Anca Dunavete

‘There is another world, but it is in this one.’ – William Butler Yeats

‘It’s 3 am,’ I say.

What I really mean is, I want to go.

Even though I don’t really mean that, but now isn’t the time. Not the time to make my way into his heart by any means possible. Not the time to want to swim into the depths, because the surface is getting cold and crowded. No, no, no, My head spins a little, but not enough to drown out the little voice telling me that it’s too soon to be fragile, that everyone loves strength, and that showing less is a mistake that can cost me all future opportunities. And so I want to leave, because I don’t want to stay just to play it tough. I’m never tough past bedtime, or around men like him. And there’s no way I’m going to let myself be soft tonight if I ever hope to see him again.

‘It doesn’t matter that it’s 3 am. There will be other 3 ams. Come.’

As we step out of the bar, he zips up his coat, his cheeks red, and I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I went with him instead of looking for a cab, after all… Ah, didn’t I tell you no, self?

‘Actually, there are only so many tomorrows until you run out of them,’ I mumble, mainly to distract myself from fantasising again.

‘What?’ he laughs, lifting my chin. ‘You never know, we might live forever.’

You know that spark they talk about in movies? When The One finds out you’re engaged to some other dude, but is still ready to catch the first plane to your hometown and pull a ring out of his pocket with one hand while fighting his enemy with the other? Well, I think that was more or less what I felt when he touched me.

It was electric.

‘There will be no other 3 am like this one,’ I say. ‘They will all be boring.’

Ah, to hell with strength. It’s always been my weakness. I knew this was coming, and his face tells me he knew it too. Next thing I know, I’m sinking my face into his shoulder and my nails into his back, dying to trace the line of his jaw with my fingertips.

‘I can’t let them get too boring, then.’

‘Right, because the world is up to you,’ I laugh.

‘Oh, I’ll tell you all about that later.’

I shrug my shoulders. I’m not naturally suspicious. For all I know, he’s drunk, and I’m mostly happy.

‘It’s fine for the rest to be boring,’ I say. ‘After all, that’s what 3 ams are for, to remind you to go to sleep. This is an exception.’

His grip tightens and tightens and my breath stops for a moment. I think I know now what I don’t like about the other nights. They don’t go like this one.

‘Hey, listen,’ he says, ‘I need to ask you something. I’ve always wanted to ask you this.’

‘Let’s hear it.’

‘What breaks your heart?’

Ah.

‘You, right now,’ I say without thinking. ‘What do you mean you’ve always wanted to ask me that?’

He laughs and thinks I’m funny.

At least I get that.

‘You’ve always wanted to ask a girl that, you mean?’

‘No, really, what’s breaks your heart? I think these are the kinds of questions everyone should ask each other. After all, that’s what we all want to know about people—what makes them human, what makes them tick. I haven’t thought of anything yet that would break your heart, so I want to know what it might be from your perspective.’

I laugh, and he smiles at my laughter, and somehow I am beginning to feel a warm connection forming between us.

‘I don’t know what breaks my heart, to be honest. Indecision, maybe. Ah, the irony.’

I’m torn between wanting to go home and wanting to play this game for the rest of the night, even if it doesn’t make sense. Mostly because it doesn’t make sense.

‘I knew it!’

He looks pleased, and I imagine that I look terribly confused.

‘Forget it, forget it. I’ll take care of it tomorrow. But for now, come.’

So are we going together from here after all?

‘Of course we are. I want to spend as much time with you as possible,’ he says, and I realise I didn’t say it out loud.

Or have I? Who keeps tracks anyway?

‘I’m taking you to where you belong.’

How odd. Must be that connection thing.

‘I see. My place or yours?’ I laugh.

‘Your place, silly.’

‘Fine. Just know it’s messy, and I’m almost certain we should have gone the other way instead.’

He seems to wonder why I’m so easy.

‘I can’t tell if you’re joking or not,’ he says.

I have no idea.

‘I have no idea.’

