Olive You
“That wasn’t twenty questions,” I stirred uncomfortably from my cross-legged position on the foot of Louisa’s bed. Her probing was unsettling but left to my own devices my thoughts were worse.
“I didn’t need that many.” She raised an eyebrow, tearing at the wrapper of another sweet with her teeth.
It was raining again, every time lightning illuminated the dark horizon I’d flash back to a little moment of my dream. I don’t remember much of it now aside from what I managed to capture between the bindings of my tattered moleskine. (I use the ones for acrylics. I like the heavy weighted paper, it gives a presence to my dreams, helps me to hold onto them even when they’re little more than a memory.)
But I remember enough.
“So what are you going to do about it?” Her question rattled my thoughts, drumming on the inside of my skull like the falling sleet on our roof.
“Nothing. What do you mean?” Stifled melancholy, disappointment that after flying across the Atlantic, nestling myself into this bustling town and hiding beneath Louisa’s plush afghan quilt my shyness still managed to find me.
“About Cook?”
Genuine surprise. “Cook?”
