HER COLLAR ALMOST COVERS HER cheeks; a green scarf fills the gaps. She has let her hair grow long. She is walking briskly, a little too fast, because her heels are starting to hurt. She slows, thinks, Wish I were Muslim. Then I’d have an excuse.
The leaves are perfectly yellow and red; very soon they will drop. They will fall on the path and the river and everything will change, sort of. Any change you can predict does not seem interesting. It can only confirm.
The path is not as quiet as it should be. At nine o’clock on a Sunday morning people should be at home. They can have someone to fuck, a person to hold, a loved one, an intimate friend, and in exchange (though not a fair one) she should be granted these moments when no one is looking at her.
Caitlin brings a hand to her cheek but does not touch it, as if an itch had flared then gone. She looks around, first at the couple approaching, hand in hand; then at the old man with the black Labrador; then at two little girls in pink, one of them hopping, the other skipping, both with great excitement. As if the world is about to be treated to their latest performance.
A blur of brown, then mallards land. She watches them swimming till the couple, the old man and his dog, and the little girls have passed. Did they look at her? Did they stare?
Walk, just walk.
The river runs straight, and so does the path. The ducks quickly recede. There is no one ahead. For the time being, she is safe. Safe and free to think about that moment in the future.
They are at a restaurant on the shores of the Mediterranean. The restaurant is busy, and they have not booked, and so the waiter asks them to share a table with another foreign couple. The other woman is intelligent, beautiful, with a name like Danielle or Sophie. The man is unimportant. The couple do not want to share, yet cannot say so. After they’ve introduced themselves, said where they’re from, the conversation stalls. Then Sam makes a clever joke about the waiter and they all laugh. By the time the entrées arrive it will seem as if they have known each other for years.
When Sam goes to the toilet, the other man will disappear. How, she is not quite sure: either his phone will ring, and he’ll go outside, or she’ll make him not exist. Then it will be just her and Danielle, who will smile and say, “How did you meet your husband?”
Her tone will not be suspicious or baffled. She will ask in a tone of approval, admiration, maybe even jealousy. This last possibility will make Caitlin pause. She will consider the woman’s cheeks, the pout of her lips, the way her hair holds its shape despite the sea breeze. What is her intention? Is she a threat? Does she guess there was a time when it seemed as if she and Sam would never be together? Is she trying to conjure that hateful time into their blissful now? Perhaps she thinks this is a wedge that she can hammer in. That Caitlin will hang her head, acknowledge she once was undeserving. This, like murder or rape, is a crime with no statute of limitations. No matter that her cheeks are whole; that she and Sam have children; that he has held her every night for fifteen years: The fingers of the dead can point just as well as those of the living.
And she loves the colour of the river. It is like whisky, like ale. It is the kind of river people are warned about in fairy tales. Don’t drink the water in the forest or you will fall asleep for ten years. But this doesn’t seem so bad. Her tomorrow will be like her today. But in a year, or five, or seven, she will be better, not a princess, but not a monster either. When she believes this, she is impatient. The future, her future, is within sight, and she does not want to wait. She wants to be happy.
“We used to work near each other,” is how she will answer Danielle. Who will smile as if to say Go on. But Caitlin will leave it at that. She will act as if this is a story not worth telling, as if there were no obstacles. They met and fell in love; how and when are details.
Walking and the sound of the river. She likes to hold her breath in the bath, the pressure in her lungs and skull building, the sound of the water no longer outside but something swirling within. This is how she feels about Sam. A stream, at times a river, is flowing from her. To call it love would be an understatement. It is not a single feeling. There is no love without joy, hope, desire, despair, hatred, and jealousy. With adoration comes the wish to hold a pillow over his face.
She is walking more slowly. Starting to relax.
Danielle will have many other questions. How long have they been married? Have they got children? Have they been to Greece before?
Perhaps she is not so bad. She doesn’t want to come between Caitlin and Sam. She just likes them as a couple, albeit in a fawning manner. But this is more touching than irksome. It is what happens to couples greater than the sum of their parts.
The path begins its long bend round the Colonies. These stone houses are where labourers lived when all the area was part of an estate. On a wall, high up, is a carving she has never noticed before. There is a hammer, a chisel, some L-shaped measuring device, what looks like a bushel of wheat.
“Where do you live?” Danielle asks, then blushes, not so much at the question, but the eager way she asked. Caitlin tells her she and Sam live in a converted barn in the Scottish Borders.
