[Fiction]

And so I thought of your room today.
Your lights are always on whenever I drive past and I wonder what you do in there all the time. I remember the first time you took me there, the way I felt. I was trying to hide myself in some way. Hide fear, hide scars, hide inexperience, hide drunkenness. I remember your smile, the one you’ve flashed me so often, and the one I shy away from every time I see it. Life feels surreal when I’m with you, like an excerpt from a racy novel. You don’t feel like the other people I meet. I look up to you in a different way. You constantly surprise me.
When we talk after, while you smoke a cigarette and ash it, I watch your fingers. I love feeling the sound of your voice fill my head. Sometimes I tune out the words and then it’s just a sound, a kind of music. I understand you, in so many ways. Your eccentricities all make sense to me.
When we talk before, I feel my stomach go into a knot. I feel my forehead moistening. I wonder what’ll happen and I wait. I even find that I hold my breath sometimes.
You’re always honest with me, sometimes subtly, sometimes brutally. I feel like you’re always careful not to hurt my feelings too much. You don’t like it when I play down my abilities, but when I big myself up, you break me.
We talk often – at dinners, on drives and on my terrace. We talk of our ideals, our dreams and how everything is so eff-ing wrong. We never talk about us though, and when we do, even in jest, I don’t say much. You say – we’re this and we’re that. I listen and smile, and nod. To an outsider, it may seem like I don’t think about our relationship, but in truth, I have analysed it, over-analysed it, dissected it, in every way possible.