Most of all, I was always struck by her ability to suddenly and very quickly fall asleep. That's true, it cost her to do nothing for some small period of time, and please! She began to snuffle peacefully, and it was not disturbed by the fact that there were people around who laughed loudly, chatted, sang and even ate chocolate cake with chocolate syrup and chocolate chip cookies, no noise of cars rushing along the road, no music, no lecture , if she seemed uninteresting to her ...

And now she was asleep. She put her hands on the table, dropped her head on them and watched her colorful dreams. But we just waited until mother collected us her branded pancakes with meat to the country. Fortunately, my mother is a doctor without any illusions and sentiments, and she considers this pathological ability to sleep where it is almost a divine gift — after all, “every minute of sleep is so useful for a young organism.”

Finally, our charges were over, I buttoned up the same stuffed God knows what, the backpack and again looked at the clock, at the Sleeping Tsarevna and again at the clock. Mom nodded:

- Look, do not be late for the bus, you still have to get to the bus station.

- This is nonsense, mom, we'll get a taxi. Let him sleep a little more, while I go get changed.

- Well as you know. I will not wake up your treasure.

Mom kissed me goodbye and busily sounded on some of their mysterious medical courses.

I packed a camera, rinsed the plates, pulled on old jeans and a randomly selected sweater, wrapped a scarf around my neck and poured two or three sips of tea into a cup of tea. Breathed deeply.

I don't know why or why, but I never liked waking people up. I always thought it was some sort of blasphemy, so in my whole life I have not developed any particular algorithm for waking anyone from sleep. And, then, it is difficult to choose one scheme, because every damn dawn, which I have to wake up for one reason or another, responds to attempts to wrest it from the world of dreams in completely different ways.

For example, my brother runs a pillow at me, a second cousin who is two years younger than me and whom I call simply Danya, begs for another five minutes. One of my girls just did not wake up in any, and the other lay completely stony, slamming with unseeing (I’m afraid, sometimes hating) eyes. In short, the difficult thing is to wake people up. Yes. But to her, I already, you know why, began to take shape in some kind of scheme.

I exhaled, put a cup in front of her, leaned over, kissed her cheek, stroked my hair as weightlessly as possible, and quietly called out:

- Pretty...

She opened her eyes wide with effort. Then, blinking, focused on me a sleepy, blank look and smiled. Heat so gently. She coughed, took two sips from the cup, smiled wider and seemed to doze off again. But no - in fact, she was so awake. Because after a few more seconds, she lifted her head, rubbed her forehead, and asked cheerfully:

- Let's go-go?

- Go.

Taxi took us home to the station in time for the last bus. Having difficulty in loading it into some distant rear seats, we breathed a sigh of relief. Now two hours it was possible not to worry about anything. She put her head on my shoulder, got comfortable and, of course, immediately began to fall asleep. I choked, almost missing that moment.

- Pretty...

She raised to me the eyes that had already begun to blur.

- And you ... could not ... do not sleep? Well, in a sense, because we don’t still come to you, so we’ll get settled and immediately lie down ... Here ... and we’re going for three days, so we still have time to sleep and rest, but I haven’t seen you for a week , I miss you, and although you, of course, are tired, but I would like to spend some time with you, you know, maybe talk about this and that, of course, if you're not very tired, because if you are tired then you sleep, and I sit quietly, well ...

Actually, I'm not very talkative. That is, of course, I love to sit with friends, grind about business, work and so on, but mostly I speak on business.And here some kind of garbage always worked out - as soon as I tried to start telling her something, anything, exceeding in length, “I’m not really hungry, but I wouldn’t refuse a sandwich,” and I carried utter bullshit, confused in words, forgetting the beginning of the sentence and what I generally wanted to say. Horror.

Oddly enough, it did not bother her.

She smiled.

- No problems. I, moreover, have already managed to accidentally take a nap in your house, so ...

The gust of wind that broke through the half-open window made her cough. Naturally, I rushed to fight with the uncovered part of the window in order to turn it into a closed one.

“Something got colder,” I concluded eventually, closing the window almost completely, which was fantastic, considering his condition.

With a smile, she shook her head, looking me over. Then she straightened my scarf, gently hid the ends under the jacket and zipped up the collar. Immediately it became warmer, and I was embarrassed.

- In general, I believe that it is completely unnecessary for a man to know how to tie a scarf correctly in order to look elegant, or to make it look a little warm.

- Well, of course, my treasure, - she smiled carelessly. - Scarves, gloves, hats, etc. - women's nonsense.

Then she took a deep, deep breath.

- It smells like rain.

I also inhaled, but I only felt that my nostrils and the smell of exhaust gases began to freeze.

- Well, if you think so ...

- It will be raining. Yes...

Her face became so detached and dreamy, and her gaze went through the roof of an old bus straight into the transcendental, now star-like, gave. Yes, she loves rain.

From this look, I always felt somehow uncomfortable, I began to feel like the third, or rather, the second one over. So it was this time, so, not knowing what to do, I began to play with the tongue of lightning, slightly sipping it up and down.

In the end, I pinched the skin on my chin, jerked sharply from the pain and cracked my head on the shelf for luggage. It was terribly unpleasant, but she came down to me from her rainy skies in order to pity, stroke and console me in my feigned chagrin.

- So you will not sleep, no?

I myself did not understand what it was happening to me.

She shook her head with a smile.

- No, of course, how can I leave you in such sadness and with such a scratch on the chin.

And she gently kissed my chin, offended by me.

And then her lips almost imperceptibly touched my ear, first my lobes, then slipped around the auricle, and in her instantly clouded consciousness crept in her quiet whisper:

- And, then, to leave alone such a man, bored and smelling delicious - a mortal sin ...

Light touches of the lips to one of my very sensitive parts of the body during this almost inaudible brief monologue made me feel chills.

- Ra ... is it a sin?

I froze, afraid to move, carefully looked in her direction. She moved away a little, as if to admire either my profile or my reaction to my profile. She looked at me with her annoyingly incomprehensible look. No, and again whispered in my ear, tickling and stirring ...

- Oh, sin, and even what.

I had to lick lips that were suddenly dry.

- And why?

- It is very difficult, I would even say a terrible sin, because when such a person is sitting so irresistible that it is completely impossible to resist his attraction, ...