“It has a really large pond Sam dug for me because he knows I love ducks.”
“How lovely!” says Danielle, as delighted as if the pond had been dug for her. “Do you have any other pets?”
“Two dogs, both from a rescue home.”
“What are their names?”
“Bobby and Trick.”
“Or Trick and Tricky,” says Sam as he sits down. Which makes Danielle laugh, though she doesn’t, couldn’t, get the joke, not knowing Bobby, what he gets up to, or frankly, anything about her life with Sam. It makes her seem pathetic.
But when Sam puts his arm around Caitlin, when his hand caresses her shoulder, she sees Danielle flinch. And who could fail to pity her. Beautiful, intelligent, but with a husband who is not Sam.
The ducks return. Unless they’re different ducks. Although Caitlin cannot tell them apart, these do seem happier. Their quacks are like a laugh. She smiles, rubs her cold ears. This has been a good walk: She has spent time in the future. She will go as far as the bridge and then turn back.
A jogger overtakes her, and for the next half a minute she must watch the smooth action of the woman’s arms and legs, the confident bob of her ponytail. She runs with the resolve of someone trying to punish herself.
The woman goes under the bridge, then disappears, for that is where the path loops back on itself. The river takes a strange route. Though it flows down straight from the hills, seemingly intent on reaching the sea, during its last few miles it meanders and switches direction, as if the prospect of losing its freshness to salt suddenly makes it shy. Caitlin doesn’t know the reason; it is probably something to do with rocks, or soil, or maybe people changed its path. It is definitely a good thing—if the river were straighter, more canal-like, there’d be no surprises.
Under the bridge it is dark and cold and the stone presses down. As a child, this frightened Caitlin. Any tunnel, underpass, or bridge made her shut her eyes and take quick breaths, and sometimes she passed out. Her mother thought she was claustrophobic, but that wasn’t the problem. She could hide in wardrobes and cupboards for hours without fear. What terrified her was the idea that it only took a second for the tunnel or bridge to collapse. Whatever rules or forces kept the tunnel intact, however many centuries the bridge had stood, no one could guarantee these forces would not fail.
But Caitlin is not a child. She is an adult who believes that although the world may not be kind or fair, it is at least consistent. The sun rises in the east. The seas shall never boil. She can stand beneath this bridge for years, and it will never fall.
A pause to listen to the river. To look at leaves, at smoke, at the limbs of trees. Then she is heading home. Past the Colonies, round the first of the bends.
When you know someone well, you spot them at a distance. Their overall shape and height is a pattern you recognise. So when Caitlin sees Sam, he is still half a minute away.
Disbelief; a moment of wonder; then she slowly exhales. She has been holding her breath since she last saw him, on Thursday, when they hardly spoke because so many people were bringing in donations. She does not recognise the green trousers or black jacket, but it is him, she is sure. She wants to raise her hand and wave. She wants to call his name.
She puts her hands in her pockets.
Bites her lip.
Lifts and moves her left foot forward.
Ditto the right.
And though it must look like she’s blushing, that is not it: Her blood is just impatient. It wants to be nearer to him. She wants this, as it wants this, but she also wants the opposite. She wants to walk past him. To disappear. She has no idea what to say.
He might not have seen her. Perhaps she can turn, walk round the bend, throw herself in the bushes. She wants to do this, and without warning a laugh leaves her. She is so stupid. She is obsessed, would die for him, but she is not a teenager, not a virgin. This is the man she wants, and she will walk towards him. She will be normal, interesting; she will not say, I love you.
She is seen. Recognised. He raises his hand. There on the riverbank, in the terrible present, he is speaking to her.
“Hey,” he says. “How’s it going?”
As if there were nothing remarkable about their meeting; as if they were always bumping into each other.
“Good,” she says, which although not sparkling, is certainly better than fine.
“What have you been doing? Did you work yesterday?”
“No, did you?”
“Half a day. I yawned, and then it was over.”
She laughs briefly, through her nose. And how would he react if she pulled off her jumper and T-shirt in one fluid motion? Just to show him there is nothing wrong with the skin on the rest of her body.
