Epilogue
Hades
The hotel terrace at six thirty-seven in the morning looks the same as last year, but it doesn't feel the same.
The railing hasn't changed. The ocean is still visible in the distance.
The light is the same. No sun yet, the water still dark, and along the horizon the first pale pink beginning to break.
The particular stillness of a beachside hotel before breakfast.
A year ago, roughly this same hour, I kissed Mireya.
Then we boarded the plane and sat with six rows between us.
I spent five and a half hours in the air counting down the seconds I had left before I'd have to go back to pretending nothing had happened.
That early morning, with that kiss, we made a decision neither of us knew we were making.
Now we both know.
The glass door slides open, and Mireya sits down next to me, close, at a distance we've spent the last several months slowly erasing.
Her gaze drifts to the horizon, the light climbing and the first orange beginning to push up over the water.
“Last year, right in this exact spot, I was terrified,” she says.
“So was I.”
“Do you know what I was thinking about on the flight?” she asks, taking a sip of coffee without pulling her eyes from the sea.
“I spent five hours going back and forth about whether I should talk to Drummond and ask for another transfer.
I was convinced I'd made a mistake. I turned over every option I could think of to avoid facing what I was starting to feel for you.”
“I'm glad you didn't act on any of them,” I admit with a long breath, lacing my fingers through hers over the table.
“I didn't, because when we landed, I looked back before I got off the plane. I wanted to see you one last time, knowing I wouldn't see you again until the following Monday. And you were looking at me.”
She says it with her forehead pressed to my shoulder, then kisses my neck.
I close my eyes and smile.
Once, when I was a teenager, my mother told me that some words — the most important ones — never need to be said out loud. Back then I didn't understand it. I looked for their meaning in whiteboards and systems, in games won and games lost. In a marriage that didn't hold. In an obsession.
Now, with Mireya leaning against my shoulder at six forty in the morning in Florida, while the sun wakes on the horizon, I understand.
Those words aren't said.
Those words are lived.
And maybe someday, on a dirt field at Aura Valley, a little girl in her mother's cleats with a ball too big for her will learn what they mean without anyone ever having to tell her.