We wake up next to each other, sprawled out and overlapping like we’re each in bed alone, warm but not too hot. I roll over and your hand’s on my back. It’s eleven already. We kiss and I get up to fix you breakfast: Choco-Shreddies swimming in milk. I bring the bowls up, and cups of tea, on the tray with the oil-painted fruit on it. Your hair’s tousled and you get some chocolate on the corner of your mouth. I wipe it away with my thumb. We stream some cartoons on my PC, like we used to watch when we were kids, our knees bent up together like mountains under the duvet. Then we get dressed. You straighten your hair like you like it, even though I prefer your bed-hair. While you’re doing that I take the tray back down and go clean my teeth. When I come back I smooth out the duvet and we’re ready to leave.

I lock the door behind us, noticing as I hold back the handle so it shuts properly, that cracks of naked wood are beginning to show through the faded blue paint. I think maybe I’ll paint it tomorrow. We start walking towards town. The sky’s overcast and the air’s cold. You’re wrapped up in the red-brown scarf and hat and gloves I bought you last Christmas, and your black coat, but you still walk close by me for warmth, and squeeze my arm when a sharp breeze cuts across us and makes the leaves pitter-patter along the pavement.

We pass all the lifeless houses that huddle together in uniform rows, where people who aren’t us live, and reach town a while later. It’s not too busy for a Saturday because we’re not up to the holiday shopping season yet, so we can walk hand-in-hand without being jostled by the bustling people. We take our time. Sometimes we stop and look in shop windows. “Oh, I think your dad might like that when it gets around to Christmas,” you might say, pointing to something in one of the windows. I realise you’re right and say we might come back this way and get it later. We move on.

When you pass a clothes shop, you want to go in. I come in with you and stand there as you pick out clothes. If you hold something up against yourself and ask how it looks, I tell you it looks good, or it suits you, or maybe it’s not so great, but what about this one? When you hold it up in front of a mirror I stand behind you and my reflection kisses the neck of your reflection, even if anyone is looking. Then, if you say that you like it but it’s too expensive, I’ll offer to pay for it, just because.

After that we pass a videogame shop. When I drag you in there you don’t complain, and you try to act enthusiastic as I pick something off the shelf. Maybe, since I bought you that dress, you offer to buy it for me, but I refuse of course; we really ought to save some money. We leave the game shop and I’m only carrying the white paper bag with your dress in.

Later on we’re getting hungry, so we drop into one of those coffee houses in the mall. You like those places because they do coffee just how you like and there’s a nice atmosphere. We order sandwiches and I have tea and you have coffee. I don’t point out how overpriced everything is, and when the waitress puts our sandwiches and our drinks down on the table, I don’t stare at her ass in those tight black trousers as she walks away. And you don’t stare at your coffee while swirling the milk-froth around and around with your spoon. Instead, we talk about something: we passed a travel agent’s earlier, and you say how nice it would be to go on holiday sometime, maybe before Christmas so we could escape the bad weather and the cold for at least a week. I feel bad because I can’t afford it, but I suggest that maybe we could go for a walk in the park tomorrow, or we could go out somewhere else, I don’t know where. Then I remember that I’d told myself to repaint the door. I’ll get up early, I think, and do that in the morning, then we could do something together in the afternoon.

We finish our sandwiches and order another couple of drinks and sit there a while longer, too comfortable to move as we watch the people go by on the other side of the window. But the afternoon’s getting on, so eventually, reluctantly, we get up and leave. We take in a few more shops and mess around in a toy shop, putting on pirate hats and cowboy hats and silly masks to amuse each other. Then we start heading back. On the way we pass HMV, so I suggest maybe we find a movie for tonight. We go in and I pick out a DVD that I want, and you pick out a DVD that you want. We can’t decide, but then we see that they’re both ’3 for 2′, so then we look together for another one that we both want. Our fingers flick down the rows and our shoulders brush each other. Eventually we find something and agree on it straight away because it’s perfect. When we get to the checkout, you insist on paying, but I only let you go halves with me.