“What are you doing today?” he says. Which might be an invitation. If she says she’s doing something, he’ll think she’s saying she’s busy. But if she says she’s doing something he thinks is fun, maybe he’ll want to join in. It’s an opportunity and a risk. If she says she’s doing nothing, he might think she’s boring (which he probably already does). Or he might say, “All right then, let’s do something.” It doesn’t matter that Sam has never, in the fifteen months of their acquaintance, asked her to have even a cup of coffee. There’s always a chance.
“I don’t know,” she replies. Then shrugs.
To which he says, “OK.” He shifts his weight to the other foot. Looks past her as he says, “Yeah, me neither. Hang on a sec—”
He puts his hand in his pocket, brings out his phone. He touches a button and looks at the screen.
“Anything?” she says.
“No,” he says, and sounds disgusted. In ten seconds he will leave. Then there will be months of standing in his shop or her shop, talking about fucking books. And if she is this pathetic now, how will she be in six months? She will be like that scary goth girl who pretends to be looking in the bookshop window. There are days when Caitlin times her. So far the record is thirty-seven minutes.
He looks at his phone and says, “So, are you going home?”
“That’s right,” she says. “I’m going home. I think my face is bleeding.”
He looks up.
“It probably looks like meat.”
And other people would say “What?” or pretend not to hear. They would look at the river, the trees, the sky and its very few clouds. Certainly from embarrassment, but also from kindness: The afflicted cannot be expected to control themselves.
“No,” he says. “It doesn’t. It’s not as bad as that.”
And when he raises his hand there is no swell of music. Time does not slow. This is still the present. He pulls aside her scarf, and in doing so, a fingertip brushes her face. This is how, at twenty-seven, she learns that memory is useless. She will remember him doing this, but only as an event. The sensation of his finger, its slight caress, will elude recall.
Caitlin closes her eyes. She refuses to see his expression.
“I’m not a doctor,” he says. “But no one has these conditions forever. It can just take time to find the right treatment. Maybe it’s an allergy, or maybe you shouldn’t use soap.”
When she opens her eyes, he is looking at her with his usual expression: calm, interested, but without more emotion.
And when you have tried to show someone you love them, and got nothing back in return, the only way to save yourself is to try to hate them.
“You know what? I’ve tried everything. I gave up milk, coffee, and cheese. I rub steroids into my face. I don’t have an allergy to wheat, dairy, gluten, or yeast. I don’t use fucking soap. I wash in tepid water. I stay out of the sun. I don’t use washing powder, and my clothes are never properly clean. My thyroid is fine. The only thing left to do is graft skin from my tits, or maybe the tits of a mouse, or just grow me a new fucking head.”
Sam’s expression does not change. So fucking what if he stops talking to her. Better to live without hope or joy than be an idiot.
Better for him to hate her.
Better to read one novel, then another, then another, and whatever she thinks about each—whether she liked the minor characters, or found the book confusing, its plot predictable—to speak to no one about it. Better to treat each book as a dream that happens only for her.
Better to feel nothing.
Better to be dead.
“Come on,” he says. “I’m getting cold.”
“Come where?”
“This way,” he says, and turns towards the direction he has come from. For an instant Caitlin is confused. He does not appear annoyed or angry. If anything, he seems pleased. He is whistling, or rather half-whistling—the notes are often just blown air—as he looks upstream.
When she steps forwards, he smiles. “All right,” he says. “Shall we?”
For the next minute Caitlin’s mind is occupied with several difficult tasks. She must move a body that no longer feels like hers. She must accept that this is real. She must focus on the fact that she is walking along the river with Sam. She must pay attention to everything so she can remember it. She must recall the brown and foaming water, the green-headed ducks in a hurry, the plastic bags shredded by branches. She gathers these details; she hoards them. But they are only twigs from which to make a nest. The shiny, precious things inside will all come from him. The pout of his lips, his cautious stubble, the lean line of his jaw.
As they walk, she swipes these glances, but they are not enough. If she looks longer, it will be staring, which is what she wants to do, but cannot. She needs to be patient. As soon as he starts to speak, she can look all she wants.
They pass under the small stone bridge, where Alasdair is squatting, possibly defecating. He glares at both of them.
“What do you know about him?” Sam asks.
It is like the first bite when hungry.
“Not much, except that he’s a bastard. Can I say that? I know he’s homeless, and I know he probably has mental health problems, but does that make it OK for him to be horrible?”
Sam looks at her, which means she can stare. His lips are so red they look sore.
