Self-Attainment

Sheets feel like summer and slats filter in sun.

She left with the breeze on a double-decker bus, its red shininess reminding him of a toy car.

How many Spanish people had there been in the crowd in the park in east London. He couldn’t tell if that scared him or if he disapproved because his dad wouldn’t have liked it, although he couldn’t tell if he liked it himself. Did he like it? The poshness of some of her friends made him feel self-conscious, did he need elocution lessons of some sort? But they seemed friendly enough. If the weekend could tell him anything it was that he had become something non-apparent, not wholly expected even of himself. When he left for London he had gone with good intentions and unrealistic expectations that he could simply carry on being the man that he was: proud, vigorous, cock-sure. He forgot we all get old. She knew about it. 

How the hell did she know about mortality when she was only a child?

What had she said again? A quote from a book that had stuck with him but not word for word.
'Seriousness is when people think they’re time is important. But as we grow older and you see it especially in the really old, time loses its meaning. You think about your grandchildren and the objects you’ve left behind, so life is memories. And when you look at life like that, like backwards, then you’ll care less about how you should behave now and do more of the things that’ll make a lasting impression. Like the things you really want to do. All I’m saying is, people should take life less seriously because it’s over in a blip. I need a coffee.’

Then they got coffee. Then they kiss. Then they parted.

(He wasn't sure if he liked her.)