Suddenly he puts an arm around my shoulders.

‘I do. It’s this way, because we’re taking the shortcut.’

‘Wonderful!’

If only things were always light and simple.

‘I really hope you never leave a party with a stranger again because you don’t know what feels worse: being alone or being used,’ he suddenly says. ‘When we get to your place I’ll pour us another drink and tell you my story. That should help you next time.’

I choke on my words before they come out.

‘Your story is supposed to have this massive impact on my life and my path and my… self?’

Another drink or not, his newfound arrogance would probably sober me up.

‘If words don’t change the world, I don’t know what does,’ he smiles. ‘You don’t think everything we create is real?’

He stops and shows me that we need to turn right. I nod my head. He’s right.

‘Look, right now I’m not sure if you’re charming or scaring me,’ I admit.

‘Charming, just charming,’ he laughs, but doesn’t slow his pace.

‘Fine. You can be disappointed, you know. Just know that in genera—’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll find a way to have you fixed by the time I finish my story,’ he says. ‘It won’t be tonight, but I will think of it.’

‘That’s great news, all figured out then.’

☾

We are here and I reach for the keys. I worry that he is strange and I am starting to feel strange around him, too, but there’s this pull—this strange pull—that I can not fight, and something tells me not to. I stop, keys in my hands, and try to think. (Contrary to popular belief, 3 am is not the best time to think.)

‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he whispers, as if he’s telling me a secret, and I turn to look at him, hand in the air, thoughts still unclear.

‘I shouldn’t what?’

‘That—what you said to yourself. You shouldn’t pull back. I promise you it will make a lot of sense. In fact, I can not wait to tell you.’

‘Are you talking about…’

‘My story, yes.’

I stare at him, and he stares back, and I can see that he’s starting to realise that maybe he’s said too much, and he’s not happy about it. I am curious and scared at the same time. What started as a joke has now gone a little too far.

‘Look, as much as I like it when guys can read my mind…’

‘Oh, just invite me in already,’ he says impatiently. ‘Damn it, I should have thought of this and kept it short, just in case.’

‘Hey Lucifer, watch it, you don’t have my soul yet,’ I say in a thin voice, thinking about how to get rid of him.

I don’t think he got it. Concerned, he takes a few steps in my direction until his face almost touches mine. I feel like the timing is wrong or that this shouldn’t be happening at all, but I don’t just think it, I feel it in my bones. Strange?

‘Listen, this isn’t about your soul, I’m not the devil. Real life is hard, and I don’t know how to be out in the open with girls like you. So give me a chance, will you? I know you feel like God is suddenly pulling the wrong strings, but I never thought about what the right ones might be in this case. I mean, this is absurd in my book—us on a bad date, that’s not even a story, you know? This, we’re just making this up on the spot! Ah, damn. See, that’s what I hate about life. It’s so unpredictable. I almost wish I’d stayed home tonight to write, because I feel like I’m making a fool of myself now, and I don’t know what to say anymore. Everything I say just makes it worse, doesn’t it?’

‘Are you crazy?’ is all I can say, but it’s too late now.

As he walks toward me and runs his fingers through my hair, his smile gone, I already know the story is about me. His touch is indeed electrifying, but I fear it’s for the wrong reasons.

‘The story where I don’t die and I also get the girl. That’s what I wrote. And yes, it’s all about you. But this is not the way I want to tell you. It’s not like no matter what happens tonight, I can still change you tomorrow morning. It can’t be that simple, because this is happening too. Do you understand that? This is now a part of it. What’s written can never be unwritten, and I’m pretty sure that’s how life goes too. So you need to give me a hand here, because I can’t let you fear or hate me. That would go against every law there is.’

I want to sit down. I came home with a mad man. I just wish somebody walked past us.

‘Everyone is asleep,’ he says. ‘Actually, I don’t think anyone is alive at all. I didn’t write them. I didn’t just create an entire world out of thin air,’ he bites his lips nervously, and I’m so dizzy I think it’s sexy. ‘I’m not big on endless details, Mia. I really only created you.’

