by Ella James
“Everybody has a favorite color.” His brows waggle. “Mine is gray.”
“Gray?” I snort. “It can’t be gray. That’s not a color!”
He grins. “Tell that to the good folks at Crayola.”
“It’s a color, but it’s…”
“Gray.” He tilts his head.
“It’s flat and sad.”
He smiles with dimples. “Not to me.”
“It can’t be your favorite. Choose another.”
“Gray.”
“A runner up of sorts.”
“Dark blue.”
“The color of a dark sea? I’ll accept that.”
He smirks. “What about you, Siren? I gave you two, now I want two.”
“That’s easy, and you’ll see that mine are valid. Green and purple.”
“Favorite food?”
Our path veers rightward, running flat as we traverse the peak’s significant width. Frost gleams on the vegetation. Out to our right, sprawling past the fog-dappled valley, we can see the ocean stretching on for eons.
“That’s a bit of a tough call. Perhaps a York Peppermint Patty. That’s my favorite thing I eat consistently. As well as apples, I suppose. And yourself?”
I feel a tremor in his hand and squeeze it slightly. “I guess maybe tacos.”
“We don’t eat that here really.”
He blinks down at me. “Someday.”
“What does that mean…someday?”
“Someday I’ll come get you in a plane and take you to get tacos.”
I laugh. “You can’t land a plane here. There’s no air strip.”
“Not all planes need landing strips.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
He smiles. “Trust me on this, Siren. Planes are my hobby.”
I file that bit away, meaning to ask more later. For now, I stick to topic. “Where would you take me to get a taco? Mexico?”
“New York.”
I laugh, and he looks abashed. “I know it doesn’t sound authentic, but New York City’s got the best taco place. It’s not in Mexico, but the owners are from down there. Now I want some,” he says, husky.
“What have you been eating here?”
I feel his shoulder lift on a shrug. “Different stuff.”
“What’s been your favorite?”
“I don’t know. It was all pretty good.”
I rub my finger up along the side of his wrist, where I can always see a bone protruding. His body is so different than my own, even his wrists and hands. “I worry you should eat more.”
He laughs at that, and lifts one dark brow at me. “Wasting away, huh?”
“Well, of course not. But I worry for you. I’m a worrier, I suppose.”
“I’m good.”
Our arms bump lightly as the path curves in its zigzag, headed back the other way now.
“Are you really, though?” I stroke his knuckles with my fingertips and feel his fingers tremble.
“Yeah.” He gives me a tight smile, and my heart aches a bit.
“Tell me more about Declan-not-Homer,” I say. “What’s your favorite book? Do you re-read the ones you really like, or is that just for those of us without a reliable connection to the world wide web? What were your favorite parts of your life back home?”
He chuckles. “That’s a lot of questions.”
“You answer first, then I will.”
Declan
I smile down at her. I’m always smiling at her—all the fucking time, until my face hurts. With my free hand, I rub at my aching cheek, trying not to let my smile turn into laughing. Trying to breathe deeper so my hands will stop shaking.
I’m kind of surprised I can handle her holding my hand when shit’s like this, but the truth is…I like it. I don’t know why it’s different with Finley. I guess because of how we met—that time inside the burrow.
Despite what she said back there, she doesn’t know me as “Homer.” She can’t imagine what my life is like back home. She doesn’t know who I’m supposed to be. And she doesn’t treat me differently—not like an addict and definitely not like a celebrity.
“I’m gonna have to go with something that’s kind of embarrassing.”
She grins up at me. “Yes?”
“It’s not a board book,” I warn.
She giggles. “But it is a kids’ book. I can sense it.”
“Bullshit. How can you sense it?”
“You’re blushing.” She waves at my face.
I roll my eyes. “Guys don’t blush.” I jab her ribs. “But I know someone who does.”
“Sod off.”
I chuckle.
“Out with it.”
I shake my head and swallow my pride. “I’d really like to say something like The Odyssey. Or Marcel Proust.”
“But…” She’s grinning. Little witch.
I sigh for effect. “But…it’s Harry Fucking Potter.” I watch her face as a gorgeous smile spreads over it.
“Of course it is. They are the best books of our time. It should be on the list with Shakespeare. What house? That’s what I really need to know.”
“What house do you think?” I crook a brow at her, and she crooks hers back as our path narrows and steepens.
“Somewhat difficult to say. I don’t think Slytherin. You’re too kind for that.”
I scoff. “Kind? Me?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m voting against Ravenclaw, although perhaps I shouldn’t, since you can recite poetry.”
“You calling me a Hufflepuff?” I give her a skeptical look, and she laughs. “Actually…perhaps.” She taps her chin. “I’ve narrowed down to Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, but I can’t quite sort you. You’re likely too ambitious to be Hufflepuff. And perhaps a bit competitive. You do play games professionally. And I believe you like to win.”
She laughs, and I realize I’m smirking at her.
“The sorting hat says…Gryffindor!”
I nod, smiling at the geekiness of this shit. “Hufflepuff for you?”
“How did you know?” She narrows her eyes at me.
“I had you sorted from the second day in the cave.”
