Staying In

“I like it balmy” She had said “With an L not an R”

So they lay there sweating, the heating on high, sun outside, still heavy air. Pretending it was a New York summer instead of a London spring. Him naked, her semi-nakedness made somehow more blatant by the open dressing gown. He lay on his back with his head on her belly, drifting in and out of sleep as the percussive music wove together his conscious and unconscious thoughts.

Suddenly, gripped by the fear that he may have been talking in his sleep he forces his eyes open and turns his head to see her wake from parallel dreams.

Soft belly fat, muscles underneath. Her ribs by one ear her pelvis by the other. That subterranean thump of this girl’s heart sounding from somewhere deep inside.