‘Wait, what?’

I take a step back and lean against the front door.

‘And I gave you that name. I also made you stand up for yourself when you needed to, and right now I kind of regret that. I tried to make you as good as I thought you could be, honestly. You like Mia, don’t you?’

The night feels surreal, and I wish it was just the drinking.

‘Please,’ he says. ‘Let’s go. I’ll tell you everything.’

Before he can stop me, I pick up a small rock and throw it at my building. We both stare at each other in silence. Soon there’s broken glass all over the place.

‘What’s going on down there? It’s 2:30 in the morning, you drunken idiots!’

An angry man in striped blue pyjamas threatens us from a broken window.

‘I hate neighbours,’ he says.

‘I thought you didn’t write any,’ I say, both of us still looking up.

‘Well, I guess some things are just there, you know? I mentioned this place, it makes sense that others live here too.’

‘Sure, it makes sense.’

I look at God, God looks at me, and we both know we screwed something up. This shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have come home with a stranger and broken the window. He probably thinks he should have put more details in his story so I’d have fallen in love with him and stopped swearing.

I can’t believe myself. I can’t stop playing along.

Soon, we’re running up the stairs to my flat talking about how little coffee I’ve left. He says he blames himself for it. I tell him not to worry, that writers think about characters and plots, not how much coffee imaginary women have in their apartments. Then he asks me if I think he’s crazy. I stop, turn around, and ask him the same thing.

☾

‘You look pretty insecure for someone who claims to be my maker,’ I say.

He shakes his head.

‘I told you, I’m not following the storyline. There’s no storyline for tonight. I couldn’t have seen this coming. We’re just making it up as we go along. It’s so absurd to me, too.’

‘This?’

‘Meeting you.’

I want to go talk to myself in front of the mirror until I’m sober again, but curiosity has gotten the better of me and pinned me down. No surprise there.

‘What’s so incredible about that? You gave us both a free night. I had every right to get out of your story and go to a bar.’

He breaks into a hearty laugh.

‘You should have made me immortal, too. That would have been quite wonderful. I would have thanked you in every prayer.’

‘What for, Mia? You never take any risks.’

‘Excuse me, what do you call this? It must be the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, letting you in…’

‘That’s right. And do I look like I’m trying to kill you?’

The truth is, he doesn’t.

‘Well, I could’ve at least been somebody by now, don’t you think? I haven’t even made it to the I love myself checkpoint yet. But you already know that. Do you like me like this?’

I know he wants to touch me, but I show him not to.

‘Honestly, I want to know. Was this all just an elaborate plan to get me to have another drink with you, or do you really believe what you’re saying?’

‘Come on. Do I sound like a living, breathing cliché?’

‘Then tell me, how did you jump inside the story? This is too much to be just a coincidence, if I’m just a figment of your imagination. You wrote a new chapter, didn’t you? Why didn’t you at least change the setting? You know I’ve always wanted to go to… Mexico.’

He looks at me for a while, like it’s something serious.

I’m not so good at role-playing, but I’ll try.

I like him, in a weird, twisted, friends-would-blackmail-me-forever kind of way.

‘No,’ he finally says. ‘Think about it, why on earth would I even want to meet you in person?’

‘Because I’m the girl of your dreams, I suppose,’ I say, dead serious, taking another sip of coffee.

He looks amused.

‘Do you really want to go to Mexico?’

‘God doesn’t know everything?’

‘I’m not God.’

‘You’re my God, aren’t you?’

‘No. If I were, I’d make all your wishes come true.’

‘Then write a new story in which they come true.’

‘I can’t do that, I don’t know what you wish for.’

‘I could make you a list.’

‘Mia,’ he says, putting his hands on mine before I can protest, ‘I’m not a magician, ok? I just write and write when the evenings get long and the loneliness inside me dissolves like… sugar in’—he points to my cup—‘your coffee. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s peace and quiet inside my head when I write about you, and I like it. That’s all I wanted to do, write some more. I never had any intention of… breathing life into you. I should have known that everything we create is real indeed.’

