"Tell me a story," he said as they sat on the low brick wall examining the over-cooked chips.
"Okay," she agreed and began to search for a story to tell that would distract them both from the other, more complicated stories of their lives.
She grinned and squirmed and screwed her eyes up tight into the late afternoon sun. The friends had spent a lazy couple of hours on the beach opposite. She sawm in the deep, cool ocean revelling in the rough sea, clutching onto her swimming top as the waves crashed over and over. He lay on the sand and though his body was still his mind was crashing through its own turbulent seas.
"Your story gets three out of ten."
He was confident his tale of robot self-actualisation had trumped her lame attempt at a love story of a stranger in a far away land.
They gave up creating stories and settled back into the familiar territory of real life, love and heartbreak; his current heartbreak.
"What, who fills your heart with a ten?" she probed.
"I'm thinking," he paused.
"Tell me another story," he said.
