It’s not just because we spent it exploring this archaeological phenomenon I’ve wanted to see my entire life.
It’s not just because everyone gets excited when I do and Bohdan looks at me instead of looking at all these other things he should love.
It’s not just because we laugh more than we should when Talon asks the guide in all seriousness if the preserved food would still be edible underneath all that carbon.
I do feel young and invincible again, and it is quiet inside my brain. But it’s not those things either.
It’s because Bohdan pulls me aside, right before we walk up the gangway back onto the ship.
The air full of brine, stings when I inhale, and birds swoop low overhead, calling out loudly, occasionally diving into the water by the quay. But I just smell pine and snow and quiet nights. Him.
He wraps his fingers around my wrist, and it’s his heartbeat I think I hear when he brings my palm to his chest.
He studies me, head angled to the side, eyes roving over my face thoughtfully, tracing the pillow of my cheek, the slope of my nose, and the set of my lips. So serious, like always, and I know whatever he’s going to say next is horribly important.
I feel a bit like I did all those years ago, standing on those steps leading up to my dorm while he set me on fire, and I wonder if the flames ever really went out.
“This morning in bed ... you said you didn’t want this to end.” Bohdan takes a measured swallow.
“I don’t,” I whisper truthfully.
“I don’t either.” He shakes his head, and the way his hair falls, I can’t see the scar. It’s like it was never there. He presses one hand over top of mine, and I feel his heart rate change under the cotton of his shirt when he keeps talking. “What if it didn’t? What if we left together?”
“I’m moving home,” I say, words a bit like fragile glass that could crack any moment. If he asked me not to, I’m not sure what my answer would be.
He smiles, slow and sure. “I know. I’ll follow you. The way you followed me.”
“Why?” I ask, because I still can’t imagine being someone worth following.
“I won’t survive not knowing you again.”
A cloud tumbles across the sky, and when it does, a ray of sunlight stretches across his face.
His eyes don’t pinch closed. He doesn’t squint. He doesn’t look like he’s in pain at all, actually.
“The ring. The Polaroid,” I start, and I might be scrambling for excuses, because as much as the idea of Bohdan fills my lungs up with more oxygen than they’ve had in months, it scares me, too.
I don’t say it, but those other words—that other thing I asked for—hang there, too.
The why.
He taps his thumb against the back of my hand. “Don’t give it back. I told you. I don’t care. But I’ll bring the Polaroid, we’ll talk and—” He cuts himself off with another swallow and a jerk of his chin. “And whatever happens ... we’ll get through it this time. I promise.”
It’s my favourite day, because for a few hours, I believe him—and I almost believe in myself.
Bohdan
What happened all the way back in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Pompeii was bad.
What happened a year and a half ago when I destroyed us was bad.
What happened when my head cracked against the ice and destroyed my career was bad.
And I thought what happened this morning was bad. When Sloan stirred up all that magma still there because I’ll burn for her forever and forced it up through all that rubble and all those fissures in the earth when she told me she didn’t want it to end.
She smiled more today than I think she has in a long, long time, and maybe it was a trick my brain played on me when I caught her wiping away tears of laughter that made her eyes bluer than they had any right to be—and I thought I could be a good thing for her again.
How could anything to do with loving someone this much ever be bad?