I can’t help but laugh at his stupid, stupid words, then yawn, then laugh some more.

‘You’re drunk, my friend.’

‘Not drunk at all. Maybe just mad.’

‘Maybe.’

‘So you’re saying you went to your favourite bar tonight with nothing in mind but to have a few drinks before going home and getting back to writing your novel about me?’

He nods.

‘And then I showed up there, and you couldn’t believe that one of God’s waste of words is walking around like she owned the place. “God damn—or I damn it—I should have made her better-behaved, rebels are only good in books. Who does she think she is? I’ll get her drunk, take her home and tell her all about it, before I get to write it into her”, huh?’

He looks a bit embarrassed.

‘See, I’m curious, how did you know it was me?’

‘It’s funny now that you ask, because I never wrote anything about your looks. But there was this… charisma, I don’t even know how to put it into words…’

‘Said the master of words that can change the world. What’s your name anyway?’

‘My name?’

‘Yes, your name.’

‘My name is M.’

I laugh.

‘All right, all right, M. And what’s my father’s name?’

‘What?’

‘My father. What’s his name?’

‘How should I know? I told you I don’t think about your parents, or what you like to drink, or how you like to dress.’

‘Or the fact that I’m dying to go to Mexico.’

‘Or that.’

‘Or my deepest fears, or my favourite colour, or my birth date. Or?’

‘What are you doing, Mia?’

Suddenly I move closer to him and kiss him on the lips.

He looks terribly confused.

‘You didn’t see that coming, did you? You never wrote a single paragraph about what kind of guys I’m into or whom I want to kiss over my kitchen table at four in the morning. You’ve never written about my dad and you act like you’re not good with details, but you forget that if it weren’t for my parents, I wouldn’t exist. You don’t really know much about me, and you certainly don’t know as much as you claim to. You’re just good with words, and I’m drunk enough to pretend I believe them.’

But his lips curl into a smile as I speak, and soon he’s twirling my hair around his fingers.

‘Then it’s true,’ he whispers. ‘Words do change the world.’

I lean back and roll my eyes.

‘You’re really nothing but a liar.’

‘And an amateur writer.’

‘I don’t know about that, but I’d sure like to read everything you’ve supposedly written about me… no, you know what, forget I said that.’

‘Listen… no, don’t look away, listen to me.’

I do.

I can’t stop listening to him anyway.

‘They say they want to discover me, and I tell them there’s not much to see. In a sense, I’m not lying. You know all those things you always wanted but thought weren’t real? They’re not because you haven’t created them yet. Before they can touch me again, I’ll be gone. You put the pieces together from here,’ he says, stroking my hair and back and finally taking my hands in his. ‘Breathe, Mia.’

For context, he’s just repeated to me my last diary entry word for word. I am indeed shocked as hell.

‘You forgot to breathe, Mia!’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s ok, you do it once in a while. It won’t kill you.’

‘Then how am I going to die?’

‘You’re not going to die, silly,’ he says and lights up a cigarette.

‘I don’t believe that. Burn me!’ I say, looking at the lighter.

He laughs and fortunately doesn’t listen.

‘You don’t die in my stories so far, I mean. I don’t know how or when you’ll die in real life. You’re clearly more than just a character. Burning probably won’t kill you, but it’s better if you don’t try anything just to prove me wrong.’

‘What if you wrote a story where I died? That might kill me…’

‘Maybe. I’m not sure how this goes. But I wouldn’t want that to happen.’

‘… if I am nothing but a product of your imagination.’

‘Hey, I think tonight showed us that you’re as real as you can be.’

I think that if this was real at all, then the moment should remain in history—God physically comforting one of His people. And this is all happening in my apartment. I can’t wait to tell everyone!

‘You can’t tell everyone, you idiot,’ he laughs. ‘No one will believe you.’

