1.03am

Are you there, stranger?

I’m here. Just. Maybe. God.

The rain’s stopped. Nearly. I don’t know when. I’m just growing cold atop the covers. The breeze is almost too much, or not nearly enough. I don’t know.

I feel so much, and yet almost nothing at all. My body’s not gone this quiet in months. Like I can hear every sound. The grass outside, dripping. The blood slowly creeping back through my veins. You, breathing who knows how many miles away.

Strange, because I’ve never felt so loud. It’s like my insides are rushing to fill all the empty spaces up. I’m not surprised you can hear me—my heart is shouting in my chest.

Thank you. Thank you.

I don’t know what to say aside from you’re welcome. I don’t even know what you’re thanking me for… An orgasm? I don’t think it’s that. Maybe something too big to explain. That’s how it feels to me, anyway. Though bear in mind, I just came so hard I very nearly died, so there’s a lot of delirium at work.

But thank you, too.

Yes. Too big to explain. Too complicated to process.

Too much for me to talk about. If I do, I might say something ridiculous.

Your ridiculous, lust-addled thoughts are all the poetry I’ll ever want for the rest of my life.

But it’s late, stranger. And my body was so starved for that, it feels as though I’m wandering out into the larger world after years trapped in a cave. Like this screen’s burning my eyes.

But more importantly, I know if I sleep now, I’ll dream about you. If I dream. I hope I do, if you’ll be there. So perhaps it’s time to say goodnight, stranger.

Or rather, goodnight, Maya.

I’ll see you in the morning.

Goodnight, my Malcolm. Don’t worry about whether you’ll dream of me.

I’m already there, with you.

5.19am

Are you there, stranger?

I hope not. I hope you’re sound asleep, dreaming of me or of us, or perhaps not dreaming at all. Maybe just blessed blankness, like a starless night spread out beneath a new moon.

I should be dreaming, too, but I just had to write.

Something amazing’s happened. Something so tiny but so amazing. It’ll probably sound silly to even bother to say… Only no, not to you. You won’t think it’s silly at all.

I did dream of you, by the way. Not the sort of waking fever dreams I’d entertained earlier, not like that.

An odd and innocent dream, about getting up in the morning and finding you in my kitchen. In your shirt, or maybe it was the sweater. It was gray, and it fell to the tops of your thighs. You were at the sink, washing a mug. My mug, the one I always drink from, with its illustration of calla lilies, so faded only the blues are left, and there’s a chip right where your lips want to be. My mom’s old mug.

You were waiting for the kettle to boil. Your hair was down. It was long, darkish brown, wavy. Messy, like you’d just woken up. I think you had bangs. I don’t know what we spoke of, if we did, or even what you looked like aside from your hair and that you smiled, and when you did it made your cheeks so round.

But then the boy woke me with his moans. I think it must have been just after three. I’d have guessed that would’ve been the worst, to be woken from such a pleasant and charming mystery by that call to duty, but you know what? It was fine.

For the first time ever, I felt prepared. I felt rested, bizarrely. Or my body felt at peace, some sweet strain of resignation. Is that the definition of surrender, I wonder?

I went to him as I always do. I propped him up on his bed, pulled him onto my crossed legs, and hugged him tight around the middle. Rocked him and told him it’s okay. It’s only a dream. I’m here. I sang to him. He went still a little quicker than usual, I think, after five songs. Half an album—halfway through Harvest, to be precise.

When he fell slack, I eased him down onto the sheets. He sleeps in the fetal position, curled up tight like a little cashew. I lay next to him, with an arm flopped over his body, and let his warm head tuck up against my neck, under my chin, as he’d only allow in sleep.

I fell asleep, myself.

When I woke up an hour or so later, the amazing thing had happened.

He’d flipped over. Flipped around so the little cashew was curled in toward me, face pressed to my collarbone. I could just feel his breath in the fabric there, like a secret whispered through a wall. And when I craned my neck and peeked between us, I found his tiny hand fisting the front of my sweater.

