Always been You

of his apartment, he wanted to take an ice pick, or a screwdriver, or any other pointy object and drive it through his temple. Alisha had called a cab and had it waiting downstairs for them at the hospital and because his mother was fucking cheap and Alisha was too nice to say no, the four of them had shared the cab from Lenox Hill to his apartment while his mother blathered on and on about stupid shit that absolutely no one, least of all Ranjit the cabbie, cared about.

He wanted his bed. He wanted sleep. And he wanted both now. (He also wanted quiet, but with Rosemary and Sarah all up in his apartment, he fucking knew better.)

Alisha's hand came to the small of his back and gently nudged him towards his bedroom. She shut the door behind them, drowning out the chatter in the living room. She leaned against the door and huffed out a long, exasperated breath before lifting her eyes to his, which were decidedly amused.

"Intense, right?" he asked knowingly, toeing off his shoes.

That was definitely one word to describe them, she thought. And as nice as she found his mother and sister, the last few days with them had been a little…overwhelming. Still, her relationship with Jake was too new and she couldn't very well insult his family to his face. (There were lines you just didn't cross.) "I just need a minute," she told him honestly.

"They're batshit crazy, babe, I know. You can say it." He sat down on the bed and ran his hand over his jaw. He needed to shave, but he'd also noticed the hot way Alisha'd been eyeing it and how she'd run her hand over his face a little more often than she normally would. Maybe he'd just keep it for a while.

"I do not think that," Alisha insisted, pushing her body away from the door and running her fingers through her hair. She walked over and stood between his legs, brushing her thumbs over the sides of his face.

(Oh yeah, definitely keeping the scruff for a while.) "Wanna take a nap with me?" he asked, yawning hugely.

She really did. More than anything. But his mother and sister (mostly his mother) were in the living room. "No," she shook her head and his face soured. "You know that I do, but your family's in the living room," she told him quietly, resting her hands on his shoulders, smiling when his hands smoothed up the backs of her thighs to rest on her backside. "And you need to rest," she added when he opened his mouth to protest. "I'll be here when you wake up. Okay?"

Big nodded, too tired to argue, and tugged on her sweater until she lowered her mouth to his. He caught her bottom lip between his and kissed her slowly. "You better be," he told her.

It was dark and quiet when he woke up from his nap. Rolling over, he glanced at the clock, realizing that he'd been asleep for close to five hours. Hell, that wasn't a nap, it was a mini-coma. He listened closely, expecting to hear his mother's voice reverberating throughout the apartment or his sister bitching about something. But the only thing he heard was some music playing softly in the living room. He half wondered if his mom and sister had driven Alisha so completely crazy that she'd ended up silencing them for good. Pushing to his feet he carefully stretched his arms overhead, wincing when his left side burned. He needed a shower and some pain medicine. His stomach growled, and he added food to that short list.

Opening his bedroom door, his mouth watered from the delicious smells wafting from his kitchen. He saw Alisha standing at the counter putting a salad together and singing along quietly to the old country song playing on the stereo. She looked up from the kitchen and paused, smiling warmly at him. He felt a crooked grin tug at the corner of his mouth and he walked closer to her.

"How was your nap?" she asked as she resumed dicing up a tomato.

"Good." He glanced around the apartment and noticed that it was now spotless. He remembered it looking like a hovel when he walked in earlier (thanks to his freeloading sister, no doubt). "Did you off Ma and Sarah? S'quiet in here. And really clean."

Alisha put down her knife and looked up at him, noting that he looked a lot more refreshed after his nap. "I spent the afternoon grocery shopping and making some meals for you with your mother while Sarah painted her nails and filled me in on the reason she fled the great state of New York—he sounds like a piece of garbage, if you ask me—and then your mother started ranting at her in Yiddish about her dating a goy in the first place and then being so lazy—something about how did she ever expect to become a good Jewish wife if she didn't even know how to run a household. Sarah said "God Rosemary, don't plotz," and then your mother got very quiet and had this really intense look on her face, which, if I'm being completely honest with you, is a bit terrifying. Your sister flew off the couch and started cleaning, which was amusing, but really rather pointless as your mother went right along behind her and redid everything anyway." She sighed and resumed chopping vegetables. Then she smirked and looked up at him through her eyelashes. "After all that mishegas I got them tickets to see Wicked and sent them to dinner at Lattanzi. They left about an hour ago."

"Christ, you're good. Thanks for not running away screaming," he said, only half teasing. He walked into the kitchen, wrapped his arms around her shoulders and dropped a kiss to the top of her head. "What smells so damn good in here?"

"Manicotti and garlic knots," she answered sweetly. "And I made a cheesecake for dessert.