I'll find you

My relationship with mother may be complicated but I love her unconditionally on Friday nights. It's in the effortless way she gets ready to go out: the precise Guerlain lips, the perfect fade of the subtle color around her eyes, her hair a solar storm held together by a single silver pin. Coincidental is never an option.

While I watch her in the corner of my eye Chloe is down on her knees begging me to go out with her. "Don't leave alone me with the ad men" she says, "they're at their most obnoxious after sunset".

I already know what it will be like. I will step into something charcoal black and disappear into the vapors and the noise, I will close my eyes in the chaos and right then I will feel his firm breathing on my neck, his arms wrapped around my waist and his lips pressed lightly against the back of my head as if in a kiss. I will be afraid to look back at him and he will whisper from behind, like he always does: "I thought I'd never see you again".