slumber talk

PROLOGUE

The bed was warm. When you were awake in the middle of the night like this, on the cusp of a winter that had well and truly shot the sun out of the sky, that was something to be grateful for. Jeremy slept peacefully, his face turned away from the light of the moon that watched us over the distant canopy of Suddington Forest, lips open on his soft baby snores and hair falling across his slumbering face.

I wanted to push it back. But I was scared if I moved, even jolted the slightest bit, I'd wake him up. And right now I was spying on him.

Jeremy and I couldn't have been more poles apart if I had asked for him to be. He was quiet, and dreamy, in a way that reminded you of most Armani posterboys. He had blue eyes and blond hair, muscles he neglected in a way attractive people can afford to, and a devastating smile. His face took your breath away even when it wasn't alive, this moment being a perfect example. Whereas I, I could only dream of embodying Jeremy's level of grace; I had my dad's shoulders and my mother's height, boobs I never learned how to handle and a foot size that rivalled most military wear. I was devastating. Jeremy galloped like a buck through a meadow and I tended to tramp after him like a stumpy little rhino on stilts.

It didn't really bother me before moving to Suddington, and it didn't bother me much now. Moments where I felt gawky and spectacle-like and completely out of place were round the clock in my life, but Jeremy had always seemed to accept me, and so wholly so, that I never had much room to feel the disconnect. Sometimes I'd look down on our intertwined hands and wonder if I was the most exotic thing he'd experience in this strange and sleepy suburban town. But it never went much further than that. Curious conjecture.

Carefully rustling backwards a little, I adjusted the satin pillowcase I'd hand-fashioned to wrap up my short, dry curls and settled back into sniper mode. Was it weird that I didn't feel like a freak for doing this? Jeremy might find it cute. Besides I didn't know how else to get to the bottom of this – if Jeremy and I didn't have any problems, how else was I supposed to figure out if this was worth freaking out over?

The sputter and roar of a motorcycle round the back of the apartment block shifted Jeremy in his slumber, a furrow in his brows ironing a single mar into his beautiful face. I wanted to punch that fucking motorcyclist.

Jeremy's decision to move out of Suddington had always baffled me – especially when his family, friends, his entire existence, really, was centred there. He'd picked a flat in Adshaw, of all places which yeah, I guess was nice and close to everything he was leaving behind considering it was only one town over, but it was also the capital of crime for all of England's South West. His mum had a fully excusable fit when he'd tried to explain it to her, but somehow he'd managed to evade the brunt of the guilt treatment.

I understood it slightly more each time I came over. His apartment was huge and sleek and modern, with all the urban finishings a doted-on, domesticated boy required to make a good go of his independence, there was enough room for him to kick his shoes and jackets all over the place without presenting it as messy, and those floor-to-ceiling windows you only saw in the movies. From here the view you got of the forest and the lake was moody and scenic, instead of an overbearing drab that looked and felt like all the people in town.

In the 5 months since the move, I'd only stayed the night a handful of times. The apartment was so far away from work and any of the in-service bus routes that making the journey to and from his high-rise oasis could be more of a trek than a retreat. I still didn't have a car, despite my futile attempts at saving, and every time Jeremy offered to buy me one it only served to piss me off. Our poles apart could be interpreted in more ways than one.

Lying there in his bed, watching Jeremy continue to slumber, I thought about the phone conversation I'd had with my sister on Wednesday. We had been sorting out arrangements for her to come down next weekend and somewhere between her booking coach and train tickets and me dicing an onion we'd ended up discussing me and Jeremy. Tiffs and I could get sucked into hours of conversation whenever we picked up the phone, so the tangent hadn't surprised me any – but the angle she'd broached had been abrupt, and unexpected.

"Most of the guys you've dated before have been mugs, 'dee." My sister drew on this point a lot when talking to me, mainly because she was concerned I'd forget about this if she didn't bring it up enough. "Probably more a product of growing up in bloody Norfolk than anything else, you know, but still – it is a pattern. Jeremy's a really good guy, but do you think you guys would be together if he hadn't asked you out?"

"What is that supposed to even mean?" I'd asked confusedly. "That's how going out works, Tiffs – someone asks you out, or you ask them out, you see how it goes, and then –"

"– yes, yes, I know how going out works," she'd grumbled. Tiffs had always been the more sociable of us two growing up, but somehow, the girl had never found herself a boyfriend. "That's not what I'm asking. Jeremy, well – he's so different to the others, isn't he? And I'm glad for that, BELIEVE me, I am, you need someone who shows you your worth and he does treat you like you deserve to be."

"I honestly have no idea why you're asking me this," I told her, "or what point you're trying to make here. Sure, I had reservations at the start, Tiffs, but there's so much you can't decide when you barely know somebody. And we're here now."

"I'm not trying to throw shade on your relationship, 'dee. I know it sounds like it, and I swear to you I'm not. But you don't think about a lot of this stuff, and I, to my unfortunate detriment, do. You're so good at rolling with the punches and making things up on the fly that sometimes you don't let yourself make the distinction between whether you're better than you were or whether you're actually happy. And it's important to me that you are. Happy, I mean."

I thought about this for a second. A couple of seconds, to be truthful. It took the oil spitting back at me from my mother's pan for me to register I should probably have something to say back to this.

"Well, I love him." My swabbing of the onions in the pan was accompanied by a vacuous mental whirlpool. "I'm sure that's good enough for you."

It was the first time I'd said those words. Ever. To Tiffs no less. After several moments of terrified, overthinking silence we both decided I should say the words to Jeremy at some point, but I had yet to find the courage.

Exhaling exasperatedly, I forgot the purpose of my operation and tugged one of the overlying blankets closer to me, knocking my foot against Jeremy's and brushing my toe against his sole. The shock of it struck me like electricity, and Jeremy shuddered in his quilt.

"shhh ..."

My eyes locked onto him and I waited, frozen. Nothing else came. Jeremy fell back into his impenetrable comfort like nothing else could disturb him.

I felt a frown transform my face. That was it? That was what I was worried about? My boyfriend telling me nicely to shut up so he could wait out the hours 'til morning without me continually jostling him in his sleep?

A final, sagging sigh erupted from my airways, and I settled back into the covers. Readjusting my headwrap I snuggled into Jeremy's warmth and felt him inch slightly closer, moaning, softly.

"Trishhaaa ..."

My heart clenched in its chest.