NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | updates every monday

45: sea salt

            My gaze returns to hers and I pull my hand away. 'Do you want me to leave?'

The sleep clears from her eyes. Joe wedges her elbow under herself to lift her torso from the bed just so she can ensure I feel the full weight of her shock—annoyance maybe. 'No, I don't want you to leave. It's freezing outside.'

'I just don't wanna assume–'

'I always want you to stay unless I specifically ask you to leave. How about that?' Joe raises her eyebrows, an uncharacteristically firm expression on her face, and I mostly nod because it catches me so off-guard.

Just as I start to relax into the bed, Joe interrupts me. 'Besides, we haven't done your thing.'

'My thing?'

'Yeah,' she shoves my shoulder to keep me awake. 'You have to practice talking about yourself.'

I whine. Turning onto my back, I wrap my arms over my face as if the neon sunset and string of stars on the ceiling have abruptly become as searing as those lights inside energy drink display fridges.

'Can we do it in the morning?' I'm so soothingly sore and sleepy. And ain't her fucking me enough of me receiving attention for a day?

Joe makes a very Caleb-like noise of scepticism. 'You have work in the morning—I'm not waking up for that.'

I smack my arms pin straight to my sides. 'What d'you want me to tell ya then?'

Joe sits up, finding a pillow from the floor to lean against. She takes off her harness as she comes up with a question, finding her orangutan to cuddle in her lap, tapping its fur. Finally, she asks, 'What's your worst fear?'

'What kinda fucking question is that after we've just had sex–?'

'Stop changing the subject, you muppet!'

Vines tug at the base of my skeleton as my euphoria drains into the towel. Of course I knew the answer before the question had time to land. Now, it's an anvil on my chest.

I massage my wrist as I move the words around my mouth, bitter like chunks of lemon peel. The acid makes my face screw up in a way that can't be remotely attractive but I can't smooth, nor can I get my voice any less raw.

'I got arrested once.'

The shift is instant. The orange light becomes, not an aphrodisiac, but an alert. The way it shaves depth from everything it illuminates turns to distressing, not helped by the fact that I'm not wearing my glasses. I suppose this is how Cece feels all the time, like they can't quite see things clearly enough to know whether they're a foot away or three, whether a shadow's solid or bottomless.

'I weren't even doing owt—like, I've done illegal things in my life, smoked loads of bud for one, so if I were caught then, at least it would make sense. But I weren't doing owt.'

Even as I spit each syllable out, the bitterness only gets worse. Until the vines of dread climb high enough in my spine that all I taste is blood.

'I just don't want our kid to go through that. They sure love testing their fucking luck, though. They're always testing their fucking luck and at some point, it's going to break. They don't... They can't not fight. Anyone tries to constrain him and he'll bite— police or not.'

The rest of my explanation plummets into the well in my stomach. I press my forearms over my eyes again, not that it masks my crying given the way my breath rattles.

I've seen Cece when they feel even a little cornered. He don't see owt but the threat and he'll crawl free with no thought for lung or ligament. Makes no difference if it's real. Makes no difference who he faces. There ain't a bone in their body that knows how to cooperate, how to comply. One stop and search and they'll be in prison for the next few months. And that's the best-case scenario.