I can’t believe this conversation.

‘Maybe I just remind you of your character, and I’m thinking what she’d be thinking, M.’

‘No, you are her.’

I know this all sounds crazy, but as I reach for pen and paper, I have high hopes.

‘Write about me. Let’s go to Mexico!’ I whisper, handing it to him.

‘You know it doesn’t work that way,’ he says. ‘I have to believe in what I’m writing.’

‘So what do you believe in, if not a beautiful life?’

‘Oh, Mia…I am so sorry. If I believed in a beautiful life, I’d never have written a single story.’

‘I created someone in my writings, I created a human being out of paper and vivid imagination. At first I thought I created Mia to hurt myself. To run my fingers through her soul and see what it’s like to be inside a beautiful mind. To contrast and shame me at my worst, to give my favourite character the best of me. Then I realised that Mia is real. Mia is here, she’s accessible. She’s not an unattainable trophy, but my hidden treasure. I didn’t create anyone, because she was inside me all along. And despite everything, watching my imagination unfolding was like watching God at work—the best part of me, giving its very best. Heavenly.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me? I wanted to go somewhere, or at least be prettier or smarter. What is this?’

‘I’m sorry, Mia, but these are the only things I believe in: you and my ability to write. I wasn’t interested in the plot. I just wanted to sketch a person.’

‘Oh my God—and that definitely is not you—to hell with you and your ability to reshape me! You said you’d fix me up in the morning, well, I don’t feel any better. You’re sick, M.’

I’m too tired to kick him out, so I’ll just rely on his ability to read me.

And that probably works. A few seconds later, he stands up.

‘Mia, I’m going to get myself killed.’

‘No, you won’t,’ I say. ‘God, I’m so stupid—and so are you!’

But when he slams the door behind him moments later… you know what I do? Yeah, it’s not too hard to guess. I really must be the simplest character ever written. I get up and run after him.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I yell.

He’s already all the way down, but I can still see him.

‘I told you, I’m going to jump in front of a car or something!’ he laughs.

‘That’s immensely stupid, why would you do that? And what about me?’

I know I wouldn’t be able to stop him if he was actually serious.

‘I want to see if our next date is in heaven or hell!’

‘But I don’t want to die yet!’

‘Then don’t!’

☾

When I can no longer hear him, I go inside. It’s five in the morning and I’m wide awake as I stretch and curl up under my covers, still feeling the taste of alcohol on my lips. I’m alive, I tell myself over and over again, but I’m afraid to fall asleep. I know I’m going to have another one of those nightmares, and this time it’ll be ink pouring out of me, not blood.

Eventually, I put on a coat and go outside. I’m cold and tired, and I expect an ambulance to arrive at any moment. I walk for what feels like hours until I give up and slide down a brick wall, back pressed against it, head in my hands. No one is awake—or alive, as the man with whom I spent the strangest night of my life put it.

Just wait until you tell everyone you met your own personal Jesus, I think and start to laugh. But then I hear that familiar voice, and I just can’t believe this is happening again.

‘Up here, Mia!’

‘Hi God, what a miracle!’ I shout back without looking back, a chill running down my spine.

‘Come up, it’s cold!’

‘I would, I just don’t know where the elevator to the ninth cloud is!’

‘Have you tried inside the building?’

When Voltaire said God was a comedian, he must have met someone like this the night before.

I turn around and see M looking out the third floor window at me.

‘I’m coming, you hear that, you crazy god, I’m coming to read from your book of secrets!’

Someone pulls the curtains closed and I see a woman’s face behind another window.

‘Hey, who’s that?’ I ask, pointing at her.

‘That’s Chloe.’

‘Did you make her up too?’

‘Just get up here!’

‘Hey Chloe, it turns out you weren’t good enough for him! Apparently I’m the girl of your artsy neighbour’s dreams!’

The front door opens before I need to buzz and I find myself inside the building. An old man on his way out looks me up and down, slightly confused.

