Page 35 of No Greater Oblivion

I thought we were okay. Maybe a little shaken but not so much that time wouldn’t heal us on its own.

Apparently not.

He covers my hand with his and guides my fingers to his lips for a kiss. “What’s the point in life without you?”

“Is that why you went in?” I can’t help but ask. “When the building was about to collapse?”

“I was either getting you out or dying with you.”

I blink and warm tears roll down my lashes. “What can I do? What will help?”

“Just be with me. That’s it.”

“Always.” I kiss his cheeks and then each corner of his mouth. “Forever. For the rest of our lives.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

9

ASHES TO ASHES

Dahlia

The Past

August slips away in a hazy, golden blur, the last blistering hot weeks of summer finally simmering down to welcome a cooler, more temperate autumn. Lettie sulked about the shift in weather and the unseasonably cool evening we had a few nights ago while I rejoiced in the reprieve—summer in New York is nothing compared to summer in Barcelona. It’s a different kind of heat.

Alejandro drifts further and further away; alone at sea and kept afloat by a raft and sheer willpower. I wonder if it’s worth trying to pull him back to shore.

On the last Sunday of August, he finally takes me to see the lounge. I’ve been begging to go, if only to see the damage with my own eyes. I’m not sure what to expect—blackened windows, damaged doors, dingy walls. Part of me wonders if the fire was really as bad as everyone makes it seem. All I have to go on are secondhand accounts of an evening I have no recollection of.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I found waiting on the other side of the front doors.

“El Aliciente.” Karina says. “How mysterious.”

I reach for the doorhandle. “Do you think we have to buy something to sit in here?”

All the columns have burned to the core, revealing the load-bearing beams under layers of plaster and wood. Most of the ceiling panels have collapsed and the glass from the skylight is completely shattered and boarded up. The fire burned so intensely even the mosaic tiles on the walls cracked and fell apart. Now there lies a sea of ruins at my feet, colorful tile chunks mingling with charred wooden planks and cracked glass.

Behind the bar, the wall of antiqued glass is shattered and stained, most of the shelves having collapsed and the stools underneath the counter are burned beyond recognition. The doors to the kitchens are barely hanging onto the hinges.

“I’ve never seen a man that pretty in real life before.”

“Imagine he comes over here?”

I lift a hand to my mouth to stifle the sound that nearly escapes. I hadn’t expected the state of the lounge to affect me this deeply but being here makes it feel real in ways it hadn’t before.

El Aliciente was important to Alejandro and his family because it was his father’s place; the last dream he had before he died. For me, it was something else entirely.

I met my future in this lounge.

Karina and I were two clueless tourists when we stumbled through those front doors. And when I walked out of them the morning after, it had been with the intention of treasuring this place like a memory and never coming back. Except, I did. The lounge was part of our story. Alejandro and I met here and to think something as mundane as a gas leak could’ve caused this much destruction…

It’s all been reduced to ash.

“Oh, Alex.”