Weekly Writing – May 20 2023

“I don’t believe you,” she laughed, in a way that sang from the rim of her wine glass.
“What, you don’t think I would?” They had long since emptied theirs, and stretched across the couch to the bottle standing on the coffee table, only to find it drained to the last few drops as well. “You think I’d find something better to do with a next life than find you?”
“I’m not convinced there is another life,” she said, sprawled comfortably under their stretch. “If there is, I doubt we’d still think or act or…be enough of ourselves to really care about finding each other again.”
“So when I say I would find you again…”
“It’s not that I don’t think you’d try if you could,” she confirmed. “I just don’t think it’s a situation we’re ever going to find ourselves in.”
They didn’t try to wrestle their way back up to where they’d been sitting, but settled in more comfortably across her legs instead. Staring up at her with wine’s flush and lazy contentment, but a glow, also, of something stubborn and brighter in their eyes.
“Then it shouldn’t be a big deal for you to bet,” they said. “If we die-”
“I don’t think that’s much of an if.”
“When we die,” they corrected themself without letting it cost them any momentum, “If we are still more or less like us, and if I find you-”
“I’ll owe you a tenner?”
They didn’t swat at her thigh as they might have earlier in the lazy evening. Staring up at her, the same flush riding high on her cheeks and pooling wet in her eyes, they said, “No. Then we’ll give it another go, wherever we are. Whoever we are. That’s the bet.”
“It seems like a pretty safe one for you,” she said, though she didn’t tousle their hair as she might have earlier. “The only way you really lose is if we die and cease to exist or come back as sparrows or something and can’t really care about winning bets anymore anyways.”
They smiled, loose and lopsided, though still with that stubborn fire in their eyes.
“I would still find you if I were a sparrow.”
“Then you’d better hope I was one as well, or it would be awkward. All right,” she decided, searching for a clumsy angle at which she could shake their hand. “Bet. Now I just hope neither of us has to win or lose for a very long time.”
“I hope,” they echoed. “If I do die, though, watch for sparrows.”
“Don’t say that,” she tried to sound as if she were just scolding them, and tousled their hair after all. But they were both quieter after that, sitting and lying on the couch as the city moaned in its sleep outside. Thinking about how many sparrows there were, maybe, or other things to possibly become, if they became anything at all. About bottles and lives drained dry before the ones enjoying them realized, and how long the odds of such a bet might really be.