Page 104 of Her Sloth

The kiss gets heated.

My hand wanders under her shirt⁠—

And then she stops.

I remove my hand immediately, pull back.

I went too far⁠—

I didn’t think⁠—

“There is something I need to show you first,” she says, in a tone that flushes all heat out of me.

“Show me?”

“Yeah,” she says, looks at her phone, and adds, “Let’s have breakfast dinner and then I will.”

“Ooookay,” I say, unconvinced.

She kisses me on my forehead and then gets up and into the bathroom. Meanwhile, I stare outside the huge window into nature. The sun is setting down again already.

I slept an entire day. In the nature of nothingness.

Being used to New York, the concrete jungle with just a park here and there, this is something entirely off. The air is too clean; there are birds chirping, and otherwise just so much silence. It’s so quiet that my own mind plays tricks on me.

I have thoughts.

So many thoughts I can hear in my mind.

Thoughts telling me I don’t fit in here.

And yet, I don’t feel entirely out of place.

Everything is just so…different.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asks me, returning from the bathroom.

“Yeah,” I say hesitantly.

“Let me guess, it’s too bright and silent for you,” she says.

I snigger. “Guessed right.”

“It’s thirty minutes, and you’re in the middle of buzz,” she says.

“I’ve been to L.A.,” I say. “But that’s no buzz. That’s a colorful hole of too cheerful people with their visions and dreams locked away in their damn cars.”

“You have humor,” she says and laughs. “But fair enough. Won’t hold you hostage here so you can go back to inhaling lousy air.”

I stick my tongue out at her and get out of bed to get myself ready in the bathroom.

At least she has a normal shower, I think to myself as I get into the bathroom. On a sideboard next to it, she has placed a towel, everything I need from toothbrush to the exact hair products I use and clothes.

A smile steals its way onto my face, because it’s sweet.

I get out of the bathroom, only to find she’s not there. I walk through the house to look for her—it’s not big. I don’t find her in the kitchen either, so I check out the rest of the house. It has a cute living room that’s half the size of the terrace outside, filled with books about cars, a small statue made from nuts and bolts, a Porsche model in a case⁠—

This really is her.