He’s never held onto me before. I mean, for all I know he turned around because of a stomach cramp. For all I know he was dreaming of his mother, or about clinging to … to who can guess what. But a part of me wants to believe he knew it was me. Smelled me. Needed me.

Is that crazy? I hope not.

I’d have lay there like that forever, but he had another little spell. Not a bad one, just a minute’s soft whimpering, and when he settled next he was facing the other way again, clutching the covers and not me. But that doesn’t matter. I know I didn’t dream it.

Later today, when the sun’s high up and the roads have dried out, I’m going to take him for our first run. Between this teeny miracle and the peace you’ve brought to my body, I’ll be able to run and run and run. No matter that it’s been months and I’ve barely slept.

I’ll run for miles and miles and miles.

And then maybe I’ll fly. Because I can’t remember ever feeling this light before.

8.34am

I’m here, Malcolm—though I did sleep. And I did dream, of us. We were in a park, I think, or maybe just a big field. The sort of place I used to love to go to and just spend hours with some falling-apart book that I probably pinched from a library. There was a lot of long grass, shielding us from view.

Though not just us. I’m pretty sure your boy was there too. Making airplane wings with his arms, like my brother used to do. When I woke up, I was full of this strange sense of peace about it.

And what you described only deepened that feeling. His hand clasping you, how happy it made you, all the progress you’re making with him. The lightness all of it gave you—god, I’m glad for that. A small part of me was worried that it would have been too much, or too little, or that my greed is overwhelming.

But that part is getting smaller.

All the worried parts of me are getting smaller. Or is it that my courage is getting bigger? I thought about standing in your kitchen, and the need to just be there was so great it practically blacked out all other considerations. In fact, I actually put on shoes.

Do you know how long it’s been since I put on shoes?

So long that I couldn’t walk around in them. The best I could manage was a pair of ballerina pumps, and a tentative once around the living room. But after I’d done it I sat down with them still on my feet, and I didn’t once get the urge to take them off. To throw them back in the bottom of the wardrobe and never think about them again.

They’re mine again, now.

And so is the balcony. I went out on it again today, but not just because of you and all the things I’d like to do. Because I wanted to. That glimpse of the world has made me curious for more, so I crept out just after dawn and watched. A guy at his sink across the street, draining his morning cup of coffee. Three girls laughing and golden and gleaming with glitter, stumbling towards home. Someone setting out a sign for a cafe I’ve never been to.

Chocolate soup, it said, and that urge was there again.

To go out there and see what chocolate soup actually is.

God, I want to know what things actually are.

P.S. Yes, I have a fringe. Or bangs, as you say.

2.32pm

Rest easy in the knowledge that the world isn’t passing you by entirely—I have no clue what chocolate soup is, either. And I’m a recovering hipster.

Part of me wants to order you to walk out your door, down the hall, into the elevator, punch a button labeled L, drop down all those floors and march through the lobby, cross the street, and find out.

But another part says no, let’s stay in. I’ll cook us soup. Non-chocolate soup.

I know a few recipes. Caldo verde and slow-cooker split pea and this really amazing African stew that’s made with sweet potatoes and red beans and peanut butter. I know that last one sounds weird, but it’s so fucking good. You squeeze lime juice into it, and it’s like sex in your mouth.

I’ll find us some really good crusty bread from the bakery, and we’ll eat soup like it’s been outlawed for indecency.

I ought to admit I’m not myself just now. I’m feeling weirdly manic, actually. Can you tell?

I went for a run, like I said I would. We got rained on a little, but overall it went great. The boy didn’t make a peep, and we went over six miles. Too far, really, because now I’ve got terrible heel blisters from my new sneakers, and I’ll probably wake up with shin splints, but I couldn’t stop. And I don’t care.

I feel that way still. Like I can’t stop.