“I mean, have you heard how he speaks to people? He makes them feel awful. It’s very aggressive. He dresses it up in this new-age diet crap, as if he cares about their health, but he’s just a bully. He knows they wouldn’t take it if he weren’t homeless.”
And maybe she shouldn’t talk. Every word is a risk. He is already looking at her in a way that makes her head feel like it’s made of glass.
“So what did he say to you?”
“All kinds of stuff. Mostly about my face.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. One time he said I needed to eat raw onions with every meal. He also said I should avoid direct sunlight at all times.”
She laughs. Looks. There are grey hairs above his ear.
“That doesn’t sound mean. He just tells me to eat more fruit. Especially apples.”
She snorts. Not an attractive sound, but she is too indignant. “He also said my face wouldn’t get better unless I stopped hating myself.” This so clearly vindicates her opinion that Sam needn’t say anything more. But it would still be nice if he did.
They keep walking. The river widens, seems slower. They pass a play area where every child seems possessed. Shrieking, screaming, they run in tight circles, spinning, colliding, falling over, hurting and being hurt.
“What’s wrong with their parents?” he says. “Why don’t they take care of them?”
“They’re just playing. They’re fine.”
He shakes his head.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He begins to walk faster. As they round the curve of the river, he neither looks at her nor speaks. He has either forgotten her or (more likely) is trying to pretend she is not there.
The path stops at steps. Something is burning. She cannot see the smoke. The sky is blue, incredibly pale, as if the atmosphere has grown thin.
This is so autumn, she thinks, then says, just to hear the words out loud.
“Everything must end in autumn,” he says.
He is smiling, not looking at her, as if this is a joke. And she has thought him many things—wonderful, brilliant, kind, cruel, cold, and indifferent—but this is the first time he has seemed weird. For the last twenty minutes he has been someone else. In some ways she likes this, because it makes her feel they are closer, that he has shared something with her. Except this is not quite the man she loves.
The river is ten feet below; black railings block off the drop. To their left the land rises in steeply terraced lawns, each with a waist-high chain-link fence separating it from the path. Though there are no signs saying private, it seems wrong to imagine opening one of these gates and trying to climb the slope. The grand houses above seem to forbid it.
It is ten thirty, perhaps eleven. There are now prams and tricycles, scooters, children running, children refusing to walk. There are also couples hand in hand, arm in arm, hands in each other’s pockets. A lot of people, too many eyes. A cold voice in her head says, Quit while you’re ahead.
As they near a domed stone building they are forced to stop. Two families are blocking the path. A boy is turning slow circles on a tiny bike while two little black-haired girls have a skipping rope stretched taut between them. From their pinched expressions it is clear they mean this as an ambush.
None of the adults is paying attention. The three men have their backs to the children; the two women are caught in a state of delicious outrage. “Totally ruined,” says one with a French accent. She is wearing earrings that are miniature wind chimes.
“So what did you do?”
“I had her put down,” she says, then chops the air with her hand. Her earrings chime their approval. As for her friend, she shows her appreciation by laughing and taking a step forwards to put her hand on her friend’s arm. With this there is a gap in their ranks. The children freeze as Sam and Caitlin approach.
“Come here, darling,” says the Frenchwoman, then places her hand on the nearest girl’s head. The girl, who is seven, maybe eight, drops her end of the rope, then clings to her mother.
As they step over the rope Caitlin smiles and says, “Don’t shoot.” The Frenchwoman stops talking to her friend. Fuck off, she says with her face, while her lips say, “Alan.” With that, the three men turn. This no longer feels like a public path; it is their living room into which two strangers have walked.
Something is wrong with these people. She has smiled, made eye contact, tried to sound friendly, and although Sam has done none of those things, he hasn’t been rude. She wonders if something terrible happened to one of these families. Perhaps there was once a young man and woman who walked up to one of their girls and hit her in the face. Or worse. Did they have a boy or girl who disappeared? A child who was found dead? A child that was molested?
It doesn’t matter. They will soon be gone. They will not form part of a story told to a couple in a restaurant on the shore of the Mediterranean.
“Zombie,” says the girl who is still holding the rope. “Mummy, she’s a zombie.”
“That’s right,” the boy says. “There’s blood.”
