene she remembers is from a late morning warm with brewing coffee and his linen pajama pants. She remembers the smell of roasting herbs and the musty familiarity of coffee dripping into the pot. His arm around her waist and nose in the space between her collarbone and neck, he inhales and yet she knows his smell is more therapeutic than hers will ever be to him. His free hand motions to a squirrel just beyond the window, its black tail curled behind him like a question mark where he pauses on the wooden table next to the half melted candle. His bottom lip grazed her earlobe and he whispers to her about that squirrel, how he scampers around every morning, up the tree trunks, acrobatting onto the scaffolding. The squirrel now hangs upside down from a drooping branch that nearly touches the windowpane “He’s showing off for you.” She catches his eyes, a puddle of blue green and she feels a happiness she never thought existed for her.