I pull back, one hand coming up to cup her cheek before my thumb traces a pattern towards the tiny constellation of freckles just below her eye, and I punctuate each word. “Jedna. Dve. Tri.”
She blinks, softer and slower, like she’s finally relaxing. “What does that mean?”
“One, two, three.”
Sloan inhales, sharp and sudden, her eyes water, but I think they’re good tears this time.
“Jedna. Dve. Tri,” she repeats.
“Slower,” I encourage, grinning now. It’s a harsh language, but it sounds beautiful when it’s coming from her.
She says it again, and it’s closer this time and I’m about to tell her, but she asks another question, words soft, tentative, andmaybe she’s able to peer into that open wound and see what’s written on the inside of me.
Her name. Golden and bright.
“How do you say I love you?”
My thumb twitches against her cheek. “There are a few different ways, and it’s not usually said like that, but ... literally, you’d say miluju te.”
“Miluju te,” she repeats, bringing a palm to press against my chest, right over my heart.
I smile, my thumb dragging along the curve of her mouth. “Better.”
Sloan tips her head, hair falling over her shoulder, cheeks soft, words even more so. “Have you ever been in love?”
I debate lying, but the bleeding seems to have stopped, the wound in my chest stitching itself back together each time she smiles, and I decide I don’t want to hurt her again for the rest of my life; I don’t think I’d survive it.
Brushing my thumb across her lip, I pull back and count each freckle smattering her cheek again, and tell her the truth.
“Only ever you.”
Bohdan
There’s something a bit cathartic about sitting at a worn table on a too-crowded port street in a too-crowded city, teeming with tourists spilling onto the pedestrian-only cobblestone streets, while you drink too much beer with your two best friends you don’t usually let yourself see.
I’ve avoided everyone for the better part of the last year and a half since it ended with Sloan, and I wouldn’t let them come see me the year and a half before that after I got injured, but maybe my mom and my therapist were onto something about not trying to heal alone.
It’s been refreshing. Haven’t even had a single migraine.
But that’s about to come to a screeching halt.
“That doesn’t look like a fucking boat that’s going to take us down rivers for a week.” Jay tugs on the gold chain hanging against his neck, visible through the too-many open buttons of his white linen shirt, before pointing a finger towards the port, the array of patchwork tattoos on his arm stark under the sunlight.
“River cruise rhymed better with retirement.” Talon’s grin splits wide when he kicks back in his chair, the legs teetering precariously on the uneven cobblestone. One hand flexes, and he stretches out his arm, like maybe he’s admiring the stack of rope bracelets sitting around his wrist, or the deeper-than-usual bronze of his skin from the last few days we’ve spent following him all over Barcelona.
Jay groans into his hand before draining the rest of his beer. “Talon, is it a river cruise or not? I was told river cruise. You know, a significantly smaller boat traversing significantly smaller bodies of water with significantly smaller numbers of guests. I didn’t sign up to get on a floating mall.” He drops the empty pint glass on the table where it wobbles precariously before settling beside the steadily growing collection. We’ve been sitting here all afternoon because Talon wanted to “watch the ship come in.”
I can see why now.
“What’s an ocean if not a really big river?” Talon holds up a hand before smacking his giant luggage where it sits beside him.
“One’s a vast body of saltwater encircling a continent, and the other is flowing fresh water that empties into said vast bodies of saltwater,” I answer dryly, eyeing the ship behind Jay, distaste curling my lip upwards.
It’s huge. You could probably fit four riverboats onto the deck alone.
“Rock boy.” Talon grins again, folding his arms and rocking back and forth in his chair. I imagine his eyes light up behind his Ray-Bans at the use of yet another dumb nickname he came up with in college.
“No,” I tell him, draining the rest of my beer. “Not a rock fact. You don’t need a degree in geological science to know the difference between a river and an ocean.”
