Page 101 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

I bleed ink, then let it go.

Don’t have permission to know what happens after—lost all rights.

So the way he talks about it paints a faint smile on me I can’t get rid of.

I could shatter this moment and say:

I wrote her.

Hand over the chain that would bind us forever, so he could never leave me. But that’s a ruse, not real—a trap, not truth. Chains only take away choice, and I don’t ever want to take from him.

“When I find a song I like,” I say.

“I listen to it obsessively.”

The corner of his mouth kicks up.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. If it hits? It becomes my whole personality. And I’ll play it to death, wear it out before it can turn on me. True story.” I shrug. “I don’t move on, I burn through. So I got you. I’ll keep racking up streams, so you can keep calling your favorites yours. My obsessive personality balances out your possessiveness.”

The moment hangs⁠—

the words, the stare we’re locked in.

His grin climbs,

and mine tags along behind it.

Second bottle⁠—

Slice. Twist. Pop.

“Why’d you leave that mornin’, huh?”

He takes a swig,

then passes it over to me.

My foot’s in his hand,

both propped on his thigh,

thumb kneading slow into the arch.

“You slipped right outta my arms.

“Had me thinkin’ it was all a dream.”

The wine slides down easy, tasting like something ancient crawling through a winter forest.

I lift of my shoulder, handing him back the bottle. “Woke up. Felt you breathing on me. Then I imagined the one morning I wake up, and you’re not breathing on me anymore. Suddenly I’m planning your funeral in my head…

“Standing at your grave…

“And then the thoughts wouldn’t stop.”

I cup water into my hand,