Surrounded by leaves, the branches of the trees reach down and disturb my hair. I hate them for it, and yet at every opportunity, I kiss their bark as if I were kissing her. Closing my eyes, I see her mouth; her lips are as sugary as donuts. The expensive ones. Krispy Kremes. On her knees, she fingers twigs and giggles like a kid, and even though she’s not as young as she was when I first met her, she’s still the child of my heart. We lie to each other whenever we can. We put cigarettes out on each other’s arms while the other’s sleeping. When we touch noses on the cool side of the pillow, such dreams as these are as potent as the night of our first date. It started with a curry, right? I made you laugh so hard you spat out your chicken korma. “No, it was over starters,” she pipes. Scratching my head, the memory blurs like sandcastles on a beach being dragged out to sea. “Are you sure?” I blurt, like a drunk searching his memory, and finding no one home. “Of course, I’m sure,” she sneers, “you had tomato soup with bread rolls, and I had macaroni.” She says this with a defiant nod of the head. “But then we stood outside smoking in the shelter of an underpass, right?” “Right. You leaned into me, and I kissed your forehead. I wanted to kiss your lips, but I kept that back so I had something to look forward to next time we met.”

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