At the kitchen table, Clay and I eat in silence. He won’t even look at me.
I want to tell him I understand why he thinks this is a bad idea, but that I have to try. Yet, I don’t say a word. Because I know it won’t change his mind. And anything he says won’t change mine.
When dinner is finished, he pushes back from the table. “I’ll wash up.” He reaches for my empty plate, but I stop him…
I do it without thinking.
I touch his forearm, my fingers against his flesh… and he stalls, looking down at me.
“I’ll be okay,” I say up to him.
He is silent, blue eyes lidded, watery in the candlelight.
“We both know it’s time. I can’t stay any longer.”
His mouth parts like he’s going to speak, but no words fall out.
I remove my hand and he watches me a second longer, like he can’t pull himself away. Maybe it’s the loneliness I see in his eyes, the part of him that doesn’t want to admit that he preferred having someone else on the island with him. The part of him that doesn’t want me to go. Even if these are thoughts he can’t admit, even to himself.
I almost say I’m sorry. For leaving.
Because he knows this feeling too well—being left behind. The only one. The last one.
But after a second, he forces his eyes away and walks to the sink.
My heart feels like it’s being dismantled. Maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t there, maybe it’s not loneliness in his eyes—it’s relief that he’ll finally be rid of me. Even if he thinks I’m a fool for risking the open ocean.
Maybe I’m imagining emotion in his eyes where there is none.
So I leave him alone in the kitchen, a single candle burning from the table, and I retreat to the bedroom—his bedroom—where I crawl beneath the blankets. Once I’m gone, his bed will be his again. Linen and silence and solitude. The island too.
I’ve been here over two months.
And last night, a boat washed ashore.
I have to try.
The morning light is gray through the window, and I hear the wind before I’ve even opened my eyes. Rain gusts against the house as I walk out onto the front porch, sweater pulled tight across my chest. The ocean is churning and tossing against the shoreline.
Fuck.
I won’t be going anywhere today.
Two more days pass like this. Three and then four. The rain unending, the temperature dropping, and I worry we’re slipping into colder months, or we’ve drifted farther north, near Iceland or Greenland.
“You could leave the island,” I say over a breakfast of bread and apple jam. “You could come with me.”
We’ve barely spoken since the boat arrived. Like we both know there’s no point—I’ll be leaving soon, might as well pretend that I’ve already left.
He pushes up from his chair, walks to the stove, where the cast-iron kettle has begun to boil. He carries it to the counter, but stops, staring out the back window, and I know what he’s looking at: the gravestone at the edge of the island. He shakes his head. “This place is all I have left.”
He won’t leave his buried wife and children. And what kind of life could he really manage on the mainland, now that he has become a fable? Now that the world has changed beyond anything he could imagine?
He pours the steaming water into two mugs. Our morning tea.
He leaves one for me, before he heads out the back door.
I know it shouldn’t matter, but a twinge of hurt rips through me. I hate the distance between us. I hate the quiet, the side glances when he refuses to look at me.
