Champagne Problems 「︎Corpse Husband + Dream」︎

thirty

can we start this the way we were meant to
c h a m p a g n e p r o b l e m s

It was no surprise to her when she woke up that next morning to a message that repeated in her head like, "I'll be there in a couple hours." And she rolled out of the bed that felt so foreign yet so comforting in the most painful way. It was six am, and Lilith was worried that he didn't sleep. Considering his rush of words and lack of call or orchestrated plans, she wondered how much convincing it took him for Sapnap to allow him out of the house sleep deprived and drunk on love that was so impossibly difficult to obtain.

Clay
4:55am

leaving now, ill be there in a
few hours x

Lilith washed the airport and tension off her skin—although it has long past saturated into her muscles and bones—and lightly cleaned the stuffiness of the house out. It felt as empty as she was; she hadn't been there residing in it for a few weeks. She wondered when something resided in her last. And she thought of him. Them. She flinched the feelings away.

It happened so fast that she forgot to come up for air, so as she sat on her steaming shower floor she sobbed and sobbed until she allowed herself to feel every stabbing wound of feeling something for once. She felt things all the time, but in protection over her sensitive heart, she brushed every caring word and touch off like it wasn't a big deal. It's not a big deal to anyone else but the end of the world to me.

It was always a big deal to her.

She saw it when it took physical intervention for them to look away from each other. By the time she was clothed and poured weak cold brew from the French press she prepared late the night before, her phone rang incessantly on the island. She picked it up as she took a long sip from her coffee; she didn't have to check the ID.

"I was stopping for breakfast, what did you want?"

"Anything sweet."

"Thought you'd be tired of sweetness after the week we had." Lilith's face fell. The week; the one that was already so far down in her memory that she wondered if it was simply a long-winded dream or not. The bruises on her thighs and across her chest and ribs begged the differ. Her eyes lingered on the suspicious bottle of adult cream that she poured in her coffee. She made a mental note to put it back before he arrived.

"Don't think it was as sweet as you remember it."

"I was hoping you thought a little better of me—all of us—than I did."

"That's not what I meant." Dream didn't reply to her.

"I—"

"Just save it," she sighed and she curled up on the sofa and turned on the latest show on Netflix she binged before she left. "We have—We have all the time in the world once you get here."

"Alright."

Lilith didn't anticipate him walking through her apartment door with the gourmet donuts she had craved since November. Fire spread though her arms when she realized how he remembered; she hadn't mentioned her craving since then. On her feet, the flooring was cold and cooled her anticipation down to a tolerable degree; a degree at which she could easily touch him. As he placed the plastic to-go bag on the island and simultaneously dropped a new bag to his feet—he didn't plan on leaving today—Lilith walked into the kitchen and subtly put the liquor bottle back in the cabinet like she forgot to.

She turned to him as he turned around the island to enter the kitchen. Their eyes lingered on one another for far too long. An entire story separated them; like they both watched a movie and couldn't quite come back down to reality.