I can’t figure out if this is just what feeling good again is like compared to feeling depressed, or if I’ve swung the other way temporarily. If I really have gone a little manic. It feels as though I’ve drunk eight espressos and I want to clean everything. Make everything new.

I feel like how my mom used to get, those times when she had a recurrence. Like I want to clean the whole world.

I remember coming downstairs around midnight when I was about twelve, the night after she’d been to the oncologist and gotten bad news. There was a scary noise coming from the basement, and I found her down there in the laundry room, and there were a dozen tennis balls banging around in the dryer. She’d washed them, and she was waiting there with a lint brush for when they were dry.

“It’s so nice when they’re all fuzzy and bright like new, don’t you think?”

She wasn’t crazy. Not really. I get it now. Whenever she got bad news about her cancer, she wanted to live live live live live live live. Live times a thousand. She wanted to do everything, taste everything, sing every song, make everything fun.

Make our old tennis balls the color of highlighters again.

I think I’m doing that too, a little bit. Only I didn’t get bad news. I’m just feeling alive and awake for the first time in months. I want to run until my feet bleed and polish all the doorknobs.

But more than that, I want to ask about you. May I? You don’t have to answer every question. Pick one or two.

Did I get the rest of your hair right? Is it darkish brown, the color of milk chocolate? Is it wavy?

What color are the shoes? Tell me how they felt on your feet. Every little detail of them.

What was your favorite book—or three—when you were a kid? Ones worth stealing from the library so you never had to give them back? Especially as I suspect you were probably a good girl who normally followed all the rules.

What’s your brother like? Is he older or younger? Did he watch your back when you were kids or put worms down your shirt? Or both? I bet a brother could be a mix of hero and bully.

I hope you’re having a nice day, with a good movie or book lined up for the afternoon.

Do you have Netflix? If so, one of these evenings we’ll have to pick something to watch together. At the same time, I mean, like, we both hit play at exactly ten. Maybe something really terrible, so we could text snarky shit to each other through the whole thing.

Okay, I’m off to polish the doorknobs. Not literally. Also not euphemistically. Probably going to clean the fridge, though. Something in there smells like rancid butt.

Later, Maya-stranger. Bug you once the boy’s gone to bed. Maybe sooner.

3.22pm

Your mom doesn’t sound crazy. She sounds right.

And you sound right too. Vibrant and alive and full of all the best ideas in the world. Elevators and eating stew and staying in and answering questions… They’re all things I never knew I wanted so much and yet I do, I do, I do.

So I’ll start by offering you all the things you want to know.

Yes, you got my hair right. Darkish brown, wavy. Like it’s always left to dry while pressed against a pillow—which it usually has been.

The shoes, the shoes … a deep blue with little bows on. When I started to have some money of my own, they were the first things I bought. And I was so proud of them, so happy to have them. I thought they were the swankiest things in the world. Of course they weren’t at all, and they definitely aren’t now—they’re all scuffed around the edges and worn, like the velveteen rabbit.

But they still felt so good on my feet. Roomy and familiar.

And I was a good girl, oh yes I had to be a good girl for most of my teenage years. It was just that I wanted those books so badly. At night I used to lie there terrified, imagining the police coming to put me in prison for taking them. Yet somehow, even that didn’t scare me enough to not do it. In fact, after a while I started to wonder if it would be better if they did.

All the reading I could have done in my cell.

Because no amount of reading was ever enough. I’m not even sure if I can narrow my favourites down … there were so many I loved. Moondial and Behind the Attic Wall and Neverending Story. All those books about American girls getting murdered and making out and going steady. Ah, they drove me wild with envy.

Even the dead ones.

As for what I’m doing now: I’m totally waiting for you to read my hell yes let’s watch a movie together that is the greatest suggestion anyone has ever made in the history of mankind. And then we can do that as soon as possible, because it’s glorious and magical and right.

All we have to do is decide which one.

8.30pm

Evening, you.

I ate up every detail you shared like … like… Like candy, but I’m trying to figure out which kind.

