The Line

Fiction

I couldn't speak so I slurred while I looked for a word but, you left just before I could find it - The Japanese House, Face Like Thunder 

I wake up to the sound of the city. The city I found myself in all those years ago. The sounds are familiar, I can almost call them home, but, I'm not naive enough to think of home as just one place anymore.

I blink in the illuminated darkness and release a deep breath I didn't realise I was holding. A weight has been lifted off of my shoulders, for the first time in a long time I feel at ease. I remember the presence of someone else next to me and turn to my side in the blinding hopes of finding him there. Panic erupts in my core as my fingertips brush the empty sheets where he should be.

I sit up, my eyes quickly adjusting to the pseudo-dark, and look around the room. Everything is still here, none of this was a dream. A bout of irrational relief flows through me. He is real after all.

Getting up from the bed, my feet touch the soft white carpet, my arms all too aware of the slight spring chill coming from the open balcony door. The silk curtains move like autumn leaves in a breeze, parting enough so that I can see a figure stood out there. Behind him the dotted lights of tall buildings and the blinking ones of the planes passing through above. A view I used to die for.

The strength of the urge to go to him is unfathomable. Like my internal organs want nothing more than to fuse with his. To beat alongside his.

Stepping out onto the cool wooden floor I'm greeted by the warm, savoury smell of pollution, dulled down by the cool air coming from downriver.

He leans on the railing much like he does at home. His shoulder blades visible through the white t-shirt, arms defined, shadows trailing down him in all the right places. Making him look like one of the purest figments of my imagination.