"I know," I said, and that one was the truest.
Tina nodded, stood up, and went back inside, because her point was made and she had never once lingered after making a point in her life. I sat with the feeling for a while — the specific weight of knowing you were wanted before you knew you were staying — and then I finished my margarita and went to find him.
He was at the dark edge of the gathering where the light from the rum bar didn't quite reach, which was where he always ended up — close enough to be part of it and far enough to be himself. Bastien had finally relinquished the arm. The argument with Gustave had been paused until next time.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," he said, which he'd learned from me and still deployed at slightly the wrong moments, with complete confidence.
I looked at him for a second. Then: "Tell me about the ink."
He went still in the particular way he went still when something had been said that he'd been waiting to be said and was now being careful about how he responded to it.
"It's been three weeks and it hasn't moved," I said. "I want to know what that means."
He looked at the water. Not me — the water, the way he looked at it when he was about to say something he'd been carrying and had decided to set down.
"The ink on your shoulder is permanent," he said.
"I know. I've been pressing my fingers to it every morning for three weeks. It doesn't move."
"It means the bond has been completed." A pause. "You will not age at the rate you did before. It has already begun slowing." He kept his eyes on the water. "The wave-reading will keep sharpening. The salt water. You've noticed the salt water?"
I had. I hadn't said anything about it. "It feels like coming home," I said. "Every time I go in."
"Yes." He was quiet for a moment. "There will be other changes. I cannot tell you all of them because I don't know all of them. This has not —" He paused. "I have not had a completed bond before. I know the direction of it. I do not know every place it goes."
"Okay," I said.
"You are tied to this island," he said. "And to me. In ways that will compound over time. You should know that."
"Okay," I said again.
He turned and looked at me then, directly, the full weight of it. "I knew," he said. "Three weeks ago I knew the ink was permanent and I did not tell you."
The music from the rum bar drifted through the trees. Somewhere inside, someone laughed.
"Why?" I asked.
He looked back at the water. "Because you might have left."
I let that sit for a moment.
"Maro." The way I always said it — deliberate, specific, the tolerated sound, completely and specifically mine. "I missed a ferry."
He said nothing.
"I missed Thursday too."
"I know," he said.
"I know you know." I looked at him. "I'm telling you anyway."
"I am," he said, "working on the words."
I stared at him. "What?"
"There are things I want to say." He looked at his hands. "I am finding that the words available are not the right size for what I mean by them. I would prefer not to say them wrong."
