War Bride

Eric

The sunlight slanted through the sheer curtains, turning the edges of my room gold. I lay sprawled across my bed in a tangle of silk sheets, shirtless, one leg tossed over the edge and the other buried under the weight of a half-folded blanket. My sketchpad rested near my hip, open to a charcoal drawing I barely remembered working on, a pair of hands nearly touching, but never quite.

I sighed, rolling onto my back. For the first ...