Some kind that comes in different flavors, and different shapes. So I could turn each one around with my tongue and taste it and feel it and savor it. The only candy coming to mind that meets that description is Runts, though, and Runts aren’t that great. Especially not the banana ones.

Maybe there’s a better, British candy that fits my simile.

I have to say, though, there was a little grain of sand in my candy box. My tooth came down on it, and I flinched, because you said you’d tell me all the things I wanted to know. You left one question out. I don’t know if you did it on purpose, and I’m not in a mood to pry, so I won’t.

I can picture your shoes now. I can half-picture you in them. You’re like a sketchy watercolor drawing with details penciled in here and there. Your hair, your eyes. Your shoes and your hands.

It’s much nicer than if you simply texted me a selfie, some picture posed before a bathroom mirror, phone in hand. I like the mystery of you. The paint-by-numbers.

I never knew The Neverending Story was a book! You must know it’s a movie. I think I watched it about twenty times the summer I turned eight or nine. I got it for my birthday and played it until the VCR chewed it up. I can barely remember anything about it now.

Wait a second…

8.40pm

Guess what’s on Netflix?! Any interest in that? Or is it one of those childhood movies you’d rather not discover is totally terrible to watch once you’re an adult? I rewatched The Wizard a while back and couldn’t believe how bad it was, considering how much I loved it as a kid. It was basically a two-hour ad.

But some kids’ movies stay great, like The Princess Bride and The Iron Giant, and anything involving Jim Henson. So you never know.

Anyhow, I’d be up for it.

8.57pm

Wine gums, you want wine gums. Do you have wine gums in the US? Some are strawberry and some are lime and then there’s this one that doesn’t taste like anything that exists. That one’s my favourite. I call it the white one, even though it isn’t white at all. It’s sort of translucent and kind of yellow, and yes I realise I’m talking way too much about wine gums.

I didn’t intend to. I want to caps lock you to death about Neverending Story instead. Firstly because you watched it until your VCR chewed it up, which is amazing and stupidly made my heart start beating fast like you’d just declared undying devotion. And then secondly because oh my god let’s watch it IMMEDIATELY.

It has to be that. I don’t care if it doesn’t hold up. I just need to watch it with you, as if we are a completely normal couple slouched together on the couch with our snark radars on red alert.

9.13pm

You, me, Neverending Story. It’s a date. Hit play at precisely 10:30? I should be done with my nightly chores by then, and if the boy’s going to wake it almost never happens before 2am.

10.29pm

You ready, stranger?

I’m ready!

PLAY!

Holy shit, I remember this music!

Okay, so I had totally forgotten how crazy amazing this song was.

It’s like the eighties are assaulting me in the face, and I love it.

That’s it. That’s exactly it. My ears can barely handle the complete eightiesness they’re hearing.

Was he dreaming the credits, or…?

I wouldn’t put it past this film. His dreams are very red and like a disco in a working men’s club in 1985.

I’m totally taking notes on single fatherhood.

It’s like his dad is a science teacher who accidentally walked into the wrong house. Start facing your problems?? I think he’s about four years old.

Note to self: tousle the boy’s hair.

Sorry, I got very invested then. I had his exact haircut and suspect kids would have put me in a dumpster as a kid, if we had dumpsters here.

Awww.

I’d tousle your hair, too. If you were here.

And tweak my nose?

Only if it’s consensual.

Everything is consensual when it comes to you.

Duly noted. Dude, this store is like stranger-danger central.

It’s like he’s luring him into his gingerbread house, only the house is made of books. Which actually sounds pretty cool, to be fair.

Fewer ants.

Plus, being cooked in an oven would probably be a reasonable price for getting to read something that gives you a dragon that grants wishes. I mean, I would take that if I got the dragon first.

I feel like I know everything I need to know about you from that one text. Also, this room is amazing. Kids’ movies always have amazing old dusty secret rooms.

