“Do you think there will come a time when we’ll end up like them?” she asks.

Pulling on Hachikō’s lead as he pines to move ahead, I slyly suck on my smoke.

“No. We’re stronger than that. Even when we’re at our lowest, the light we keep will never extinguish as it did for them.”

“But what if things change? What if we lose the light—what if it blows out when we’re least expecting it?”

Squinting my eyes against a dizzy mix of sepia sun and smoke, I let the cigarette linger upon my cracked lips.

“If there comes a time when we no longer resemble the people we once were, and the principles we live by are left on the cutting room floor, at least we shall have each other.”

“You can’t be sure of that, though, can you?”

“Yes, I can.”

“How so?” she asks, eyeing me with a look of wonder.

“No matter how far apart we may one day grow, we are bound to each other like the ocean is to the shore. We could be a million miles apart, and yet I will still be able to feel the beat of your heart as if it were beating against my own. No one can take that away from me. They can grind me down into dust. They can put a bullet in my brain and obliterate every inch of the man I am, and yet my love for you is forever.”

“Do you promise?”

“It’s the only thing I can promise, that, and that one day we shall dance among the stars just as we did before we were born.”

Studying my features as a lorry rolls past kicking up a shit load of dust, she squints the same as me while those across the road watch with envy.

“I can’t imagine you dancing,” she smirks.

“It happens,” I say, “but not often.”

“Well, I suppose that’s one reason to keep sticking around.”

Holding her against me, I rest my chin atop of her head.

“There’s nothing poetic about me thrashing around on the dancefloor, but the sense of release never leaves. It’s like the memory of our first kiss.”

“Go on,” she says.

Breathing onto my neck, she kisses my skin as Hachikō snaps at a butterfly circling his head. Circling higher to avoid the dog’s searching mouth, it flaps its wings with a sense of style and grace quite out of place with our surroundings. Such a simple act, and yet sometimes it’s the simple acts in life that are the most beautiful. What’s just as beautiful, are the coy souls who notice them.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US