The Invisible Body by Jenny Cutts

Author:Jenny Cutts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stopped Clock Press
Published: 2021-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

The next day feels unreal to Zoya, as if waking life is the dream.

She drifted through the motions of breakfast, errands, conversations, not altogether present, as if there and not there at the same time. She found herself at work in the café. Everything’s the same. Everything’s different.

She serves meals, clears tables, talks to regulars. And all along, playing and replaying the memory of last night.

When not daydreaming, she watches people, looking out for that one, tall figure, wondering where he might be right now. His shiny blue camper van is still there, parked by the promenade, but where is he?

The day wears on. Customers come and go. Eventually, the certainty of it all evaporates, the way dreams fade from waking memory, like cool mists warmed by the sea.

Then, she sees Reed walking towards the café and a bolt of excitement prickles her skin. Without thinking, she dashes outside, bumping into his body; surprising herself and unbalancing him.

They grasp hands to steady themselves and to lock eyes and to feel the physical reality of one another; right here, in the waking world. They whirl around and away from the doorway – an arm around a waist, a hand on a shoulder, tangoing footsteps, a scramble of interlocking limbs. Two people, one delirious motion. Tangled together, they settle in an embrace by the back wall; secretive whispers; infectious laughter; small, quick kisses.

They are talking over one another.

‘So, it isn’t a dream?’

‘You disappeared! No, it’s real.’

‘I just woke up at home in bed. It really happened?’

‘Yes, that’s how it goes. So, you remember everything?’

‘I remember it all. It all really happened?’

‘Yes!’

They are resting against the wall, bodies folded into one another, eye inches from eye; gentle, instinctive kisses to test that the other is real. He exists and she exists, and they are really, absolutely, here.

She puts a hand up to feel the softness of his hair and they giggle at the preposterousness of their secret, shared experience and the very randomness of being alive in the world, and together. They are standing so close he can see his own face reflected in her shining, deep brown eyes. Here they are, two very different people, sharing the same feeling: where do I end and you begin?

‘And I thought today would feel like the comedown,’ Reed jokes.

She likes his bashful expression in extreme close-up.

‘I know! It must look like we’re high.’

They laugh and drag their gaze from one another. They seem to be alone.

They find themselves leaning on the back wall of the café, standing in the empty car park, a few metres from the grubby bins. There is nobody on the promenade.

‘So, it’s real. You physically exist,’ Zoya reiterates, kissing his mouth to check.

‘And so do you,’ he replies, stooping to bury his face in her corkscrewing hair.

He brings his nose to her neck, inhaling. Zoya looks at the view in front of her; everything different, everything the same.

‘We really have been hanging out in our dreams,’ she murmurs, getting it straight in her head.

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