Real or Fake?

He told her he wanted to be a line in her novel. Make me a page?

Bee laughed and said maybe but when he kissed her forehead on the second night she decided she wanted him as a chapter.

The first time Bee met Matt he asked if she was trying to get electrocuted while she stabbed her fork in the toaster to scoop out her English muffin.

The second time they talked she was rubbing her hands on the walls, eyes bright from the LSD still thrumming in her drug-virgin body.

Is this happening right now? Real or fake.

She peeled decals from the walls and scrubbed at fingerprints near the light switch and then the girls got home she wanted to pet their hair. She wasn’t hallucinating, no, but then again how would she know?

When everyone else left she asked him instead. Real or fake?

She’d point out objects, touch his features, touch her clothes, raising a chipped-polished finger to freckled nose, earlobe, arm, flannel.

Real.

Her mind didn’t want sleep, and thankfully his didn’t either. She didn’t have to face a night with eyes wide open in bed alone, back aching to be touched. So instead they talked, hopes and dreams and arms and legs intertwined tight. Shirts on. Just don’t decide to like me. I don’t do that stuff, she had said. And he believed her.

They kissed once, twice, three times and when she nestled her head in the space between his chest and his neck she decided she didn’t really want him to leave.

—

They always say you find something— someone? — when you aren’t looking. And I wasn’t, not really. I just said I’d try it solo, I’d meander my way through the world on my own until we bumped into each other and knew we weren’t meant to be apart.

I have questions but I don’t want to ask — there may be no answers. Apparently you’re just supposed to know. And I have to think about those things now, because like my friend told me, I know what is at stake.

Every now and then I breathe you in. You’re still on my clothes, in my bed. I can’t bring myself to wash you away.

Love? Or just drugs. Real or fake.

Real.