I smile, but it’s not what I meant. I wave my hands around, and my chef’s hat slides to the left, but Bohdan reaches out to straighten it. He tucks errant hair behind my ear, his eyes stay on me a bit too long, and I forget to breathe.
Swallowing, I gesture vaguely again. “No ... here. Wearing chef hats made for children and catching up over hibachi like we’re ... strangers. Asking questions once upon a time we’d have been able to answer for the other.”
“Only one of us is wearing the hat, Sloan,” he deflects.
I glance at his hair, almost amber from the sun, messy from all the times he’s run his hands through it and the too-high heat of the grill. I lean forward, and maybe I’ve had a bit too much wine like Jay, but I tug on the end of a wave curling over Bohdan’s ear and whisper, “Do you want to pretend we’re on the Titanic?”
“Not really.” He gives me a flat look, but I think there’s laughter hiding somewhere around the corner in his eyes.
“But ... aren’t we?” I ask softly. “Doomed to not make it to shore?”
He grips his jaw with one hand, and the other splays against my leg. I think his fingers might start tapping out counts of three against my skin, in time with each of his next words. “Two more days.”
“Two more days,” I repeat, tipping my chin up to brush my mouth against his. My fingers brush along his jawline, over the sharp planes of his cheeks, and tentatively, I reach up to touch the precipice of the scar hidden along his temple.
He tenses, but then his lips move against mine more urgently, and I forget it’s April 12, 1912, and soon we’re going to sink.
Sloan
Then - Seattle
It’s a beautiful day—not a single cloud. A bright, vibrant sun.
The kind of day people would run outside for, lift their chin skywards, strip down to tank tops and shorts, and stretch their limbs out on blankets nestled in grass, sitting beside their best friends and people they love.
Unless you’re me, and you lay there as the colours changed in the sky and became brighter and brighter but nothing in your world did, while you listened to the love of your life breathe in and out mechanically all night because he fell asleep when you were trying to talk to him.
Unless you’re Bohdan, and you take one look at the sky through the window and physically recoil.
I watch him move around the apartment, grabbing things at random and shoving them into his hockey bag. He has an appointment with the team doctor. I’m not sure for what. He stopped answering a while ago, and eventually, I stopped asking.
I wait to see if he might notice me, standing there behind the kitchen island, mug of coffee in my hands. Eyes and cheeks puffy from lack of sleep.
He used to say he liked my face in the mornings after I couldn’t sleep—just this tiny, little bit extra—because he said my freckles looked more beautiful.
But he must have been lying because he didn’t notice me today.
“You fell asleep early last night,” I try, this sad attempt at acknowledgement. My fingers tighten against my mug.
Pathetic, my brain whispers, peeking over my shoulder, watching as this person who used to orbit around me careens off into space without a care.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t look up; he just keeps tossing things into his bag.
“Oh, I just thought—when I came to bed—never mind, it’s stupid.” I wave my mug around, and coffee spills over the rounded edge. I don’t even bother jumping backward. I just let it stain my shirt—some old one with a raccoon Tia gave me years ago.
I try again. I’m not sure why. “I’m attending a lecture on mummification processes today and how they influenced modern-day embalming.”
He might nod, he might raise his eyebrows in acknowledgement, but his eyes pinch closed in pain when he shoulders his bag, and he doesn’t say anything else.
You really are a loser,my brain giggles before splaying on its back to stretch out under the sun.
Sloan
“I don’t think it’s been this bright the entire week.” Tia pushes her sunglasses up her nose to cover her eyes.
I tilt my head back, craning my neck up towards the sky. “You’re right. There isn’t a single cloud.”
One of her manicured nails taps the porcelain of her coffee mug. “What do you want to do today? When my brother was drafting up his itinerary, I don’t think he realized that ‘Day at Sea’ wasn’t actually an activity.”