We walk back to our flat. The rain’s held off until now, but the first cold drops are beginning to fall from the sky as we pass again those blank houses in our neighbourhood. We run the last half-mile to our front door because the rain’s getting harder, then we stand there, our breathing rapid streams of mist that intermingle in the air as I fumble for the keys. I can’t remember which pocket I put them in, and already we’re soaked. But we don’t care, and just as my fingers close around the keys, you grab me and turn me round. The scent of your perfume hangs on the air, brought out by the rain. You press me against the door as you kiss me. I feel your nose cold against my cheek, but your lips and your tongue and your mouth are warm. When you pull back, you wrap your arms around me and hold yourself against my chest, then I unlock the door and we walk in.

We start to strip off our wet clothes, and I go turn on the gas fire and get out the clothes-stand. You disappear and come back in your dressing gown, drying your hair with a towel. The gown’s open and beneath it you’re just wearing your jeans and a bra. You tell me that we forgot to go back and get that thing for my dad. “Oh well,” I say, “we’ll just go get it another time.” You take the jeans off and pass them to me so I can hang them on the clothes-stand to dry. You loosely do up the gown then you come over to me and hug me. We sit down on the sofa together, and I’m just in my boxers, but I’m stealing your body-heat and the fire’s warming the place up. Your hair’s all wavy from the rain. We start to make out and I slide my hand inside your gown and up and down your legs, but not too far up because affection doesn’t always have to mean sex.

The room starts to smell of damp clothes, so I get up to light some incense. You watch me, then you say you want to try on your new dress. You go get the white paper bag from the kitchen and bring it into the living room while I go upstairs to put on some clean jeans and a t-shirt. When I come down your gown lies across one of the armchairs and you’re wearing the dress. Your arms and your legs and your feet are bare. You twirl so the skirt fans out then ask how you look. I tell you you look beautiful, then I sit on the arm of the sofa to watch as you glide around the room, light as a summer breeze. I’m not sat long before you come over and grab my hand and pull me up to dance with you as if there was music playing instead of only the drum of rain against the windows.

When we’re done dancing, panting like cats, laughing like children, you kiss me on the cheek and thank me with a little curtsey. I smile and bow to you, then you go upstairs and change into a faded t-shirt and those soft jeans that are just a millimetre away from wearing through completely. When you return you ask me to come keep you company in the kitchen while you make dinner. I want to play a game for half an hour, but instead I come into the kitchen and help peel and chop the vegetables, standing side by side with you, our knives moving in unison. As we chop, you look out the window and say “it’s really coming down out there.” “Yeah,” I say. We both know we’re glad to be in this warm flat together. Then dinner’s prepared and you put it on to cook. While it’s cooking we go back through to the living room and you curl up beside me on the sofa as I play on my Xbox. I turn it off when dinner’s ready and we switch over to something you want to watch. I don’t say anything and I don’t interrupt, except in the adverts, until it’s finished. I’m not watching it though: I’m looking over at you, thinking how glad I am that it’s you I’m with and not anyone else.

After that we watch something funny and we both laugh at it. Outside gets dark. The incense has burned down and the rain still beats against the window. I get up to draw the curtains, but first look out first through the glass and the rain at the glowing windows of all our neighbours. I momentarily feel sorry for them all because I know none of them are as happy as we are. Then I sit back down with you. You change channels on the TV and we catch the end of the weather forecast: it’s going to dry up tomorrow, might be some sunshine even. Now the room’s getting too warm, so you get up to turn off the fire and say you’re going to take a shower. I say I’ll join you and you smile because it’s a while since we’ve taken a shower together.

We get under the hot stream. First I wash your back, then you wash mine. Your thumbs massage my shoulders as you rub shower gel onto my skin. When we get out we dry each other off with our big beach towels before either of us get cold, then we go to the bedroom and wrap up in the sheets. The air’s cold in here, but we don’t need a fire because we’re making each other warm. We don’t even need lights; candles will do. We kiss. We don’t know what time it is, but it doesn’t matter. I remember that I meant to get up early. I decide to set the alarm on my phone before we go to sleep, and make a mental note of it before I’m swept away in the moment.

Then we’re making proper, fingers-interlocked, love. I kiss your neck and you go crazy and pull me close like you’re trying to crush us together. We finish at the same time and roll onto our sides, facing each other. I stroke your hair back from your cheek. I don’t know how long we lie like this for, but when I roll over to set my alarm, the candle’s halfway burned down. I blow it out and roll back over in the warm blackness. Before we go to sleep you tell me that you love me and you don’t want to leave me, ever. I tell you that I love you too. And we both mean it.

Tags: Fiction, idealistic, intimacy, Longing, Monologue, Relationships

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