On Thursday John taught from 8 am till 3 pm. When he arrived home it was 16h30. He downed a big mug of cold coffee left over from this morning, marched straight to the bedroom and dropped down on the bed. He didn’t bother to take off his shoes, which was in direct violation of the domestic code drawn up by Z, but he was too tired.

He put Gloria by Them on repeat.

O was exactly 5 feet, not 5 feet 4. Z was 5 feet 4 though. His first girlfriend had been something like 5 feet 3. And once he’d had a girlfriend who’d been slightly shorter than O. About half an inch shorter.

He pictured him and O watching some movie in her apartment, with glasses of wine. She would drink white wine and he’d drink red wine. Halfway through the movie they would start the slowest foreplay in the history of sex, with lots of kisses and caresses at a snail pace. He tried to picture her apartment, he tried to picture her shiny black hair, loose, hanging over her bare shoulders.

Then he heard the clinging of Z’s keys at the door. He jumped up, ran to the mat in the hall and started taking off his shoes.

She put her laptop bag on the ground and stared at him with a condemning frown.

‘I have been standing here all the time waiting for you to come back. And the wifi signal is better on the mat’, he said, looking at his phone.

‘Sure’, she said.

She took off her boots and put them on the mat next to his shoes. She hung her coat in the big hallway cubboard with the sliding doors.

John went to sit on the couch in the living room.

Only Z had the key to their post box, so he asked:

‘Were there any yellow papers today?’

A yellow paper meant a book had arrived at the post office. John ordered books like a maniac.

‘No yellow papers today’, she said.

John was about to flip open his laptop when Z came to stand in front of him, her crotch almost level with his face. With her hands on her hips she said:

‘Now fuck me’

John stood up and followed her to the bedroom.

(Featured image ‘Empty bed 1’  by Sabina Panayotova)