I awaken suddenly, convinced I've overslept, but the bedroom is still painted in the serene silence of deep night. It's far too soft to hold anything but dreams and the tired musings of sleepless souls. Musings, and the unmistakeable rustling of cotton on cotton. My chest is bare and exposed to the warm summer air, so that means—

I roll over carefully, and Lord, if it isn't a glorious sight.

Rose has always been such a contained sleeper. Flat on her stomach, face cradled in her forearms and toes stretched towards the mess of blankets we've kicked onto the floor—she's a literal line of flesh and curves, drawn across my mattress by some merciful deity.

I reach out a hand before I can stop myself, threading my fingers through the mess of curls spread across the pillow. Makes me wish I were a painter. Maybe then I could capture the way her hair lies like a tangled mess of shadows—pitch-black against the paleness of the sheets.

Maybe then I could save the moment in all its perfection, because it's never the same in the morning. It's always different in the light of day.

The nighttime does something strange to the mind and wonderful to the heart, my mother used to say.

Never court by moonlight, my grandmother used to say. You never know what the morning will bring.

I snake my arm around Rose's waist, marveling at how soft everything is.

Soft mattress. Silk-soft skin and slip-soft sheets. Tendrils of moonlight against tendrils of hair dancing away from a body moving with gentle, even breaths.

(So subdued, so peaceful, so different from the times where she lay beneath me, eyes closed and lip caught between her teeth, with those curls teased and frazzled and fucking perfect, when the moonlight wasn't soft but fiery, unworldly, wild.)

The soft sigh that breaks the tranquil silence comes from my own lips. It mingles with the soft scent of strawberries lingering upon her skin, as sweet as it was all those years ago.

---

My alarm beeps dutifully at me from its post on the nightstand, but what truly wakes me is the opening of the bathroom door. I open a bleary eye in time to see Corrine emerge, fully armored in business professional and combing her fingers through her cropped, straight hair.

She moves to the dresser and spritzes something from a tall, fancy bottle onto her neck. The smell of strawberries slips through the air, as unmistakable as it is unwelcome.

Corrine catches me staring. "Like it?" she chirps. "Wedding present from your mother."

"It's... it's nice," I manage to say.



I stare at the bottom drawer for a long time after Corrine leaves. Really stare at it. But in the end, I leave Rose's letters where they belong: in a box with all the other tokens of my freely-lived youth.

Other pieces of memorabilia from an adolescence spent running wild beneath the moon, kept hidden away from the revealing light of the rising sun.

Don't marry by the moonlight, my grandmother told me. Some people are like dreams.

Things are always different in the light of day.



I pour the perfume down the drain.