Oh my god, I know. Do you have any idea how jealous I was of these American kids with all their enormous houses and awesome attics that probably had Beetlejuice in them or summat?

This giant… That’s how I feel right now, after crippling myself, running all that way. Except I want bourbon instead of rocks.

I dunno—I distinctly remember feeling those rocks looked delicious. Easily better than bourbon. This monster really sold me on them.

Oh god, here he comes. Or wait, never mind. I thought the creepy dragon was coming.

I think we have to get to Atreyu first. Maybe?

BTW I only said maybe there because I completely remember everything now, and I’m trying not to seem like a nerd who watched this film way too much.

You totally have me fooled. I didn’t suspect a thing when you (a) remembered his name and (b) knew how to spell it.

*shamefaced*

Also, the effects are frigging amazing. I know people moan about CGI, but seriously we should moan more. I love the way all of this looks.

I love painted backdrops. Even if you can see the seams.

Oh, and Muppet strings. I love those clear Muppet strings and sticks, like when Kermit is waving his arms around.

The strings and seams only make it sweeter.

So was Atreyu a babe when you were, like, eight?

I think I had a lot of confused feelings about him. At one point, I’m sure I was convinced he was a girl.

That would’ve been an awesome twist. Like at the end of Metroid.

I think I thought Sebastian was lying or fooled when he said a little boy. Or maybe I just identified a lot with Atreyu. I had Sebastian’s hair but looked like Atreyu.

Is it totally cheesy that the horse riding and music gave me chills for a second? I blame nostalgia.

Don’t. It’s good and right to have all the chills. Look how beautiful and cool all of this is.

I hope the boy turns out as earnest and bookish as the narrator kid… And all I can think now is that Atreyu is secretly a girl.

Head canon.

Oh no, that bit is coming. The terrible bit.

I always used to wonder: why did the horse let sadness overtake him? What was he sad about?

Oh shit, I forgot about this. Add this to the list of movies the boy can’t watch until he’s, like, twenty. Dead pets are just the worrrrssssttt.

I used to fast forward past it. I couldn’t stand it. I still can’t stand it.

Go get a snack. I’ll watch it for the both of us.

Thank you. Thank you. I realise now why I didn’t like it.

Okay, it’s over. You may return from the kitchen.

While you were gone, the horse swam away to live forever in a beautiful space meadow. It’s the director’s cut.

Oh, how lovely that idea is. Like rewriting things that have already happened.

I’m highly gifted at denial. It comes in very useful.

Teach me your ways, sensei. I don’t want to get emotional about a film with a giant talking turtle in it.

You’ll have to choose between a soft heart and a pickled liver—alcohol definitely helps.

I’ve never been able to drink. But I’ve often wondered how much fuzzier it would make things. How much softer the sharp edges would get.

You need to get the dosage right. Too much and you just wind up weeping inconsolably. Or I imagine you would. You don’t seem like you’d be an angry drunk. Definitely a sentimental one.

Or maybe a silly drunk.

I wish I had your confidence, there. Silly and sentimental sounds okay.

Sorry, now I feel sort of … I dunno, rude, I guess. To talk like I know you well enough to think you’re not capable of anger.

No, my Malcolm. Not rude. Not wrong either, exactly. I’ve never been an angry person. I just always fear that it’s in me somewhere, waiting for alcohol to bring it out.

Do you think you deserve to be angrier than you let yourself be?

Oh shit, there’s the dragon. Ignore my prying. It’s about to get creepy.

It’s okay, you’re not prying. I do wish I could let myself be angrier sometimes. But now it’s hard to be because Atreyu is making a dragon that looks like a penis moan in ecstasy.

I’ll pry again soon. But not tonight.

I’m ready for your prying, when soon comes. After we discuss the wang-like qualities of this dragon that seems to get really stoked over being rubbed.

He’s like a downy, scaly, flesh-colored flying puppy-phallus. Shudder. And I don’t remember these people at all.

They help Atreyu get past the eye lasers I think. And she’s the old witch from Willow.

