Idlebones

Next Door Part 2

Later, Jessie and I drink frothy cappuccinos in the nearby coffee shop, both absorbed in our latest purchases from the St Vincent De Paul charity book store. I scan the back of my novel, as Jessica reads the first few paragraphs of her latest prison diary book. She has a thing about crime and punishment. Survival in harshest regimes that I kid her about. I tell her constantly that I’m convinced she’s researching ways to do away with me and plant me under a patio as she flips the page in her latest death row biography. It’s a subject Scott never likes to engage in, as we sit watching the football while Jessie works nights, for some reason. I think I just bore him with my talk of Jessica.

We both enjoy our books. Perfectly capable of sitting together, her head in my shoulder, as we read our seperate tomes, a gentle nudge or a squeeze reminding each other that were still there. Before she goes to work, we cuddle in our beanbag, in our spare room, silently engrossed in our books, listening to Nick Drake’s Cello song in the backround. Sometimes this leads to more. Moreoften, we just dissapear into each other, inseperable, and enjoying the silence that entwines two people who have become as much a part of each other as our own seperate limbs.

We fold into the beanbag beneath us.

She leaves for work at 9, leaving a warm empty indent in the beanbag beside me.