Mark wasn’t a man built for love. He’d long since accepted that. Stability wasn’t his thing, and keeping a relationship afloat without wrecking it? Well, he’d proven time and time again that wasn’t in his skillset. He was selfish, reckless, and more than a little inconsiderate—a bad person by his own admission. That’s why whatever he had with her wasn’t defined. Inconsistent was putting it mildly. It was messy, tangled, but somehow it still existed, surviving in the cracks of his broken world.

Today was one of those rare days where he was sober, and the idea of being surrounded by his mates—off their faces, lost in whatever substance dulled their edges—felt unbearable. So here he was, in his dingy apartment with its peeling wallpaper and permanent stench of old smoke and regret.

She was stretched out against him, her legs draped casually over his lap, her head pressed into the lumpy mattress they called a bed. He sat upright, lazily tracing patterns along her bare leg, his touch absentminded but somehow intimate. She was wearing one of his oversized jumpers, snagged off the floor without thought, paired with nothing but underwear. He was in his boxers, too lazy to bother with more.

It was quiet. Comfortable. Almost peaceful, in its strange, imperfect way.