Rest Your Bones

The room was dark when I woke up. My throat was thick with all of the things I hadn’t said, and the warm body pressed next to me made my head heavy. Too much thought to sleep.

Celia’s pink curtains were open, and for a moment I stayed as I was. I watched the stars through the window. Her bedroom had always been the same. I’d seen it in three different homes, and every time was like a photograph of the last. The same bed, the same pink curtains, the same Celia.

The first time I’d seen her bedroom, I was actually looking for her brother’s. I was fourteen, and big into football. It was the only thing me and Kevin ever had in common, but I didn’t have too many friends and we got on well enough. I wasn’t going to pass up friendship.

She was eleven at the time, and our first conversation ended with her muttering the words ‘Boys are so gross’ with a scrunched up nose. Fourteen year old me didn’t really spend much time thinking about how the people you meet end up changing your life.

Celia stomped her way into my life in her purple Heelys and stomped right out again. I saw her occasionally, but we never really spoke. Not until she was seventeen, anyway. By that point I’d grown out of football and lost pretty much all contact with Kevin. I hadn’t seen him in at least a year, and I hadn’t seen her in even longer, but it wasn’t exactly something that occupied my brain.

I felt her stir next to me, and I rolled over. I turned away from the stars, but instead I got the sun. Even asleep she looked happy. Her dark hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and her face was mostly buried into the cream pillow. She was like that line in a book that you just can’t get out of your head, and I never wanted her out of mine.

It’s funny what you realize at night. And not just any night time either. There’s something special, almost magical, about going to sleep and then waking up again to find it still dark. It’s like you’ve slipped through the cracks of time, and found your own place outside of this world. Sometimes I wanted to stay there, I wanted to bring her with me.

When I was twenty I moved to the city to go to university, a couple of years after most of my friends had gone. I remember running down the stairs to catch the tube. I could hear it, and if I didn’t get on that one I’d be late. I don’t even remember what I was going to be late for, but it must’ve been something important. I’d given up running around the same time that football lost its charm.

I just caught it. There was barely anybody else in the carriage. I sat down opposite a pair of bright blue eyes that briefly looked up to meet my own dull brown ones. She was playing with her phone. Spinning it around in her hand, one leg cross over the other. I didn’t recognise her. I only realized how I knew her five minutes after she’d started a conversation with me.

‘You didn’t know who I was, did you?’ She smiled, tucking her phone back into her pocket. The train stopped, doors opening, and she jumped out of her seat and sat down next to me. Leaning forwards over the arm rest towards me.

‘Am I that easy to read?’ A few people got on, the whistle blew, and the doors slammed shut.

‘Your eyes did this thing. They went all wide, and then you blushed a little bit. It’s okay. I’m no good with names either, Tom.’ I glanced at the map above the seats opposite, my stop was next.

‘My name’s not Tom, it’s Chris.’

‘Well fuck. That’s what I’m talking about.’ She laughed, and I remembered it. I didn’t recall her face, or the waterfall of dark hair that I’d spend hours curled up next to years later, but her laugh sent me right back. Her laugh was getting food poisoning at their family barbeque, but not minding because I managed to get almost a whole week off school for it.

The train pulled to a halt, and I reluctantly stood up. ‘I’m off, I guess.’

‘See you around, Tom-Chris.’ And she laughed again. I got off the train, and I made it all the way out of the tube station before I realized that I hadn’t even gotten her phone number. I was sure I’d never see her again.

I closed my eyes and she sighed, shuffling closer to me. I stopped thinking. I didn’t need to anymore. I was always falling in love whilst half asleep, and it was always with her. I fell in love with her over and over again. No matter how many times we claimed to be ‘just friends’. I’m sure we were. We’d certainly never had sex. We weren’t even particularly good friends. We never spoke about anything really, she’d just turn up on my doorstep and invite herself in, or I’d do the same to her.

She was living with this ‘tough guy’ when we properly met. She told me that she just had to get out of her parent’s house, find somewhere new. He treated her well, but they were totally different people. I never saw the bedroom she shared with him, but I hoped he let her have at least the pink curtains up. I doubt he did.

Her head was buried into my neck, and I felt her breath change. Eyelashes fluttered against my neck, and she yawned.

‘You awake?’ She whispered. The duvet was wrapped around both of us, tucked underneath my feet. Her legs were tangled with mine, and I fell in love with her again, right at that moment.

I debated replying to her for a second, but decided against it. If I said I was awake, she’d move away. She’d linger next to my body for a few seconds, but shuffle back against the wall. She’d laugh, I’d laugh, and then we’d fall asleep again. Find our way back together, that red string pulling us closer every time.

So I didn’t reply. I sniffled, pretending to be asleep. The room was quiet for a moment. Still. It felt as if the stars were watching us, the same way I’d watched them earlier. I wondered if they did that to everybody. They were old enough to watch someone’s entire life. See everything that happened at night. All the ways someone could fall in love, or fall apart.

She muttered something into my neck, but I didn’t catch what it was. Her hand crept under the duvet, and my heart stopped. I concentrated on keeping my eyes closed. Her cat mewed in the next room, and she stifled a giggle. Her hand found mine under the covers. I fell in love again.

Her hand nestled itself into mine, and she exhaled. She lifted her head from my neck, and I wanted so desperately to know if she was watching the stars too, or if she was looking at me. I couldn’t feel eyes boring into me, but I was never very good with guessing those kinds of things.

‘I love you too.’ She whispered, voice soft, like she didn’t want anyone to hear, and I finally opened my eyes.