“That one.” Daniel pointed at another massive berg. “Marcus, our glaciologist, would know better, but I’ve heard enough from him over the years to know it is old. Could be anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand years.”
“Thousand?” I was stunned.
“Hmm. We are looking at some of the most remote, pristine, and oldest parts of Earth.”
I whistled in awe as we passed the massive piece of centuries-old ice. Ahead, a school of fish broke the surface, moving fast, their smooth backs catching the light as they rolled. I watched them until we passed over, and they disappeared behind us.
“Dolphins?” I asked.
“Yes. If we are lucky, we might catch seals and whales too.”
I reached my right hand across to him and grabbed his hand.
“Reed,” he chided softly.
“Can’t not touch you.”
We flew like that in silence for the next several minutes.
“Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
I kept my eyes on the horizon as I held his hand. I had lost my nerve earlier at the dock and couldn’t get the question to leave my mouth, but it was time I got my shit together.
“Why did you leave?” I finally asked the question that had haunted me. Up here, he couldn’t run from me. I desperately needed to fix whatever had gone wrong. And I couldn’t do that without knowing why he had left. “When we were back on US soil, I looked for you.”
“What are you talking about?” Daniel turned his body toward me. I chanced a quick glance. He looked at me like I had grown three heads. “You’re the one who left.”
“What? No, I didn’t. I waited for a whole week.”
“That’s impossible. I remember that we got separated on the flight back, and I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone until the military finished debriefing. That took two days. As soon as I was cleared, I tried to find you. You were not on the base. I had them look up the log. The airman confirmed you had signed out the day before.”
I sucked in a breath as the realization hit me. My hand tightened around his as the implications crashed through me.
“Reed? Where were you?”
“I…I went to your home address. My debrief was only hours. Most of it was processing my U.S. citizenship. I never… Man, I feel like shit. I was still attached to my Australian unit… so they didn’t debrief me. Fuck.”
“Hold up. My home? You went to my home?”
I nodded. “Yes, I assumed you must have gone there since I couldn’t track you at the base. I found out your home address and drove there. It was locked, but I reasoned you had to come back at some point. So I rented a hotel room and waited. And waited. You never came back.”
“That was a rental, Reed. I have no permanent address.”
“But where did you go?”
“After I realized you didn’t wait for me, I… I resigned from the military and immediately applied for the Antarctic program. I flew directly here. I couldn’t face… I ran away.”
I looked at him. His eyes held the same pain that was coursing through me. Did we miss each other? Could all these years of separation be just because we were stupid?
An iceberg that had collapsed through its own center had formed a natural arch spanning open water, the sea visible straight through it, framed in ancient ice like a doorway into nothing. It felt like some poetic metaphor for our story.
“Face what?” I asked quietly.
Daniel shook his head, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
“You thought I didn’t want the marriage.” I said it like a statement.
