We’d gone back to the apartment in the morning to crash until afternoon – or rather, for you to crash. You had been drinking for most of the previous two days and sensed sloppiness on the horizon.

You went straight from the front door to the bedroom and grabbed two pillows, tossing them onto the living room floor, not far from a small canvas lying flat on a page of newspaper.

You collapsed onto your butt in front of one pillow, patting the spot in front of the other, smiling goofy and flushed.

Letting myself down more gently than you had, I took my place, resting my head on the pillow, your pillow, which you had quickly thrown on top of mine behind my back. At the same instant, you rested your head against my chest, whispering a collision, an explosion.

I lay there for around three hours, listening to the static and your breathing.

Sometime in there, I finally began to drift. I blinked, and I was lying alone. The white noise had been replaced with music. You’d left your watch lying in your place on my chest, which said I had been out for at least half an hour.

I heard you singing before you emerged from the bedroom.

“..didn’t anybody tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room?”

You sat down beside me, carefully this time, offering me a tray with two joints ready to be rolled. I sat up, taking the tray.

“..and so, and now,” you crooned, standing,  “I’m sorry I missed you..”

On your feet, bending at the waist, your voice rising;

“..but I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain..”

You kissed the crown of my skull and pushed away, back to the bedroom;

“..it went the dull and wicked old merry way..”

—

Ninety minutes later, we stopped for a moment on the short trail which someone had halfheartedly blazed through the thin wall of forest between our complex and the highway. They had successfully removed a bush and a rather small tree to make the path passable, while another, larger tree bore the scars of frustrated, fruitless hacking. You were fascinated with them, and as I took one more drag on joint four, coughing my left lung into the decaying leaves, you ran your fingers through the deep wounds in the wood.

I passed back to you, freeing my hand to grab the nearest trunk while I succumbed to the lack of oxygen reaching my brain. You placed a hand on my back, taking two too-cool puffs and blowing smoke up to the thick black and green canopy overhead.

After a short and slightly wobbly walk, we were sat at the patio bar with minimal company. Overhead, the afternoon storm was having its final say, distant thunder rolling away behind the sound of the news on the television behind the bar.

Three seats to your right. a man sat with his arms folded, gaping at the massive plasma screen in a state of apparent disturbance. When I looked up myself, it was no longer a news broadcast, but an advertisement in the style of an obviously fake news broadcast. The product looked like some kind of household cleaner but I didn’t make a note of the brand.

When I looked back down, the man was looking directly at me, still aghast, and nearly whispered;

“My God.”

I nodded. He turned back to the television and I turned back to my notebook on the bar.

“You misspelled dickless,” someone said over my right shoulder, shoving me over to squeeze between my chair and yours.

Your old coworker Laura was on bar all night.

“Your dad seems upset,” I said, glancing at our distraught neighbor.

“Fuck you.”

He was now standing behind his chair, arms folded, face twisted up, attention still fixed on the screen showing an ad for Domino’s.

“Babe,” she called to him, “you good?”

Startled, he nodded to her, holding up two fingers attached to red and sweaty hand. She said something to you, which I didn’t hear, then disappeared behind a wall and quickly reappeared behind the bar.

Beside me, you climbed down from your chair. Your eyes low and a serene smile on your lips, you slid two fingers into my right pocket, singing into my ear before drifting off to find a moment of privacy;

“didn’t anybody tell you? didn’t anybody tell you?”

“Greg,” Laura called out a few minutes later, mixing the bewildered man’s margarita, “you hungry?”

Greg looked back to her, helpless, one hand gesturing weakly toward the screen, his mouth opening and closing. He managed to compose himself enough to retake his seat when his neon green bowl of liquor arrived. On the television, the news returned, only to cut to black after a couple of seconds before resuming commercials. Greg, gazing into his bowl, missed this.

A few minutes later, Laura brought our drinks.

“She sleep?”

I nodded, then offered her your vodka and coke. She looked over to your seat, then to me, asking a couple of questions wordlessly, which I answered with a slight jerk of my head in your direction. She raised your glass rather slowly and hesitated before drinking.

“That’s disgusting,” she grimaced, returning a considerably lighter lowball to its coaster, turning to leave, stopping, grunting to herself, turning back and finishing it off before heading down the bar, maybe to rescue Greg, who was once again standing behind his chair, mumbling to himself or to the television screen, which was now solid black.

Without warning, every noise and thought vanished.

I could feel your eyes on me.

It was happening again.

I turned just in time to see your hand take hold of mine.

—

When the sun broke through the living room window we were lying awake on the couch, still in our shoes, your head on my chest, listening to my heartbeat.