The End Of Innocence

    The clock screams in its too-early-in-the-morning effulgence, a dreary 4:18 am. Half-awake or half-asleep? That's the question that Ryan asks himself while trying to regain his bearings. This is the result of either too much beer or not enough sleep, or perhaps both given the hour. Stumbling to his feet, he drags them into the bathroom, lifts the seat, and takes care of his business with a marked vigilance, just in case his aim is on the fritz in his hazy conciousness. When he returns to his bed, he arrives at a disconcerting realization... he is not alone this morning.
    Racking his brain, he quests for any recollection of the evening now past, only to come up short. The room gets timidly brighter at the flick of a switch, as if daunted by the light and reluctant to show itself. He searches her face for even the slightest memory, when suddenly he is washed over in repose, a feeling of tranquility almost foreign to him in its protracted absence. He is awestruck by the contour of her face, the perfect arc of her eyebrows, the softness of her cheek bones and jawline, and the way they all play so effortlessly off of her neck and shoulders. Her brunette hair is tossed carelessly across the pillow in a fashion nearing perfection. She seems to him almost porcelain, far beyond any expectations of beauty that may have once littered his mind. He finds himself wishing again to be wrapped in her arms, only he doesn't know her name.
    Out of the corner of his eye he spots a bag that was hastily dropped on his bedroom floor. He hesitates only for a second before rifling through the Dior purse for a license. Elizabeth Houlkum. Twenty-two years old. Five foot ten. Beautiful blue eyes he can't wait to lose himself in. The bedcovers begin to rustle, and he quickly replaces her identification in her purse.
    "Hey you," she croaks, her mind obviously more awake than her vocal chords. "I was hoping you wouldn't be awake so I could watch you sleep."
    "I was hoping I'd still be asleep, too."
    "Well, then why don't you come back in here and keep me company?"
    He sizes up the situation for a brief moment and understands, his thoughts more lucid now than ever before, that this is the girl he's been waiting twenty-four years to find, his peerless princess. Now he just has to get to know her.
    "That doesn't sound like such a bad idea," says Ryan, and he climbs back into the bed, strokes her cheek with the backside of his hand, and loses himself in those beautiful blue eyes.