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“In fact, all these clothes,” I continue. “T-shirt, panties... they’re overrated. So not needed.”
“Is that so.”
“Yeah, I’m concerned. You won’t sleep well.”
She laughs softly, then slaps my chest lightly. My bruises protest but I find myself smiling. We lay there in silence for a while and I’m almost drifting off, sinking, when she shifts.
“You called me Lu,” she whispers.
“Did I? Sounds about right for a shorty like you.”
“What? I’m not short, you twat. Just compact.”
“Squirt.”
“Asshole.”
“Hey now,” I say mildly. “That’s not imaginative at all, ya know.”
A shrug. “I’m still mad at you for being on that roof. For falling.” She shudders.
I haul her closer, bury my nose in her hair and breathe her in, feel her against me, warm and real. I don’t wanna think about the roof and the harrowing minutes that followed, about the reasons that put me there.
She wants to sleep beside me, and I want it, too. It’s a pleasure I never imagined I’d be gifted with.
Because I wasn’t meant to grow old, or to find peace, sleep blissfully in a bed with my girl. I wasn’t made for it, wasn’t prepared for it.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t take it and let myself go for this one night. After looking death in the face, the feel of her pressed against me is all that’s keeping me sane tonight.
***
After dropping into sleep like a rock, it’s a shock to come up for air what feels like a second later, panting hard, my heart pounding, in an unknown bed.
A bed I don’t recognize at first because I’m not alone in it, and there’s a faint scent of flowers and honey, and a web of silk threads clamped over my face, and—
Luna.
We’re in my bed. In my room.
My harsh breaths sound way too loud in the quiet. I’m winded as if someone punched me in the solar plexus, then kicked in my ribs for good measure.
Lifting her curls off my face, I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling, fighting the tremors going through me.
What was...? A dream. More a jumble of fear and panic and dark things dragging me down in the murk—then that feeling of falling.
Weightless for a few seconds, stretching into lifetimes, before my hand snagged on the pipe and I swung, almost wrenching my arm out of its pocket.
My stomach roils.
Fuck this shit. I’m okay, I’m alive, why the hell do I have to relive the moment in my dreams? As if I don’t have a set reel of nightmares at my disposal.
She’s so much stronger than me.
In prison, I gave up. Let the dark get to me. I don’t have signs to show for it. It turns out that having your stomach pumped doesn’t leave any scar. The other inmates gave me the pills. They were helping me off myself. It was entertaining for them, I guess. Helped them feel stronger.
Sitting up, I swing my legs off the bed and prop my elbows on my legs, shoving my fingers through my short hair. The cold is back, chilling my blood, making old scars ache.
