Today with Bobby

The perfect summer day starts with a sense of freedom. You have always felt a certain measure of passion for the topic. Perhaps it is your near-crippling obsession with nostalgia or a deep want for a well-lived life. Either way, it must start in bed, lover or alone, window ajar, warm air filtering through the curtains—you can smell the heat before you feel it.

Here, you stretch as your eyes adjust and your body greets the day. Nothing to do, everything to be done. Before you know it, the coffee is in the pot, the bread in the toaster. You’ve never minded a simple breakfast, and on a warm morning it feels more important to head directly to a body of water. So you crunch down your toast, rinsing your mouth with hot coffee before driving towards the sea. Bobby is with you today. She comes everywhere at the moment, keeping your hands free so that you can maintain your on-the-go state. She is compact and sits easily on your shoulder, fitting only the essentials—all you need is your bikini, your sunscreen, and your keys.

As you get closer, the clammy breath of the city air shifts and turns briny on your tongue.

Down at the water, the sand is already burning hot, the waves lap at your toes as you test the conditions. The temperature bites at your limbs as you submerge yourself in the water. Bobby stays ashore where it is dry and safe while you lap around the cove. When you are spent, you lay next to her suede body and notice the water droplets crawl down your spine and tumble down your torso, the sun encouraging them to their death as it heats your skin and you let out a deep, knowing breath acknowledging a perfect morning.

Back home, you take Bobby to fetch ingredients for a pasta lunch. You’ll use a shopping bag, but she is responsible for personal effects. It is the afternoons that stretch on, long and thin and languid, that you enjoy most. You fry garlic with lemon and parsley in olive oil before adding white wine and clams. You drench your pasta in the seafood sauce before sitting down on your balcony, bikini still on, sucking the tiny, meaty bodies out of their shells and slurping spaghetti. You’re meeting friends later, so you wash off the salt that has now calcified onto your skin and lie down back in bed.

When you wake from your nap, the sun is still warm and high in the sky. It won’t be dark until close to nine o’clock. You dress and apply your makeup, moving through the motions of getting ready. A premeditation of the evening ahead. Bobby is coming. She carries only a few items so that you can continue on your crusade for freedom. Your keys, your phone, and your lip liner. They fit well in her slender body.

At the bar, you stay arm-in-arm but you don’t feel clung to. You catch up with friends and drink and laugh as the sun dips behind the cityscape and the sky turns from periwinkle to Yves Klein Blue. Everything begins to roll into one: the heat, the drinks, the time…

Before you know it, you’re dancing, the bass thrumming in your ears as you move, sweaty and dazed against your new and familiar companions. Cool metal buckles knock against you as you dance. There is an understanding, an internal conversation in your head with yourself. This is how it was all meant to happen today. Tomorrow you will wake up and while your head may pound, you will flip over in bed and smile, knowing that you will never quite grasp these moments again.