This short work contains mature themes and is intended for adult readers.
Sexomnia
It began like any ordinary night.
Dinner plates balanced on our knees. A show neither of us was really watching, murmuring in the background. The dog is fed, and the lights are lowered until the room is bathed in only the glow of the television.
By ten, her head tilts back into the recliner. The dog is nuzzled by her side.
At first, it was nothing. A small twitch in her leg. A shift of her shoulder. Her hand was resting snugly inside the waistband of her pajamas, as if settling into warmth.
I turned back to the television.
Movement again. Peripheral.
I muted the sound without realizing I’d reached for the remote. Silence deepened the room. I could see her chest rise in a slow, full inhale. A soft release.
Her fingers shifted beneath the cotton. A pull of fabric.
Then again.
Her hand slipped lower, then retreated as if startled by its own hunger. A pause. A return.
Rhythmic hesitation. Unrehearsed.
The blanket drifted slightly along her thigh. I could see the faint movement of breath beneath her ribs.
I didn’t think to look away.
Desire arrived first — simple and physical. A tightening in my stomach.
Her breathing changed. An inhale that lingered.
I leaned forward without meaning to.
I told myself to look away; it felt like standing at a doorway to a place you weren’t invited to.
But I stayed.
For a moment, it didn’t feel wrong. It felt intimate. As if I were witnessing a longing oft hidden. Something private, but also familiar. The body I knew. The woman I knew.
Want sharpened.
Then something shifted. The realization that none of this required me.
Her movements were not reaching outward. They were turned inward, contained within a dream I could not enter.
I felt embarrassed.
If she woke and saw me watching, what would that make me?
It was too late.
Her body tightened briefly. A small arch. The blanket slid lower. Breath caught. Released.
She startled awake.
The stillness that followed felt abrupt, almost violent.
“Hey,” I said. “You okay?”
She blinked, disoriented. “I have to pee.”
She stood, smoothing her pajamas in a distracted motion, not quite meeting my eyes.
“If you were dreaming,” I said lightly, “I hope it was about me.”
A faint smile. Difficult to read.
She walked down the hall. The bathroom light blinked on. The door shut.
Water ran longer than necessary.
I sat there listening, feeling the echo of what I had just witnessed pressing against me, imagining what it would be like if we were together in that moment.
I let the images come.
Then guilt followed, slowly, creeping. The awareness I watched something I shouldn’t have.
The faucet stopped. The door creaked open.
She returned without speaking. A scent of soap in the air, contrasting the silence.
She lowered herself back into the recliner, pulling the blanket over her lap. Her breathing settled. Calm.
Across from her, mine was uneven. There was an odd stillness in the air.
She slept, shadows danced back and forth on the walls, unaware.
Selected essays, short works, and publications: bayliss.com