“Not the first?”
“I was getting Slytherin vibes before that.” I laugh at my lame joke, and she hits me with our joined hands.
“Likewise.” She makes a snake sound for that house’s mascot.
“So you’re a Hufflepuff. Who likes the colors green and purple, and likes reading. Favorite book?”
“Wuthering Heights. Followed closely by—” she cringes— “The Great Gatsby.”
“What’s wrong with those two? What would you rather have said?”
“Little Women. Harry Potter.”
“But you didn’t, because?”
She shrugs. “I enjoy a bit of drama.” A small smile tilts her lips. “A bit of melancholy, I suppose.”
We walk in easy silence for a while, trekking horizontally across what’s getting to be the middle part of the volcano’s wide base. We follow the trail up a set of stone stairs before starting back the other way, the ocean to our right now.
I watch Finley out of the corner of my eye. I catch her gaze on me a few times, too.
I think about the last question she asked: What was my favorite part of life in Boston? I’ve realized since she asked that I don’t know. Every month leading up to November, things got worse and worse without me realizing…and at the end there, I’d stopped doing everything I liked.
She tugs my arm, and I glance up to find a boulder over to our right, jutting out over the zigzag path below.
“Look out there.” She points out at the ocean. “Do you see that?”
She hurries over to the boulder and tosses her bag down, digging in it frantically. “Hurry!”
I climb up behind her, taking the binoculars she hands me and focusing them on the water. “Are these…dolphins?” I squint.
“Whale dolphins. They’re two-toned, correct?”
I n
od as I watch them jumping. “Black with a white belly, looks like.”
“That’s right.”
I watch them for a while before handing the binoculars to her. Then I watch her watch. She’s so damn pretty. She could be a model if she wanted to. Finally, she sets the binoculars in her lap and digs into her bag, smiling as she brings out a package of Pop-Tarts.
“Step up from an Atkins bar.”
She opens them and passes me one. I’m not hungry, but I never am. I bite into it.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You’re still feeling poorly. You like Pop-Tarts—you said so—but you look queasy at this moment.”
“Do not.”
She peers at the ocean out in front of us, and her mouth bends into a frown. “It was dolphins that took us to sea. That day,” she adds softly. “It was my birthday…and I wanted to see dolphins.”
It takes me a full second to realize what she’s talking about. Then I’m not sure what to say, what’s adequate. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Finley.”
She shrugs, nibbling at the un-iced edges of her Pop-Tart. I wait for her to say more, but she just blinks at the ocean.
“I want to tell you something,” she rasps. “Ask you something. But I’m nervous to,” she whispers.
“Ask away.” I sit up a little, propping my elbow on my knee as I lean closer to her.
“You may not say that if you knew the question.”
I turn more fully toward her, sitting cross-legged. “You can ask me anything. I’ll try to give an honest answer.”
I watch as she swallows. She looks down at her legs, stretched out in front of her. Then she crosses them. She looks into my eyes again. “When I was a small girl, my mother used to tell me stories.”
I nod slowly.
“They were of a princess—me. And her dear friend…a prince. Prince Declan. Do you know why?” she whispers.
I shake my head, feeling my pulse pick up.
Her brown eyes hold mine. “It’s because she loved your father.”
I feel suspended mid-air, that sort of paused sensation that comes with a shock. At the same time, everything I’ve ever heard my old man say in recent times about the island floods my mind.
“You can’t go wrong there. Especially where you are, son—with your temptations. If there is temptation there,” he laughed, “it won’t be a pill.”
I’m thrown back into my room at Pontresina. Answering the door that night, and Laurent leading me to the couch. What he said, and how he handed me that Xanax after.
“Declan?”
Her hand on my arm makes me blink. I realize she’s leaned in close. “Sorry.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
I can see concern on her face—the rumpled brow and taut mouth.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you,” she says.
“Tell me what?” It comes out hoarse.
She looks down, biting her lip. She looks up at me. “That they were lovers,” she says. “Here. Before they married others. They were lovers and…you know—” She clenches her jaw, looking like she thinks it’s time to shut up.
“What?” I ask quietly.
She licks her lips. Inhales and blows the breath out. “Do you remember visiting here?”
“Some. A little bit.”
I tell her first that my parents split when I was five. So she won’t feel bad for asking about my trip here with my dad the next year. If he was coming here to see her mom or something, that’s not going to upset me. Mom left him.
“I remember he pitched it as an adventure to me. We flew to Cape Town, and I had this little green travel pillow that looked like a dinosaur.” I shake my head, smiling at the randomness of that memory. “I remember seeing the boat we came on. It was pretty big, and it was headed to Antarctica for something.”
I look at my lap, because I’m not sure how to say the rest of what sticks out to me.
She whispers, “What else?”
My throat kind of knots up. I’m surprised by that. I suck my cheeks in, swallow. “Ahh, I think I met your grandmother.”
She asks about that, and I tell her about kneading bread, and Finley smiles. “That was likely Gammy. She did love to bake and make bread. She could eat bread at every meal.”
