Ben threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. I let out a small, sleepy sigh, wishing I could peek to check whether he was watching me. I waited, waited. Hoping I’d positioned myself so I looked at my most blissful and beautiful. But Ben just let out a deep hack of a morning cough and padded away to the bathroom. My eyes opened as I heard him take a piss, coughing again, the coughs audibly interrupting his urine flow. I had a choice. To get up and say good morning, or to feign sleep when he came back. While he took a shower, I reached for my phone and scrolled through social media. A few nice messages had come in overnight from my first Other Side of the Tissue Box series, and I screengrabbed them and saved them to my gallery. Then the shower turned off and I jumped back under the covers. I kept my eyes closed as Ben took forever brushing his teeth, gargling with mouthwash. Then I heard him coming toward me. A pause in the doorway. This was it. He was looking at me! He was watching me sleep! I’d pulled it off...hang on...

Within less than a second, he’d gone into the living room. That was not watching me sleep. That was a glance, tops. I lay there and silently seethed as The Andrew Marr Show came on, wondering if he’d watched his ex-fiancée Tiffany sleep, and making myself feel sick.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Ben beamed at me when I stumbled in five minutes later. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Oh, no. It’s fine,” I lied. Wondering what would happen if I said, “I was awake before you, actually, but I thought you might want to watch me sleep, so I pretended.”

“Have you been up long?”

“Just long enough for a shower.” He beckoned to me. “Morning kiss, please.”

I grinned and bent over to oblige, forgiving him for the slight he didn’t even know he’d committed.

“Mwah. Sorry. Do you want the telly off?”

“No no, leave it on.” I curled up next to him on the sofa, and he pulled me closer, kissing the top of my head. I closed my eyes, savoring it. Wondering if his love would ever be something I took for granted, rather than treating it like a finite resource I was scared of squandering too quickly.

“I shouldn’t watch politics in the morning. It puts me in a bad mood.”

“I’m sure you’ll cheer up when you’re sticking a fifty-pound note up a stripper’s vagina at the stag do later,” I half joked. “Or whatever the hell Simon’s got planned.”

Ben’s nose wrinkled, passing the test I hadn’t even realized I’d set until he passed it. “Eww, no. I don’t have mates like that.”