She leaned against him, searching for his warm embrace. Her head rested on his chest, listening attentively to his heartbeat. Time seems to stand still. There were no usual car horns or the sound of the old lady downstairs cursing those couples on the street after 11 p.m. If they noticed, a jazz song called A Nightingale Sang In a Berkeley Square played quietly in a night bar on floor 2.

"You know, I used to be in a jazz band."

Wallace confessed, half sitting, half leaning against the bed. He still held the cigarette in his hand, blew a puff of smoke towards the ceiling, then gently tapped the cigarette butt on the ashtray. Shadows of smoke gently crept under the light of old lampshades, probably from the 70s.

"Really? That doesn't sound like you at all." Lynn [Lynn is not her real name, people tend to call her by random names such as Flyn, Rin, Mint, etc. But those are still not her real name, or even close to her real name] gasped but wasn't too surprised.

"What do you mean?" He smirked. His eyebrows furrowed.
"Don't be offended." She laughed, then tried to justify herself.
"It's just, you don't seem like one of those jazz geeks. You know, calm and-" he cut her off "-old? Are you telling me that I'm an old man?"
"Don't twist what I said!"

They both laughed at the silly joke. The beam of light above their heads prepared to receive another wave of smoke from the red-haired man's lips. Lynn suddenly sat up, stepping out of the bed. Wallace immediately got up, his hand reached out to grab hers. There was a mix of confusion and desperation in his eyes as he looked upon her.

"Where are you going?" His voice sounded a bit urgent.
"Take a shower." She removed her hand delicately. "And I suggest you should do the same."

She left naked. Her body was covered in sweat and semen, his semen. Under the better lighting, Wallace noticed plenty of scars on her body. He started counting them, analyzing them, mostly guessing because he didn't have enough information about her, but he was confident in his intelligence. What he could see was those old scars overlapped with new ones behind her back. Round scars could be from cigarette burns, and those long scars could be from something sharp. In his miniature imagination, Lynn was like an old wooden cabinet full of traces, locked with the world's most robust yet most delicate chain. This girl made him curious as if there was a lure in her every breath.

When Lynn returned to the room wearing a bathrobe, Wallace was sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, hands laced together. The redhead's face was shocked, however, there was a hint of sullenness behind it. She patted her wet hair with a towel and looked at him.

"It's your turn."
"You don't… leave?" His voice sounds slightly shaking.
"Only if you want to?" This wasn't a sarcastic statement, but he probably didn't understand.
"No, I, I mean, you know, well..." he mumbled, "I just... didn't think you'd stay."
"But I'm staying here?"

"Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
Hidin' all of our sins from the daylight
From the daylight, runnin' from the daylight."

- Daylight (David Kushner)
13.11.2023