‘What, have you never seen a character go off script?’ I ask, running all the way up to Heaven’s Gate.

☾

‘Are you crazy?’ he asks and pulls me in, looking terrified. ‘You’re waking everyone up.’

‘You tell me if I’m crazy! And don’t worry about the neighbours, they don’t exist, remember?’

I laugh in his face until he cracks a smile too. He must know it’s not really him I’m laughing at, but rather his so-called creation.

‘There you go, God, life is beautiful—or are we not there yet?’

‘No, no,’ he says. ‘This isn’t a two-way street.’

‘Tell me about it. I can hardly make you laugh, when you wrote my way to your place. Life really is stranger than fiction, and your fiction must be the strangest there is.’

‘Listen, Mia, I didn’t write anything about you coming here.’

He sits down on a green velvet sofa. I look around. His flat is messy, but well-organised.

I reach for the pack of cigarettes he keeps on the coffee table, take one out and make myself comfortable —on the floor. He hands me an ashtray and I suddenly feel a little dizzy again.

‘So how did I get here?’

‘I’m not sure, but I’m not surprised either. But take a look,’ he says, pointing to his laptop. ‘Read this. I just wrote that when I came in.’

‘Weren’t you going to die or something?’ I mumble.

‘Not like that, obviously.’

‘Not like what?’

‘Not the way I said I would. Read.’

I read. It’s a short paragraph about a girl very much like me, things I said and things I didn’t say. She speaks, seemingly alone, until she feels some kind of external force dissolve within her, and she knows she’s accomplished what she set out to accomplish in the first place. She feels whole, and when she looks around, she’s alone. She seems content with that, unlike me.

I stop reading and tell him that my head is spinning.

‘That’s normal, you’re hungover.’

‘You think I’m the thoughts of a mad man on a blog, that’s what you think I am.’

‘I think you’re a living, breathing, beautiful girl, Mia,’ he says from across the room this time. ‘I just happen to know you very well. But I don’t know everything. Just the… most important?’

I rest my chin on my knees and stare at him for a while.

‘You don’t believe that yourself. You’re out of your mind.’

‘I don’t really believe in much anyway.’

My God is an atheist. Oh, the irony.

‘You’re a coward,’ I say. ‘You’d never kill yourself.’

He smiles at me.

‘No, but I don’t want to kill myself either. Didn’t you realise I was joking?’

‘I can’t tell if you’re joking, no. I can’t tell if this is all a joke to you or not, and believe me, I’ve been trying all night.’

‘But Mia, can’t you see that I’ve done it in a way that’s not the way you thought it would be?’

‘No. You wrote a stupid story about freeing the girl. What’s the big deal?’

He looks upset, as if his character doesn’t understand her own lines, which probably makes him a bad writer. I laugh to myself, because I realise how involved I’m at this moment.

‘You fight life with words, and now it seems that your own words are fighting back against you. You say I’m not very brave, but neither are you. You’re just a scared boy who wants to play God and has just met Lucifer.’

‘You’re not the devil, Mia. That’s way off.’

‘Do you even hear yourself?’

‘I told you this—no, I wrote this to you when we were in your kitchen. You’re the part of me I wanted to save, so I wrote about you. I just didn’t think you’d… you know… exist. Or that I’d ever run into you.’

‘This is too much for one night,’ I cry, the headache growing stronger. ‘Do you ever wait until the second date?’

A few minutes later, he shows me to sit next to him on the sofa. I go. Maybe because I feel like I’m in a good movie, and I’m never in a good movie, I just need to figure it all out.

‘So you wrote about a fantastic girl because you still believe in making homes out of humans. Am I your safe haven, the best thing you have to make up for your lost faith?’

‘You are, in a way,’ he admits.

‘I guess I turned out to be pretty flawed, considering our first night together.’

‘You weren’t supposed to be perfect, just raw and real and beautiful. I’ve been watching you all night, you make me proud.’

‘Thanks, I guess. God, this is awkward.’

‘M for you,’ he laughs.

