I yawn and stretch my back before resting my head on your shoulder again. There is something about that perfect light on an autumn morning. The way it falls through the window and makes even the most ordinary things look beautiful. My fingers draw lazy patterns on your chest, tickling you here and there. You catch my hand and pull me closer until we kiss. We have nowhere to be, no obligations to fulfil. Lockdown is still going strong, and we are living in our own little fantasy bubble. You and me. Your hand feels warm against my racing pulse.
You pull away with a grin, and I watch you walk to the bathroom. Naked. No need for clothes. I like how comfortable you are in your own skin. When we first met, you weren’t like that at all. You were shy about the extra kilos you carry, constantly pulling at your shirt or turning away when you changed so that I wouldn’t see. I never cared about any of it. I told you so, but I don’t think you believed me at first. Not until I showed you.
You don’t bother closing the bathroom door all the way, and what used to disgust me in other relationships seems perfectly normal with you. It’s not as if I’m watching. At least not while you’re in there. But I’m not appalled either. Everything flows naturally between us. Nothing to hide. I suppose that’s what happens when two people are unexpectedly confined to the same tiny space for weeks. There isn’t much room for mystery. And no need for pretence.
You wash your hands and return to the bedroom, living room and kitchen. It’s all one small room. You are oblivious to my thoughts. I can’t stop grinning, hoping you’ll come back to bed. But you don’t. Instead, you sit down at the piano, naked as you are. When I first saw your home, I was intrigued that there was no dining table, but there was a piano. Now it all makes sense. I like watching you like this, as if something caught your attention in the bathroom and now demands your time and headspace.
You tie your hair back and bow your head. A lock falls loose, and you tuck it behind your ear. I know it won’t stay there. You know it too. I keep watching you. Your fingers glide over the keys without pressing them. There is no sound. You close your eyes, and I know you’re drifting into your creative space. It’s as if you can hear the song you’re not playing. And I suppose you can. There is music in your veins.
I remember the first time I saw you like this. You were sitting at the piano, completely absorbed in something I couldn’t hear. I asked what you were doing, and you looked at me as if you’d forgotten I was there. You apologised. I laughed. There was nothing to apologise for. By now, I know that look. I know when you’re listening to something inside your head, when a melody is taking shape, when the rest of the world might as well cease to exist. I’ve learned not to interrupt you. Sometimes you come back to me after a few minutes, sometimes after an hour. It doesn’t bother me. I have my own little worlds to disappear into.
I sit up in bed, pulling the sheet over my chest and brushing the creases off my lap. It’s something I’ve seen in countless films. From the nightstand, I grab my journal and pen. They’re always close by, waiting for a moment of inspiration. I haven’t written much since I stepped off the plane and into your life. There is no urgency to write anything of substance, and yet I want to immortalise this moment somehow. I turn the pen between my fingers, staring at the empty page, then looking at you again. When I get the urge to write, I get lost in the words, but when the words don’t come instantly, the page stays blank. We talked about this from different directions, music and words, and always arrived at the same destination.
It’s strange how much has changed in such a short time. Before I came here, we knew each other through messages and occasional calls. We knew what made the other laugh, which songs we liked, what kept us awake at night. Or at least we thought we knew. There are things you don’t learn about someone until you share a room with them. Until you share the same air. The way they breathe when they’re asleep. How they take their coffee. What they look like when they’re annoyed, hungry or simply too tired to be pleasant.
I was supposed to stay for one night and two days. Long enough to find out whether the person behind the screen was anything like the person I’d imagined. Long enough to have a good time, perhaps an awkward moment or two, and then return home with a story to tell and a bag of possibilities to unpack. Instead, the government announced a sudden hard lockdown. The subsequent cancellation of flights turned my visit into four weeks. Four weeks of you and me in a tiny apartment. With a stranger. I tried getting home, but the world was put to sleep by a pandemic. And eventually, I gave up trying.