“Blood!” the girls squeal, then point. The adults stare. Caitlin stops walking. She looks at the Frenchwoman, who stares back at her, and only after a long moment, during which she meets Caitlin’s gaze without flinching, does the woman turn her head and make her earrings chime. “Ni-co-las,” she says to the boy, then smiles at him. “He’s at that age,” she says, without turning back to Caitlin. “He watches too much TV. He likes soldiers and monsters and guns.”
And time travel is real, it must be. Because the Caitlin of 2016 would pull her collar up, wind her scarf round her face, and flee with her head down. It can only be some her from the future who points at the girl and says, “Is it yours?”
“Her name’s Estelle. She’s not an it.”
“Well, a person wouldn’t say that.”
“She’s just a little girl.”
“She’s a little girl who doesn’t understand that people have feelings. You haven’t taught her that. Maybe you don’t understand that either. Maybe you’re not a person.”
“That’s enough,” says the husband.
“No, it’s not. Your children have said something horrible, and you don’t give a shit. Is that how you’re raising them? That they can treat people badly and there are never any consequences?”
“Listen, we’re sorry,” says the other woman, who sounds Scottish. “But they’re just kids. Can’t we just forget it?”
“You probably will. That’s why you’re all so smug and pleased and think that you’re good people.”
And as the faces shift, as anger replaces disapproval, Caitlin realises she has lost. So long as she focussed on their kids, she had a chance to shame them. But who can accept that their entire way of life might be deluded and wrong? Who will let themselves be casually destroyed?
“What’s your problem?” says Alan, and steps past his wife. “We’re not doing any harm. So what if they said something? What do you want us to do?”
Something definitely happened. Or is still happening. A school bully or a chronic condition. Something to make them scared.
Alan jabs his finger at her. “Leave us alone.” He pauses, and when he next speaks blurts, “Just fuck off.”
He swallows and looks somewhat pained, as if this has taken great effort. He keeps glancing at Sam, but Sam is looking away. He is pale and biting his lip.
“Go on,” says Alan, with more conviction. “Fuck off, both of you.”
She might as well. This is pointless. He will not back down.
“Why don’t you?” she says. “You’re in the way. You’re the selfish cunts.”
She is almost as surprised as Alan. She thanks people for donating clothes that smell of sweat and piss. She stares at the ground when schoolgirls laugh. If there were truth to the notion of biting one’s tongue, hers would be a stump.
But what does it profit a person not to speak their heart? The meek inherit nothing. If they are going to be crushed, put in their graves, they might as well cry out.
Alan’s face is red; spittle flecks his lips. “Cunt,” he says, then pushes her. Then pushes her again. The corners of his mouth twitch up, as if he is trying to smile. As if he is delighted by his honesty.
And so what if he hits her. As Caitlin is pushed, takes another step back, she thinks this would be impressive. Swearing and pushing, though unpleasant, are still acceptable. But although there is no question that women deserve equal pay and can do virtually any job as well as a man, few say it is no worse to punch a woman than a man. Even if the woman hits first, the man is not supposed to retaliate. No matter that women are the same as men in one crucial aspect: Some of them deserve it.
“How fucking dare you,” he says, and this time, after he has pushed her, his hand contracts into a fist. And no one is telling him to stop or trying to grab his arms. The others are standing and watching as if this were merely an interesting spectacle they have chanced upon. Even the children are rapt.
A hand takes her wrist, then pulls; the rest of her body follows. She steps closer to Alan, who quickly steps back, and she is pleased to glimpse fear.
Again, she has travelled through time. She must have, because she is walking hand in hand with Sam. To be precise, wrist in hand, because he is gripping hers. Only when they have turned the corner does he let go. He steps away a short distance, then puts his hand on his heart, as if he is about to propose. “Sorry,” he says, and turns. Then he bends and vomits.
“What’s wrong?”
He wipes his mouth. “Nothing. It’s fine.”
“Are you ill?”
“No, I just have an allergy.”
“To what?”
“Certain kinds of people.”
“Really? No.”
“OK, well, maybe not an allergy. But they make me feel ill.”
“No shit.”
He raises his eyebrows. Takes several deep breaths. Then he says, “Hygieia.”
“What?”
“Who.” He points at a statue of a woman on top of the domed building. She wears a loose fitting dress that acquires folds as it descends her body. In her right hand she holds the base of a cup; her left rests on a pillar being embraced by a snake.
“OK, who?”
“She’s the Greek goddess of health. Daughter of Asclepius. It’s where the word ‘hygiene’ comes from. And I think it’s actually open.” He goes towards a gap in the railings. “Yeah, it is. Amazing.”
