Why I feel like sunshine in the darkness.
How I am the moon spinning about the earth and an immovable rock rooted through the earth’s crust at the same time.
“Beatrice?”
“Yes, Simon?”
“Please be real when I wake up.”
She squeezes me tighter.
My arsehole responds as it must this evening.
And everything draws darker in the musical sound of her laughter.
If this is a dream, then I never wish to wake up.
40
THIS TIME, I’LL BLOODY WELL GET IT RIGHT
Simon
My head isa sour lemon that has been squeezed one too many times and has now turned into petrified cotton.
Is petrified cotton a thing?
Why must alcohol make me so bloody miserable?
But—“Bea!”
I bounce to sitting so quickly that the room spins.
Was it a dream?
A nightmare?
The show.
I missed the show. At the drive-in.
Surely it was a nightmare. But?—
“Whoa, hey, easy,” a feminine voice, husky with sleep, says nearby.
It’s followed by a gentle hand on my arm.
A very real hand belonging to a very real woman whose head is on the pillow beside mine.
I think.
Everything is still swimming.
“Bea?” I whisper.
She sits up beside me, a whirl of color in the soft morning light poking through my curtains. “How’s your head?”
“Are you real?”