Her eyes go to the ocean again, and with them fixed there, she murmurs, “Did you remember me? I heard you were here when…”
When they found her. She can’t say it.
I swallow again, and take her hand.
“You sure you want to talk about that, Siren?”
“I asked.”
My thumb strokes her smooth hand.
“Yeah, I do.” When she says nothing, I go on, trying to tread lightly. “That’s a lot of what stuck with me. I guess just like…the mood of people. How focused they were. How everybody tried to sort of stay busy. There was like…this weight hanging behind things. Things like making bread. Nobody told me exactly what had happened, so I didn’t really know.”
Dad told me someone had gotten lost, someone important. And I could tell he was upset. He was upset the whole time. I remember feeling kind of nervous about that. Because I didn’t know what was wrong. Just that something was.
“I saw you,” I finally say. “When you came back. Dad was on that boat.”
Chills cover my skin as I remember how everybody looked when the boat pulled up to the dock, and someone stood up, holding her. I don’t know how many people were there standing on the dock with me, but I’d imagine probably at least a handful, despite it being nighttime. And I guess at that first glance, when they first saw her, they all must have known that it was only her.
I remember everybody crying, but trying not to. And someone was holding her. My dad was right there by her, too, and he looked really weird. Really upset.
I look at Finley’s face and find her eyes a little wide. That’s all, though; besides that, she looks impassive as she stares out at the ocean. “Didn’t know that. I didn’t know you two were here at all. Not for several years. I suppose it didn’t seem quite relevant—or perhaps a shade too relevant. Your father’s presence here then.”
I want to tell her how the glimpse I got of her eyes was my first time ever seeing agony: that bright blaze roaring like a fire in her dead, sallow face. I couldn’t place it, so I rolled that memory over like a pebble in my hand for years. Till after my own shit, when one day I caught the same soundless blaze in my eyes in a mirror.
“When I thought of coming back here, I thought about you.” I manage to keep my voice steady.
She looks at me—for just a second, her eyes touch mine, asking, What? Then it’s back out at the ocean. I squeeze her hand.
“I heard you were still here. And I wondered how you turned out. How did you keep going? I wanted to know.”
She’s so still, so frozen, my hand on hers shakes from being worried I upset her.
Her lips tuck up, a barely-there motion. She still won’t look at me, but her hand in mine tightens. “There is no how.” The words are thin. Fragile.
“I think of my mum, and for her, too…I believe there was no how about it. Your father left. She wouldn’t go with him. Too frightened, I think. And so she married my father. And that’s the part that strikes me most, I believe.” Her tongue moves over her lower lip, her mouth pressing flat for a second, and her eyes grab at mine again. “There’s endurance, I believe. And within that, there can be no how.”
Twenty-Eight
Declan
Her voice trembles a little on those words, and I fold both my hands around hers.
“Ask me,” she says thinly. “What you’re thinking. Don’t just sit there silently. I’m not so fragile.”
Her fingers thread through mine, as if she wants to reassure me that she’s not upset. I look out at the ocean, too, like she is. “What was your dad like?”
Her tongue darts over her lips; I see her in my periphery. “Truth be told?” She looks down before seeking my eyes with her
watery ones. “He was horrid.”
My heart feels like it’s lunging out of my chest. I know Finley’s okay—she’s right by me—but I’m so fucking jittery and shit, I start to sweat.
She moves her hand off mine and draws a finger underneath her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve never spoken of this before, to anyone.” She sniffles softly. “No one asks about them.”
“Hey…there’s nothing to be sorry for.”
I wrap my hands more tightly around hers. With her chin up and her brown eyes spilling tears down her cheeks, she looks almost holy—like some sort of warrior saint.
“I hate to think of her life with him.” She inhales, wiping at her eyes again. “My mum was…lovely.” She sounds breathless as she shields her eyes with one hand. “My father was the last of the unmarried males near her age.” She looks at her lap as she whispers, “He wasn’t good.”
“What do you mean?”
She looks at me, but it’s more like she’s looking through me. She draws her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them.
“I hate to think of her that way.” Her throat sounds tight. Her head is kind of down there on her arms. That’s how I notice when her shoulders tremble.
For a second, I’m not sure what to do. Despite what she said, she seems fragile. Like if I fuck up, I might break her. But I can’t watch her cry without touching her. So I scoot closer. I sit right beside her, and I wrap my arm around her back. When she doesn’t tense or push me away, I wrap my other arm around her in the front and scoot still closer.
Finley’s body slackens against mine. “I killed them.” Her voice quavers. “I killed my mum.” I feel her shaking ramp up, and I squeeze her tighter. Fuck.
“No.” I shift her weight a little, so she’s in my lap—she’s in my arms—and wrap my hand around the back of her head. “I know that’s not true.”
“I did.” Her voice is tight and thick.
I rub her back as she shivers. I can feel her chest pump, as if she can’t get enough air.
“Hey…” I rub some circles on her back. “Just take some slow breaths. Do it with me, sweetheart.”
I inhale, pushing my chest out so she feels it. I feel her ribcage expand on a breath. Then she exhales with her cheek pressed to my shirt.
