The Wake-Up Call

by Beth O'Leary

life is too short for rules about what’s cool and what’s not cool; life’s for living.

We are all misled and misdirected from time to time. Perhaps there really is no shame in that, as long as we wake up to it before it’s too late to change.

(Why is it that when men sweat, it’s sexy, but when I sweat, I look like I’ve been crossbred with a tomato?)

I want to look after you. So that you don’t have to do it all, for once.

How did you get from strangers to this, where you’re like one person split in two?

I would like to believe that I can let a person see me, and that once they have, they might think more of me, not less.

‘Lucas,’ she says, softly now. ‘You can relax. It’s just me.’ It’s just me. Like she isn’t fucking everything.