I can’t wait for the lasers. That’s the bit I remember best. Probably because: boobs.

Gigantic boobs, if I’m recalling correctly.

Without hyperbole, one of the formative sexual experiences of my young life.

I had a girlfriend who said David Bowie’s pants in Labyrinth were that for her.

Oh, here we go. Boobs ahoy!

I think the Bowie thing must have affected all us girls, like a bulging contagion.

“Bulging contagion” made me almost spit out my drink.

I don’t think I’d make it past the sphinxes. My heart’s a hot mess.

They’d probably zap me from seventeen miles away.

My god, those boobs really are skin mag quality.

Nipples and everything.

Also, you’d totally make it. You’re so genuine and sweet. If secretly filthy.

If I would, you would. You might think you aren’t those things but that’s bollocks.

Don’t—I’ve had just enough to drink now to get all feely. How dare you take advantage?

I’m shamelessly opportunistic when it comes to convincing you that you’re a good man, the best of men, my lovely one.

I must be allergic to something. My eyes are all weird and watery.

It’s probably just raining on your face.

I’ve just been cutting onions. I’m making a lasagna for one.

That sounds right. We will go with that.

But it’s for you, the lasagna. Because I know you probably had something terrible for dinner.

I was just going to say: plus now I get to eat it instead of the super noodles that are congealing on a plate by the couch.

Oh shit, more boobs.

Sometimes the child actor sounds vaguely English.

I think he might have been. But I have no idea how I know this.

Maybe. American actors always tend to go a little English in fantasy movies. You guys are just more magical-sounding.

Well, the posh Brits are. I sound like I’m about to have sex behind some bins.

Okay, that time I DID spit out some of my drink.

I want to ask where you live as badly as I don’t want to. I feel like I’m just not supposed to know. Or like you live in some strange vortex with no postal code.

I live in the North East.

Of Fantasia.

Sassy minx.

I always want to know how you pay for all the stuff you must have shipped to your door. And when you last went to a doctor. And a million other questions that seem somehow better unanswered.

I sell edible rocks to fantasy creatures.

>:-(

I don’t remember so much of this part… I wonder how many times I stopped watching after the boobs were over.

You don’t remember “Come for me, Gamork”??

No!

God, I must have acted out that moment a million times in my head, only with me in Atreyu’s place.

My goodness, the stuff he’s saying. This is pretty disturbing for a kids’ movie. Those who have no hope are more easily controlled… That hit me right in the guts.

Oh, honey.

All the best kids’ movies are scary. Or have scary bits.

That’s true. I remember being terrified of a lot of films like this. Terrified, but also preferring their version of these horrid things over the real-life versions. Easier to kill a fantasy wolf than the stuff it represents.

I’m guessing no magic dragons turned up to save you in the nick of time when you were little.

Do they ever?

No, not as far as I can tell. If I’m one for the boy, I showed up pretty fucking late to the party.

You were one for him, believe me.

Maybe. Sometimes I worry the inside of the boy’s head looks just like this bit now. All dark, empty space and drifting fragments.

Mine did. Mine does. But less so now. You make me feel like maybe the dragon has come, so I don’t know why it couldn’t be true for him.

He’s still so little. I don’t remember anything from when I was his age. So I hope maybe he won’t either. I hope he won’t remember a time when I wasn’t there for him.

He might remember a time before. But he’ll remember you coming for him more.

I hope so. But I don’t feel very heroic. I feel like I’m just fumbling my way through this shit, trying not to make anything worse.

That’s the way actual heroes always feel. They get up to the window and shout out the name, even though they are sure it’s probably not the right thing to do.

I hope you’re right. Though I don’t want to be a hero, really. It’s so much harder than owning a liquor store. In case you were trying to choose between the two.

Oops, we missed, like, the entire climax of the movie.

Yeah, but I think we got the point of it.

So, do all the characters remember when the Nothing came through, or did the kid turn back time and hit Undo on all the badness?