At first, I was worried. Not about being stuck here, exactly, but about what would happen once the novelty wore off. Two days are easy. You can be charming for two days. You can overlook irritating habits, swallow an impatient remark, pretend you aren’t bothered by something. You can even pretend to be a little more interesting than you really are. Four weeks are different. You have seen me wake up in a foul mood for no particular reason. You’ve heard me talking to myself while looking for something I’ve misplaced. You know that I sometimes start a sentence in the middle of a thought and expect you to understand the rest. You’ve watched me get distracted halfway through doing something, only to remember it much later. You’ve heard me sing both on and off key. You’ve seen me at my least flattering, and yet you laugh. Not at me, but because you find these things amusing. Sometimes you tease me. Sometimes you simply let me be. I don’t have to explain every little thing about myself. I don’t have to make myself easier to understand or more agreeable to be around. You don’t seem to mind that I can be quiet for hours and then suddenly talk your ear off about something that caught my attention. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so comfortable being myself around another person. Or maybe I’ve simply stopped noticing the things I used to worry about.
Of course, we get on each other’s nerves occasionally. You leave things lying around, and I put them in piles without thinking. You complain that you can never find anything afterwards. I complain that there wouldn’t be a problem if this place were just a little bigger, with some space for me. We bicker, laugh, and forget about it. The first time we disagreed, I wondered whether the atmosphere would change. Whether we’d spend the rest of the day avoiding each other in a room where avoiding anyone is practically impossible. I was afraid you would resent me and my presence in your private space. But you made coffee, asked if I wanted some, and carried on as if nothing terrible had happened. Because nothing terrible had happened. Everything was simply amplified by the situation we were trapped in.
I look up from my journal and notice a scratch mark I’ve left on your shoulder. The skin is red, not bleeding, just red. It stands out because you’re so pale and the sunlight catches it. You turn around and look at me. I want to take a photograph of you, to freeze this moment. You’re smirking, and beneath the stubble covering your cheeks and chin, I can see your dimple. Just the one. I like this look on you. Completely relaxed.
I wonder what you see when you look at me. There are days when I forget to wonder. Days when I walk around without worrying about my appearance, when I laugh too loudly or say something ridiculous without immediately regretting it. It doesn’t occur to me until afterwards that I haven’t been thinking about how I might appear to you. I used to be so aware of myself in the presence of others. Now I sometimes forget that you’re watching. And when I remember, it doesn’t bother me for long.
Something has happened between us. Something neither of us expected. You tilt your head to one side, and more strands of hair escape your ponytail. I look you straight in the eyes. Neither of us says anything. We don’t need to.
We haven’t talked much about what comes next. Eventually, the flights will resume. The world will open up again, and I will have to go home. There will be jobs and responsibilities, separate beds and different routines. We’ll have to find out whether what we’ve discovered here can survive outside these four walls. Maybe we’ll go back to talking through screens, telling each other about our days without being part of them. Maybe we’ll gradually have less to say until everything we were here fades to silence. It’s difficult to imagine that now, with you sitting only a few steps away from me.
We have two more weeks to figure it out. But I don’t want to think about it. Not today. Today, the sun is shining through the window, and you’re sitting naked at your piano with your hair falling into your face.
I put my journal and pen aside again. I won’t write. Most of my prose has sprung from sadness and melancholy, and I’m feeling neither right now. I push the sheet away and walk past you towards the kitchenette. You slap my bum, and I squeal. I fill a glass with water, take a sip and return to you, offering you the glass. You take it and set it down on a stack of papers before pulling me against you.
Your head rests against my chest, my chin against the top of your head. I sigh. This feels like home. Not the apartment, not the unfamiliar city outside the window, not even the strange circumstances that have brought us here. You.
I want to laugh at the sentimentality of it all. I feel connected to your soul, and I snort at the thought. A poet’s thought. You raise your head to look at me, and I shake mine. I don’t explain. You don’t ask. We stay like this, in silence. I can feel your breathing against me. I used to hate it when someone breathed on me, but it’s different with you. Somewhere outside, a car passes. The refrigerator hums behind us. Ordinary sounds in an ordinary room, on a morning that should be no different from any other. Yet I know I will remember it.
I don’t know what will happen when I leave. I don’t know whether we’ll ever have another morning quite like this one. But I know that I have spent four weeks being seen in ways I hadn’t expected, and that somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to hide. You never made me feel as though I take up too much space, even here, where there is barely any space to begin with. I look at you, your arms still around me, and wonder whether you will remember this morning the way I will.
The sun keeps bathing us in its warm, perfect light.
Later, when you’re busy with your music again, I reach for my journal. I look at the empty page for a moment, then begin to write.
I used to be a forgotten moment, a never-taken breath. I used to be an afterthought. But now, I am a memory that can never be erased. A dream behind your open eyes. A skipped heartbeat at night.
