EPILOGUE - CLOUDS, AGAIN

She feels hazy when she wakes up; like she's walked out of an air conditioned room into thick summer humidity and she can't shake either atmosphere so they both cling to her, entangling her.

Confusing her.

At dawn she finally went to sleep for real and so did Bobby. They woke up at exactly the same time a couple of hours later—a moment, a quick intake of breath, a fluttering of eyelids, and now they're here, twisted and twined through the other like necklaces lying in a pool at the bottom of a forgotten jewelry box.

And no one's moving, neither one of them making the slightest effort to shake themselves free.

"It's cold," Bobby mutters into her shoulder.

"Fire must've gone out." She doesn't feel like rolling over to check.

Bobby looks up briefly, glancing over her at the fireplace before dropping his head, warm and heavy and thatched with curls, back down to rest just above her chest.

"It did."

"Mmmm."

His phone vibrates just above her head. She tenses, but he makes no move to grab it.

"I'm glad you came over," she says.

"Me too."

"Really?" she murmurs into his ear.

She can feel his smile through her shirt.

"Yeah. How's your hand?"

She thinks about it, flexes her fingers a little.

"I'll live."

"Damn straight," he mutters, and she laughs at the sudden shot of joy she feels, the quick vibrant throb in her chest because she is alive and she will see the sky and she will work and she will be warm and she will feel safe, again.

It might take some time (unfortunately), but it will happen.

And maybe someday she will have a real dinner party for her real guests, and after real dessert Real Bobby will come over and read out loud that odd, abstract real poetry he likes so much in their real bedroom while she drifts off to real sleep.

Maybe.

Who knows?

The sky is endless.

So are the possibilities.

***

Okay, I have one.

Person place or thing?

None of the above, really.

None of the above…

Hmmm.

Is it…a theory?

Some might say.

Is it based in fact?

Perhaps.

Based in emotion?

Definitely.

Is it logical?

Not hardly.

You're running out of questions here.

Does it have to do with these two people?

Duh.

Did…it happen that night?

Perhaps. Might've happened before, though.

I don't need any extra hints, thanks. I think I've got it now.

Then let's hear it.

But it's…overdone. Cliché. Applied too often to situations where it shouldn't apply at all. Said in place of I like you fuck me you're familiar to me goodbye.

True.

All true.

But there has to be some truth in clichés because otherwise, well, they wouldn't be clichés, they'd just fade out of our lexicon, unimportant, a mere flickering molecular blip of a stupid statement.

So let's hear it.

Is it…

(cough, clear throat)

Love?

(blush)

Ah.

Well…

Maybe.

A/N. So this last bits might make more sense if you go back and read the first and fourth chapters again, because (not to spell it out or anything) that's sort of what I'm referring back to. Anyway. Thanks for reading! and thanks for all the reviews, which make me smile, because so often I think that I'll never actually be able to make it as a writer and then the last ten years of my life will just have been, you know, completely fruitless and all, so it's nice to hear that people are enjoying what I'm writing. Next up: sequel to Stare Decisis, tentatively titled Cy Pres, if I can stop screwing around revising the beginning over and over again.