I don’t like the idea that he just undid all the bad. I mean, I guess I wish I could do that for the boy’s head, but I can’t, so I’d rather the movie end with everyone moving on with their bad memories but being stronger for it or something.

Is it okay if I do want it undone?

Of course it is. I guess I just want to think there’s a way to fix all the cracks, instead of just going back and not dropping the vase. You know?

Oh yes, I know. I do. I like both of those options … but one of them will always be the winner for me.

Can I ask you something?

You can always ask me.

It’s more rhetorical than anything, because I’m not stupid. I want to ask if you had a traumatic childhood, but I think I already know the answer. But I don’t want to ask what happened to you. That feels like too far. So I don’t know what I want to ask. But if you have anything you’d like to say, I’m ready to hear it.

Is it enough to tell you yes? Yes, I had a traumatic childhood. Though traumatic seems like such a grand word for things that felt so … mundane. Mundanely bad. Like you know in movies when Julia Roberts has a violent husband? And yet it seems so glossy still. Everything is glamorous and works out okay. Nothing happens awkwardly or too suddenly, and once the villain is vanquished everyone goes on into a wonderful, amazing new life.

I do know what you mean. I wish things here were like a movie. Like, I show up here and everything’s really hard for the first hour of the movie, but then there’s some miraculous breakthrough like when Helen says “water” and I’ve gotten through to the boy and everything’s good and the music swells and the credits roll.

But you’re right. Reality is very mundane. And very un-glossy.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes. Yes. And you KNOW. You know in the movie that someone is coming to save them. The surety is perfect and absolute, and even if it isn’t you can just turn it off before it ever gets to that part. But not here. Here, it’s the opposite. You’re sure no one’s coming, and you can’t turn it off.

You don’t ever have to tell me about your movie, not unless you decide you want to. But could you tell me how the first one ended? Are you in the sequel yet? It’s better, isn’t it? Safe, if still mundane?

Oh, my Malcolm. Yes, it’s better. It’s been getting better in ways I didn’t fully realise—like a caterpillar in a cocoon, I think, rather than an agoraphobic hermit who doesn’t ever want to face reality. But you’ve made the second act really something.

God knows I don’t want you to feel obligated or like I rely on you, because I don’t. But you have, and you still will have no matter what happens from here.

Am I shouting down into your well? That’s what you do for me. And now, after this last week or two, I can even see a little blue way up there. A tiny little circle of blue.

You’re doing more than shouting. You’ve reached down and grabbed my hand, and I know I can pull myself up. I just hope I can pull you up from yours, too. Or at least give you something that you can use to do it.

I think I called you my bucket a million years ago.

God, it feels like a million years. But in the best way.

If this was a movie, I’d scale your building and come rappelling through your window and carry you off into the sunset. Which would somehow be spectacularly bright and colorful, even though it’s always overcast here. And I’d be taller and more muscly than I am. Probably played by Ryan Gosling or whoever.

But I don’t think this is a movie.

No. It’s better.

That made me smile. Tell me what it is, then.

Not being afraid for once of what happens when you can’t just stop watching altogether.

Is it okay that sometimes I want to fast forward to the later bits? The bits that come after 10pm?

It’s okay. I want to fast forward to the part where I actually get to hold you in my arms.

I’m wearing kind of a scratchy sweater. Just so you’re warned.

I don’t think a sweater made of rusty nails and broken glass would stop me.

You should have been here tonight. Watching that stupid-slash-amazing movie on my couch. Eating around the burned kernels in the bowl of popcorn I made. There were a lot of burned ones. That’s one thing I suck at cooking. Which is sad, since it comes in a packet with basically one instruction.

I would eat the burned ones gladly. In fact, I’m starting to feel foolish for not being there with you. Scared still, but foolish.

Shit, sorry. Have to go—I hear the boy moaning. More later.

Goodnight, stranger.

Hope he’s okay. Night, my Malcolm.