Mid-summer afternoons never failed to press their incessant sultriness upon you. It was days like these when you found yourself lounged against the billiards table in the dim library of your family’s estate, fidgeting restlessly with a cue stick as you battled the bothersome sensations of summery humidity: one of your socks riding higher than the other; your camisole fitting oddly tight in the dull heat of the late day; the balmy stick of your palm against the pool cue that caused your brow to furrow. And the painfully languid scene of Beau flipping his newspaper page. You sighed.

“You look uncomfortable, my dear.”

His voice cuts through the otherwise silent, muggy atmosphere. Grey eyes remain fixed on the newspaper before him, dying cigarette abandoned in the ashtray. It’s that subtle inflection toward the end of his words that piques your ear. As if, perhaps, he already knows the cause of your childlike antsiness.