'How soon can you be here?'
'It's midnight. An hour.'
'Please come.'

She went.

She drove through streets illuminated by sodium glow, along tarmac still emanating the intense heat of the day.

The back door was unlocked. She let herself in, dropped the latch, and climbed the stairs. His bedroom door was ajar. The fan was whirring gently, sending intermittent shuffles of marginally cooler air across the room, trying to cut through the sultry night. The sun had been down a few hours now. The air temperature had dropped, just a little. She opened the windows wider.

He was lying on his back; the sheets beneath him were ruffled and his top sheet had slithered to the floor, indicating his fractious sleep. She replaced the top sheet before slipping out of her dress and sliding into bed next to him. The movement roused him and he began to murmur. He rolled onto his side and enveloped her with an arm and a leg. He whispered into her ear: 'Hello, You.'

'Hi.'

The first kiss was tender, delicate, almost as if they didn't mean it. Almost as if they didn't know if they should. Almost, but only for a moment.

He woke alone. There was the faintest depression in the pillow on her side of the bed and the mildest scent of her, so subtle that if you didn't know it was her, you would not have noticed it. Otherwise, there was nothing to indicate that anyone else had been there. No aberrant strands of hair. No misplaced earrings. No randomly strewn underwear. It might've been a dream, cloaked in misty blue sleep. Yet there was an ethereal memory of her touch woven through his thoughts, a silver skein drawing him back to her fingers tracing over his back, her legs wrapped around him, her skin against his.

He opened his laptop. Written on the wallpaper, purple toning on lilac, were the words: 'No, you didn't dream it.' He drew a sharp breath, and then smiled.

He thought of her tiny flat, where she probably wouldn't be now. Her tiny flat, utterly dominated by a poster emblazoned with her motto.

Discreet, until they rock your world.



Thank you.