Night on the Planet

By Courtney Milnestein

Christmas and New Year in North London. Beneath the spread of fireworks, amidst the sound of cheers and celebrations, best friends Diana and Luna find themselves stranded over the river and after midnight on the last night of the 20th century.

Faced with either waiting for a bus that might never come or walking for several hours in the bitter cold of midwinter, the two girls set out along the path of the river and through the heart of London in pursuit of tea, toast, and a good night’s sleep, all the while dancing around the issue of their feelings for one another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685500153

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Night on the Planet

By Courtney Milnestein

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2022 Courtney Milnestein

ISBN 9781685500153

Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

* * * *

Night on the Planet

By Courtney Milnestein

Not for another hour, she said, apologetically, turning away from the faded bus timetable behind the stained Perspex.

The other girl looked up, confetti and glitter clinging amidst the hairspray, the faintest smudge of mascara and eyeliner.

You’re kidding me.

Diana, a month older, which bestowed on her the tentative right of seniority in their longstanding, long-enduring friendship, shook her head and slumped onto the narrow plastic bench alongside her friend.

I wish I was.

In the dark, fireworks were going off, those excited to be out past midnight still intent on making it known that they had not died, that they endured not just the changing of one year to another, but the changing of an entire millennium, and that the machines had not risen up and killed them in some glorified Terminator-lite pastiche brought about by the failure of anyone in 1970 to imagine that computers might need to be able to read dates in the 21st century.

This was it though, she thought; this was the 21st century, sitting on a bench by Tower Bridge, the next bus not due for another hour.

Luna, the younger of the two of them, named so by parents more wistful, more wishy-washy, more artistic than Diana’s own, shook her head in exasperation.

This is a joke, she snarled with abject displeasure, turning her head to glare at every car that rushed past with a celebratory honk of the horn, at every gathering of celebrants spilling out from the pubs onto the street.

She glanced up at the bus stop.

TC, she read aloud, the two letters spoken with such contempt that it was almost as if they were a personal affront.

Diana shrugged, beginning to acknowledge that she was sadly, unpleasantly, thoroughly sober.

Do you want to walk back?

Luna turned back to