“Did it come out okay?”
YOU LET ME IN
THROUGH THE BACK DOOR
Jonas Reynolds & Loan Thi Mai
She didn’t need to sleep but he did. Quite often he would stir and find she was no longer in the bed with him, or she was there but wide awake. That night he woke to find her standing across the room, focusing on her reflection in a mirror fixed to the wall. She was putting the finishing touches on her makeup, though for what reason he wasn’t sure. Ultimately it didn’t matter. They both had their own lives and he respected hers and much as she respected his.
On the nightstand there was an old camera, the kind that spat out your photograph right after you’d taken it, and still half-asleep, he took hold of it as quietly as possible. It was only after he’d taken the picture that he realised she’d heard him and had turned her eyes from her own reflection to his. He used to joke about her not showing up in photographs but already he could see her outline taking shape in the picture the camera had deposited in his hand.
“Well?” she asked him smoothly before returning to her work, finishing off her lipstick.
“Well what?” His accent was thicker when he was tired, the words coming out in a slow drawl.
Her smile was delicate and subtle but he caught the signs in the mirror as he sat up, scratching his free hand through his hair, the camera already half-buried in the tumble of sheets. “Did it come out okay?” Her simple gesture towards what he presumed was his reflection prompted him to look down at the picture again. His smile was crooked and lazy.
“Came out just fine.” He held it up for her to see. She smiled another one of those subtle smiles of hers as he set the picture aside and climbed out of the bed, padding across the room to stand behind her. She had finished her makeup and her hair was perfect, not a strand out of place, but that didn’t stop him from bowing to kiss the side of her neck, his voice a low rumble as he murmured against her skin, “I prefer the real thing, though.”