Chapter 15: Good Day, Sunshine

Mike’s Apartment, Tuscaloosa, AL

Early Morning, Saturday, January 11, 2003

With an unexpected elbow landing on my nose, I was unceremoniously awoken at about 4:30am. Startled, I sat up in bed wondering what just happened. As I came to my senses, I could see Kaleigh waving her arms up above her head and down in front of her chest. She was mumbling something I couldn’t make out, and then I heard her clearly shout, “Stop! No don’t! Stop!” Her arms and her legs were now moving in jerky, frenetic motions under the covers.

I turned my head away quickly to avoid another blow, and then turned back to grab her arms. I rolled her over to her side, and hugged her gently into my torso. I then softly said, “Kaleigh, Baby. Kaleigh, it’s alright now. You’re here with me. It’s Mike, Kaleigh. You’re safe now.” With her arms under my control, I moved my right hand up to caress her face as she slowed her twisting and turning motion. Then, just as suddenly as her bad dream started, she stopped thrashing about, opened her eyes for a second and said, “Oh, okay, Mike,” and dropped back off into peaceful sleep.

I held her face gently in my hands for another thirty seconds and leaned into her prone body to hopefully give her comfort. Then, as my heart rate returned to a more normal level, I felt something trickling down over my upper lip, and used my right hand to test out what it was. With my right index finger, I wiped at the warm fluid and decided to turn on the aquarium lights to confirm that it was indeed my blood. In the low light from my fish tank, I could see the dark fluid on my finger, and I also confirmed that familiar taste of blood my tongue.

I threw back the covers and slipped out of bed and made my way into the bathroom to better inspect the damage to my nose. With a few toilet tissues, I was able to clean up the mess in my left nostril, and saw that it wasn’t bleeding much anymore. My nose was a little sore but from previous sports experiences, I knew it wasn’t anything to worry about. With one final cleaning of my nose, I tossed the bloody tissues into the commode and headed back to bed.

After crawling under the covers, I found that Kaleigh had turned onto her side, facing away from me. I didn’t think I’d drop back to sleep but figured I would warm myself back up a little after my jaunt in the chilly room air. I snuggled up and spooned myself into the back of her warm nude body, reached over her and placed my right hand on her lower arm. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t long before I dozed off.

For the second time that morning, I was awoken in a usual manner. I noticed a semi-bright light shining near my face, with it flashing up over my closed eyelids once or twice. Then I felt a soft hand touching my nose and upper lip area. As I slowly opened my eyes, God’s prettiest angel was staring intently down at my face, unaware that I was awake. With half closed eyes, I tried to see what she was doing without her knowing my level of awareness. I kept as still as I could for the most part, only moving with slow short actions.

I could barely see Kaleigh move a cloth or tissue of some sort to her mouth and wet it. Then she slowly brought it down and lightly rubbed it around the outside of my nose and down over the skin above my lip. Her face had a look of concern and determination on it as she concentrated hard on her light actions. She pulled the cloth back up and twisted it real tight, and moistened it again in her mouth. This time, she used the small pointy end of the cloth to wipe around the inside of my nostril. With care, I acted like it was tickling me and shook my face slightly at the intrusion, but acted like I was still sleeping.

A slightly startled Kaleigh quickly moved the cloth from my nose area, and let out a soft, “Oh” in surprise. I waited a good fifteen seconds before wiggling a little and then settled down again. I took a slight peek up at her and barely saw her pinch up the cloth again and re-wet it in her mouth. I shut my eyelids again and waited for her to try to clean around my nose again.

It wasn’t more than ten seconds before I felt the wet cloth on the edge of my left nostril. Kaleigh slowly put the tip of the cloth in my nose and lightly moved it in an ‘in/out’ motion. As she moved up the cloth up to the top of my nasal opening, she must have lost her balance slightly, which caused the cloth to push in further and harder than she planned. With that hard pressure in my nose, I flinched back a little, and groaned out lightly. The intrusion was hard enough to wake up most folks, so I acted real sleepy and groggy as I appeared to rouse from a good sound sleep.

As I blinked out my eyes, Kaleigh was sitting beside me with a look of sadness on her face. She bent down and lightly kissed my nose and then my mouth. As she pulled up, she almost was in tears and started to blabber rather quickly about her actions. “Oh Mike, I’m so-so sorry. I went to pee and saw some bloody tissues in the toilet. I remembered you soothed me earlier. It was a nightmare of my rape and I, oh, I must have swung my arm and hit you. I, uh, I used my safety light from my, my purse and you, I saw your bloody nose. Oh, God, I hit you hard. I’m so, so sorry.” She was really in tears now and I reached my arms up and pulled her down to my chest and hugged her bare chest to mine.

“Hey, hey, Star-Baby. I’m up, alive and one-hundred percent okay. It’s just a nose bleed, nothing more,” I said as I tried to calm her down with my hug and gentle words. “Kaleigh, I’ll take a bop in the nose, mouth or whenever I can to help put your demons to rest, or help ease your soul. Don’t worry about my nose, it’s not broken, and, uh, seeing you cry hurts me more than that little shot to my nose. Baby, it’s gonna be okay.” I started to rub up and down her back with my hands, and felt that her sobs were starting to lessen in intensity and frequency. “That’s better, Baby. I’m alright and you don’t have a skinny thing to feel sorry about.”

With her sobs almost over, she pushed up from me and used the cloth in her hands to dry her eyes. With her face still crinkled up, looking like she was still on the verge of tears, I smiled at her and said, “I absolutely love you, my little Star.” Kaleigh stuttered and sniffled hard at my words and fell back down on my chest. She went crazy kissing my cheek, ear, neck, along my jawbone, and ended up at my mouth. We were lip-locked for what seemed like eternity, and then she pulled away and looked down on me with her once more teary eyes.

“How can you love me? I’m damaged, weepy, and, and still scared at times. I don’t know...”

“Stop, stop, stop! Kaleigh, stop. You are NONE of those things to me. You have a beautiful and pure soul. You had some assholes hurt you and it has caused you a lot of problems. Unfortunately, they’re all natural reactions but, BUT, look at me baby now,” I asked her as I tilted her face towards mine. “You, Kaleigh Plyer, you have overcome your greatest fear from that awful time. You risked everything, everything that must have been completely, uh, um ... frightful for you, to show me your love for me.”

Her cute little chin quivered in my hand as her tears once again started to flow. With gentle pressure, she pushed her chin down out of my hand and kissed me repeatedly. After a final long sustained kiss, she pushed up forcefully with her arms on the mattress, and sat beside on the bed. She used that semi-dry cloth to dab her eyes again. She surprised me by using that cloth to forcefully blow her nose. She took a quick peek around my bedroom, and saw my mesh laundry hamper outside my closet door. With textbook set-shot mechanics, Kaleigh sent the balled-up cloth into the hamper.

Kaleigh’s quick quip, “Nothing but net,” caused me to chuckle out loud, and hold my hands up in the air like she nailed a ‘three-pointer’. She saw my action, and immediately gave me a ‘high-5’. It appeared that the lively girl I’ve come to know very well was making her true morning appearance. “Is that coffee I smell?” she asked after sniffing the air a couple of times.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied as I rubbed her bare thigh before she turned away from me.

Kaleigh used her cat-quick like actions to jump out of bed, and then she pranced her nude body out into the kitchen. After a few seconds, she yelled at me, “One sugar, and a little cream?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied as I threw the covers back and hopped out of bed.

I was almost to the bedroom door when I heard her say, “Why don’t you get the shower going? Is this an automatic thermostat or do I turn the heat up myself?”