Page 83 of Lost and Found

The second time, he’d been alone. Asleep, covered in bandages, still too vulnerable-looking, and still larger than life to me.

“Yeah, I was scared. Even if I haven’t had another panic attack for a few months, I’m still scared all the fucking time,” he admits. “But I like the money, for one. Keep that to yourself, though. Don’t need people catching on to how much money us blue-collar folk make.” He gives me a sly look before turning earnest. “And—I like being the one people call on.” He turns a frown out to the foggy ocean, his pupils shrunken to pinpricks. “I’ve never been someone’s first call. That would be Ellis.” He sighs. “But at the risk of sounding like a sopping-wet wimp here, after a lifetime of being the one who needed people more than they needed me, I relish being the one who gets to help.”

“You are firmly in first position when it comes to my calls, for whatever that’s worth,” I tell him. “You’re not getting edged out of that spot anytime soon.”

He snorts and lays a kiss at the top of my head, then presses a tentative one to my mouth. I’m not allowed to engage in any sexual activity for two weeks, and my doctor’s policy is no penetrative sex until week four, as long as everything is looking good. I can tell Silas is going to treat me like I’m delicate in the interim, and as much as I appreciate his care and know that sex is only one small part of us, I can’t say I love it. Not when we just got our start, and not when he’s treated me like I could handle anything up until this point.

We do the circuit on the train twice before climbing back into the truck and heading back home for the evening, where wewatch movies in Silas’s bed until we fall asleep again in a sea of pillows.

I barely rouse when he leaves for work in the morning, where he’ll be for three days in a row. I only manage to kiss him goodbye and mumble “I love you,” with my eyes still closed, before sleep tugs me under again.

Time, bitch that she is, pulls the same shit she always pulls. My days are marathons long. Silas and I text regularly throughout, a conversation with no direction and no end. And since I hardly sleep, anyway, and keep myself awake worrying about my lack of sleep when I try, I spend my nights baking bread until I feel ready to collapse.

I continue to sleep in Silas’s bed, with Calcifur molded to me every night.

Send me a picture of you, I wake up to one morning from him.

You first, I say. He obliges me. He’s on top of a scorched world, dawn rising up from the blackened ridge behind him. There’s steam floating out of the paper cup in his dirty hand and soot stuck in all the lines of his face. His tired smile looks even whiter than normal in contrast. Eyes brighter, too.

I fire a picture off to him in return, making sure Cali is also in the frame, and watch the three dots pop up and disappear over and over.

Are you short-circuiting, lol?I ask after the fifth time.

Yeah, Red, I am, he sends back.

I like you guys in my bed. I like you in my shirt, too.

I like it a lot.

Fuck. I can’t wait to come home.

I can’t wait for him to come home, too. I miss his sounds moving throughout the house. His insistent humming and whistling and his baby-talking the cat. The way he sweeps and vacuums, like clockwork when it complies with his schedule, every three days. His distant music in the garage when he’sworking out. Despite being gone for stretches at regular intervals all summer, the quiet is oppressive this time.

The day he’s finally supposed to be off, I get a message from Silas that readsWe’re getting held over. There’s a fire in Bend we have to go help on. Good news is, we should be off for a few days before the Fourth now, before it gets bad again. Give Cali a kiss for me.

He follows this up with a phone call a few minutes later to tell me he loves me, and the low rasp of his phone voice has me kicking my feet against the mattress and squealing into my pillow after we get off the call.

I haven’t been a nail-biter since I was five, but by day seven post-transfer, mine are chewed down to the quick. I can’t take it anymore. I know I’m risking a false negative and potentially crushing my hopes, but I have to take a test.

Just one, I promise myself. I’ll only take one, and if it’s negative, I won’t do that to myself again, because it very well could be wrong.

I’m too impatient to wait until the morning before work, even though I know that’s when my hormone levels would be the most concentrated. I haul my water bottle and both of my little cardboard boxes into the downstairs bathroom, Cali weaving in and out of my feet.

“It’s fine if it’s negative,” I tell her.

She slow-blinks her agreement.

“It’s probably going to be. I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” I say.

Her tail flicks behind her. It’d probably begoodfor it to be negative so I can fortify myself in steps. If it is negative, I can still hold out hope for a positive test when my levels might, hypothetically, be higher, but I’ll at least be able to temper myself this way.

Time isn’t a thief. It’s a prison with a mercurial warden. These minutes take a century.

God, I’m sweaty. I can see tiny beads of perspiration in the lines of my palms. Heart line, life line, fate, and head. I press and slide my thumbs into each until my alarm finally sings.

Me and my reflection lock eyes. Hers are glassy and wild, and her hair is untamed.

I flip it over, my hand trembling so badly I struggle to see.