We burst out laughing at the same time, dissipating the tension into camaraderie. He excused himself to go shave, and when he came back out, he looked so young, like a little boy, like he must have looked at seventeen. It twisted my insides, and while precedent would indicate that I was in for a knee-buckling rush of nostalgic emotion, right then I only seemed capable of not thinking through a haze of desire.

‘What?’ He peered into the mirror over the dresser. ‘Did I leave shaving cream on my face?’

I shook my head, some garbled half-words stuck in my throat.

He bent down, his face close to mine and—was I calling it right? Could he really be as nervous as I was?

‘Hey, what?’

I swallowed. ‘You look so nice.’

He broke into an abashed half-smile, and he looked down at his hands, introducing me to a shy dimple on his left cheek, flustered and so utterly adorable that I kissed him, quick, before my brain exploded with the effort of trying to compute the level of cuteness it was being exposed to.

He woke up with his hair in an almighty tousle, drooping into his eyes and sticking comically up in the back, looking even more of a kid than the night before. But he took his coffee all grown up—no milk, no sugar. Black. Hot.

We spent the morning in bed, talking. Towards afternoon, when our edges had been all but smoothed flat by discoveries and breakfast wine and skin on skin, I finally asked him about April.

‘What was she like?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Yes. I really do.’

‘She was beautiful. Gorgeous. Brilliant. Bloody crazy, though.’

‘You told me that, once.’

I saw a flash of anger cross his face. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘I disagree. More, please.’

He smiled. ‘She was very kind. She had a soft heart. Too soft, maybe. She was always breaking into pieces.’

I nodded, remembering. ‘Did you end up putting her back together?’

‘For a while, yes.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘I do.’ He sighed, tired. ‘I miss who she used to be.’

‘Who did she use to be?’

He sat up to look at me, piercingly, like he was trying to catch me in a lie. ‘A lot like this, actually. A lot like you.’

Lying there with him, watching the flesh fall on to the bones of my dreams, I drifted into the blackest sleep of my life; safe, at last.

We woke up as the sun was glowing low in the sky, the golden light touching our skin with the kind of beauty all the make-up in the world couldn’t achieve. We paid homage to it with our bodies, slowly, exquisitely. I rested on his chest, dwelling on the images, committing the plains of his face, the way light caught his angles, into the securest holds of my memory.

‘This is my favourite time of day.’