Suzanne

'I love you too honey.'


I heard the comforting sound of static that could only be Suzanne's voice, I just had to wait a few seconds for the translation.


'I can't wait till we're together, it won't be long now.'


I couldn't wait either and then nobody could come between us. But we were always together even though we were light years apart.



I kissed my hand and waited to receive her kiss back. That's how it works you see.

The kiss arrived and I kept my hand in the same position and kissed her again. Sometimes I spend hours at a time kissing Suzanne and I do get a lot of funny looks. People don't understand. They think there's something wrong with me but I just want to shout and scream to the whole world that there's nothing wrong with me. We are in love.

I confess I must look a little bit odd. Talking to my hand like this, but I'm not, I'm talking to Suzanne. And thousands of light years away she's doing the same thing, only she doesn't really have hands. They're more like flippers. But the rest of her is normal. She's blonde, blue eyed and has legs so long you wouldn't believe. I can get over the flippers. She tells me about her family and about school and about her dreams. She wants to be a botanist. She loves anything like that and we spend hours talking about plants and stuff. Although it's very different over there and they don't have gardens so to speak, just window ledges full of pot plants. They all live in high rises. It's a planet of high rises but pot plants are very popular.


I hold my hand to my ear because there's an incoming message. It's a loud one this time and I think that even some of the people on the train have heard it.


'Tell me again, what are Earth girls like?'


She knows they have arms instead of flippers but apart from that I don't talk about them much.

'Not as beautiful as you,' I said.



Of course I've seen plenty of pictures of Suzanne and I've sent lots of my own to her. I'm not one of those guys that pretends to be someone they're not. I'm no Brad Pitt but I try to take care of myself. And she's beautiful. We share photo's all the time. It's easy once you get used to it. You just put your hand tight up to your face and close your eyes and the pictures materialize inside your head. It doesn't happen straight away and you need to keep your hands pressed tight and your eyes closed for about thirty minutes to get a really great picture. The longer it takes the better the quality. It's much better than any digital camera you get over here. It's all in your head see, the colours become living breathing parts of you.



I can't wait till we meet in person. It's not going to be long now. They're saving up the money for a transmat booth. It's the latest thing over on Meros. They are slowly doing away with cars and trains, that kind of thing and soon everybody will have one. She tells me that you can travel anywhere in the blink of an eye and that it will only take a few minutes to get over here. I can't wait.



We spend the rest of the tube journey kissing.



Everybody is giving me that look and a few people are filming me on their phones. I don't give a shit anymore. What me and Suzanne have is special and they can laugh and stare all they want. They will be laughing on the other side of their faces when Suzanne comes over. I do worry about the atmosphere though. I'm not sure what it's like on Meros. We haven't really talked about it much. I'd hate it if she came over and ended up whizzing back into space like a popped balloon. Or what if she got here and found it impossible to draw a breath? Sometimes I think it's probably better to keep talking to my hand just in case.






A lover thousands of light years away is better than a dead one. Or a squashed one.





                                                             


                                                                                           (C) Ally Atherton 2014