She follows him and sees a metal door in the side of the round building. A sign above the lintel says St. Bernard’s Well.
“I’d forgotten. Today is the day of open doors. How lucky is that?”
“Very,” she says, but with no idea what he’s talking about. Her heart is beating fast, and she also feels sick. She is back in the awful present where she and Sam are not together. This walk will be no foundation. If they had not run into those people, if she had not said those things, they might have gone on. They would have reached that place where the river is broad and slow. There are benches there dedicated to people who sat beneath oaks and alders watching the river pass, the sway of the trees, and irrespective of the year, the age, whatever their troubles were—the factory had closed, their husband was in prison, their son had said he was gay—the sights and sounds made them feel better.
She follows Sam down the steps. An old man in a green blazer sits on a metal chair in the doorway. “Hello,” he says, and Sam says, “Hello,” and then there are more steps. As they descend, the air is cold, and they should not be here. They should be on a bench with a plaque that bears the name of a man who sat and stared at the river. They should be sitting as close to each other as they will be in that restaurant by the Mediterranean. Instead they are going down into a tomb. How appropriate, she thinks, and remembers what Sam said about autumn. Was this his bizarre way of telling her she should give up? If so, she cannot disagree. There is really no chance.
It is not this thought that stops her halfway down the stairs. It is, after all, not new. She thinks it almost as often as she imagines their future. What cuts her from the inside—the knife is dull and slowly twists—is that she now accepts it.
“Where are you?” he says.
“Here.”
The knife moves through her gut. It is awful, depressing, and to her surprise, a relief. There is something tiring about hope.
“Come here. It’s amazing,” he says.
“Coming,” she says, then descends. She ducks through a low doorway and is surrounded by cornflower blue sky. It is, however, a strange sky, because it is supported by pillars. And yet it is, without doubt, the sky—it contains the sun.
Sam stands beneath, gazing upwards, his head to one side. She hangs back and does not speak. The moment seems private.
“We’re so lucky,” he says. “This is closed every other day of the year. There are probably people who’ve lived in the area all their lives and still never seen it. You know Mrs. Maclean, who volunteers on Thursday?”
She nods, although he cannot see. Mrs. Maclean is one of those old women who seems terrifyingly nice. They bake, they knit, they do volunteer work; they poison thirty-seven people at a summer fête.
“She was telling me about this a few weeks ago. She said she saw it in 1955, and I said, ‘What was it like?’ and she said, ‘Wonderful.’ But when I asked if she’d seen it since, she shook her head. Which seems pretty strange. If she liked it so much, why hasn’t she seen it since?”
“I don’t know,” Caitlin says. She stands next to him, under the sun, the sky all around. It is then that she understands she will have to leave. Not just her job, but also the street, probably the country. There needs to be an ocean between them. She’ll go to Australia, maybe India. It’s the only way.
Sam is still looking up. They are standing so close. Anyone else would lower their head and tell her, “Don’t stare.”
It is the start of the agonising process of taking her Last Looks. This will go on for weeks, months, but now that she has decided to leave, never to come back, she is entitled to be thorough. The skin on his neck and throat is stretched. It is like she can see every follicle, hair, and line. He is all detail, and she wants to focus on each one completely, but all at the same time. Why is that kind of looking impossible?
Yet even as she studies his cheek, his chin, she cannot properly focus. There is too much stone over their heads, underneath them, surrounding them on all sides. They are as enclosed as if they were in a mouth. And the decoration does not help. What gives the illusion of openness, space, is actually worse than blank stone. It is a blue weight that presses down. It reminds her of a documentary she saw about a coffin artist. He painted only on the insides of coffin lids, usually landscapes. His audiences had to get in and close the lid and then a light came on. He claimed that under such conditions, people paid attention.
The air is poor, lower in oxygen: She needs more of it. She sucks it in, takes quick, shallow breaths, and at first this helps. She feels happy, almost giddy, but then the ceiling drops an inch. As if the stone briefly forgot whatever is keeping it up.
She should just run. Take his hand and drag him out.
Like she hasn’t been crazy enough.
She will stand her ground, outstare the sun, say fuck you to the sky.
They will be crushed together.
He lowers his head, turns his face to hers.
“I really enjoyed today. We should hang out more often.”
And suddenly she can breathe.
The sky is not going to fall.