The Night That Never Left Us

Chapter Four

The sun had long set. The heat of the night had been enriched by the burning of their skin, and they had opened the window for zephyr to remind them their touches were real. Lone cars were passing by the motel with no reason to stop and every reason to keep going; somewhere someone shut the door and someone else found something to laugh about. Farther out, someone was tending to his wounds, each pang further fueling the rage to finish what he had begun. He wasn't alone; there were others, with faces known and many still unseen, who wouldn't spare a thought before pulling a trigger. But tonight, none of it could get to them. They were in their own little world; they were lost and never before had they felt like they belonged somewhere more than they did now.

She lay so close to him that only her hair was sprawled across her side of the bed. His arms, darkened with ink yet so light on every inch of her skin, were pressing her closer to him, even though there was no space left for the heat of love between them. Their foreheads touched, and he stared into her eyes as if he saw her for the first time with every blink. And she stared back, completely incredulous. It had been fast, the way she fell for him, but she would be lying if she claimed not to have seen it coming. The flutter of her heart each time he walked into her infirmary, the ease with which her eyes found his name on a list of scheduled appointments for the day. Now she was fatherless, a fugitive, without the one thing that had kept her clean before she met him, and there were still butterflies in her stomach at the slightest movement of his body. Perhaps she was still falling, not yet in the shallows of realizing what had transpired.

"Tell me about Panama?" she said.

A sigh of content escaped his lips and a smile teased in their corner.

"Well, I have a boat ready there," he said. When, unlike him, she didn't hide a smile, he went, "What?"

"Nothing, just ... I, um, I always kind of wanted to live on one," she said. The little things, the trivialities, the childish dreams, the thoughts that invade the mind when the evening is as far away as the morning; they had foregone them all, went right to the core, risked what matters most without having any foundations to rely upon. But she had opted for foundations first, a few times before, with other men, men that had nothing against them, she argued. It had still brought her here; so, really, it would be hypocritical to bemoan the speed that landed her in this bed, in a town whose existence she was ignorant of just days ago. Tonight, the self-righteousness won over any argument.

The pad of his thumb followed the curve of her lips, so gently she could barely feel it, so lovingly she could barely take it. It had never felt like this; even in her numbness to the ruins caused and found in Chicago, she felt his every touch, his want, his honesty. Her mind was clear, her heart never more alive, so unlike the times she escaped with a needle in her vein. How could this be bad for her, be inherently bad in any way? She could enumerate a dozen reasons but they were just words, words to be stomped upon like leaves in the autumn.

"Sara. I'll give you everything I possibly can. Whatever you want, we'll have it."

Possibilities. So many things she could want, so many things he could give to her. What crossed her mind first, though, what stayed and quietened everything else before she could think of it, was simple, as simple as a wish could be. A start, a new start that iterated every day, ensured every day, forever.

"So breakfasts, just the two of us?" she whispered.

He considered his words, as if unsure whether they fit. His eyes were still on her lips, resolute not to meet hers, as he spoke.

"I wouldn't mind if one day it wouldn't be just the two of us anymore."

There was doubt in his voice, as if he feared it was too much, too soon. It probably was, but they would probably be shot at when the sun was up again, chased like animals. Probably had lost its meaning to them; it was too rational a word in their irrational world.