‘Sorry, you’re not funny.’

‘I know, I know, I’m sorry.’

I look at him, then look away. I know he’s trying not to laugh at me.

I try not to laugh with him. I notice how nervous he still is.

‘I wrote the ending, and I want you to finish reading it. Then I’ll be done as a writer—as far as you’re concerned, anyway—and you’ll be free as a bird,’ he says, showing me the laptop again. ‘Tell me what you think.’

I give in. I take the laptop to my knees and start scrolling up and down, trying to convince myself that there’s a story after all. My name shows up in most of the paragraphs. I feel his gaze and then his breath on my shoulder. There’s a final paragraph at the end that I hadn’t seen the first time.

‘Interesting. You made everything disappear forever, but left me alive. Now I see what you mean. You’d be the perfect boyfriend.’

He ignores that.

‘Aren’t all geniuses crazy?’ he laughs. ‘Ah, enough of this fake, imaginary immortality I’ve gotten myself by playing God. I don’t think I’ll ever create another character. I can write, like, descriptive prose? Invent a world or two? Plant a tree where there wasn’t one, but I thought there should be?’

I want to laugh right now, but I can’t.

‘Do you want breakfast?’

I quickly do the math. I’ll never find another guy who goes to clubs, reads my mind, and writes like a god. And on top of that, he can cook an egg.

And I’m starving.

And totally curious about the egg thing.

‘Sure.’

He goes into the kitchen and I go over the text again.

☾

‘M?’

‘Yes?’

I stand at the kitchen door.

He looks so good. Too bad about the distorted reality.

‘When did you really write this?’

He thinks about it for a moment.

‘It must’ve been five or six in the morning, right?’

‘I think so. I don’t know what you usually eat for breakfast.’

‘I got here later than that. How did I still find your house?’

He looks at me, puzzled, his smile fading.

‘I don’t have all the answers, Mia. But we must be connected somehow.’

He tells me the coffee is ready as he brings the laptop into the kitchen. I ask him what’s going on, and he mumbles something about figuring something out. I roll my eyes.

After quickly typing something, he flips the laptop closed and comes next to me. As soon as he touches me, electricity flows through my body, wild and intense. I must admit to myself what a nice feeling holding his hand is.

‘If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?’

Then, before I can say anything, he kisses me. He’s a good kisser, too. I can’t believe that’s exactly what’s going through my mind right now, but hey.

My body is suddenly pumping energy and joy into every cell of mine. Happy, yeah, I guess I am most of the time. But it tends to be plain, ordinary happiness—here’s a cookie, chew on it and shut up. This time it’s a little different.

‘Nowhere,’ I say, amused. ‘Why? Here’s good.’

I’m not ready to wake up from this and sigh back to reality. I want to see us together a little longer. At the end, or should I say, the beginning of the day, we belong next to whoever makes us happy.

‘How about Mexico?’

‘Mexico? No.’

‘No?’

What’s he on about? I go to his laptop, and only one sentence appears on the screen:

‘If I am right, then she falls in love with me. And stops swearing, at least for a while.’

I can see him out of the corner of my eye, smiling and going back to his cooking. Oh, I could be so happy here, if only he would not pretend to have fallen from the sky.

I go to the window. There isn’t a single person out there, driving to work or walking their dog. The world seems empty of all the details that make it come alive. Part of me begins to wonder how the neighbours got here, but his voice interrupts my train of thought.

‘Do you like spicy food?’

Suddenly, I feel the urge to pray to God, but I remind myself that maybe, just maybe, he’s standing next to me and might know what I’m doing.

‘What about you?’ I ask back.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I guess the girl of your dreams likes spicy too.’

He laughs and I take a deep, deep breath.

‘You are crazy, M,’ I say in a thin, shaky voice.

He’s probably tired of answering with another yes, no, maybe to the same remark.

I hate spicy food, but I’m curious to see if I’ll love it in the next minute or so.

‘I am too,’ he says. ‘I am too, Mia.’

Great.