Chapter Forty-Three. Daye
Daye
Rory arrived home with the weekend.
“I missed you so much,” he said at the door, his voice jarring after five days of muffled snow silence. “I have no idea how I’ll survive another week of that, let alone a whole semester.”
‘I missed you, too,’ Daye signed. Her hands, too, felt unwieldy after days upon days without conversations. ‘I hate it when you go. I wish you didn’t.’
She knew that she should have been used to it by now.
It had been years since her days started fraying in Rory-shaped holes.
But after three whole seasons at Rory’s side, she was out of practice; she had forgotten how to transmute loneliness into mere aloneness, how not to fall into the hole of his absence.
“I know. I hate it, too,” he said. “This week was crazy. I’ll tell you all about it, but I just need to hold you for a bit first.”
They clung to each other for a while in the foyer, Rory’s bag still slung over his shoulder, until Rory started shaking from the cold.
They spent that night in the fortress on a nest of blankets, winter spreading around them cold and still.
Rory curved around Daye in his coat and boots, his voice in her ear, telling her about the mysteries of his sister’s flat, about reacquainting himself with the library and registering for classes, about how the sidewalks were full of frozen patches and people kept tripping and sliding around—until she could almost picture it, the strange fantastical city she’d never visit, full of faces she’d never meet.
Neither of them was comfortable—Rory too cold and Daye too warm—but it was tolerable, and both could feel the specter of Sunday evening looming over them. So they made do, somehow.
And then Sunday came, and he was gone again.
“You know I love you, right? That I’m yours?
” Rory whispered into her collarbone the next Saturday, his eyes tracking against her skin like it was the bark of a paper birch, just on the verge of curling loose.
They were sprawled on the living room floor, all the windows thrown open.
The January night seemed to hang, suspended, like a single sustained note.
It seemed impossible that Sunday would ever come.
It seemed like Sunday would be here the next time she blinked.
Daye’s hand opened and closed against the carpet.
Lately she had been wondering, sometimes, what Rory meant when he said he loved her.
It felt like there was an undercurrent to the words, hidden but for a faint, distant hum.
Like looking at newly frozen ice, just thin enough that she could still see things moving under it, but too thick to tell what they were.
‘Rory.’ Her hand was moving almost without her deciding to. ‘What—’
Her fingers stilled. How could she explain this feeling, this niggling sense that there was something important just out of reach?
Rory sighed against her skin, eyes closed.
“I love you so”—he skated his nose down to her shoulder—“so”—his lips traced the curve of her breast—“much.” He buried his face in her ribs, exhaling.
The sultry heat of his breath played a tug-of-war with the cool night air across her skin, the sensation teetering just on the verge of discomfort.
“You do know that, right?” His eyes fluttered open, searching hers.
Daye hesitated, her fingers stuttering on questions she couldn’t find words for.
“Daye?” The smile fell from Rory’s face. He levered himself up so that his mouth was no longer hovering over her skin. “Daye, you do know that, right?” He swallowed, his eyes beginning to widen in something that looked close to panic.
‘Yes,’ Daye signed. ‘I know.’ She did know, even if something about the word seemed to have changed while she wasn’t looking.
The panicked look was still creasing the corners of his eyes. “And, do you—do you love me?” He sounded almost pleading.
‘Yes.’ Of course she loved him. She always had. And when he kept searching her eyes, she added, ‘I love you,’ making the movements large and sure. ‘I do. You know I want you here. That I wish you would stay, or that I could go with you, or—’
Rory surged forward, gathering her to him, his fingers lacing through hers like ivy, pinning any more words into stillness between their palms as his lips covered hers with a kiss.
“I can’t believe I have to go already,” Rory said on his third visit back from the university.
Daye could feel his voice humming against her cheek.
It was three in the afternoon on Sunday.
They were curled naked in bed, Daye’s head on Rory’s chest, his hand gently caressing her shoulder.
The uncomfortably warm stickiness between her legs offset by the knowledge that Rory’s return train was barreling closer and closer.
There was a mounting sense of urgency throughout that weekend, and it kept ratcheting up and up and up the closer evening came, until Daye could feel it vibrating against her teeth. A sense of approaching cataclysm, an end of days.
‘I wish I could come with you,’ she signed, her motions half hidden against his chest.
“I know. I wish so, too.” Rory pressed a kiss to her hair. “But it’s only for now, only until I find a solution. I promise.”
‘I don’t want you to go.’ Daye flexed her hands. It wasn’t the first time she’d said so that weekend, or the two before that, but it was the clearest. ‘Please, if you’re mine, if you’re doing this for me, please stay.’
Rory’s hand stilled on her arm. He rubbed his eyes. “Daye, please,” he said with a pained expression. “We talked about it. I hate it too, but we don’t have a choice. I don’t want to spend the time we have together arguing. Please, just … stop, okay?”
So Daye stopped. Rory kissed the top of her head, a silent apology. His hand returned to trailing up and down her arm, the tops of his fingers barely grazing her skin.
“Is there anything I can bring you from the city? Anything at all you want?” he asked after a minute.
‘That sounds like a bribe.’
“It isn’t.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I would love to bring something for you. If there’s anything you can think of. Anything you want.”
Daye buried her face in Rory’s shoulder. Hair was appearing on his chest, delicate and curly.
“Daye?”
‘I don’t want anything.’
“There must be something. Please, can I buy you something in the city? Is there anything that you want me to bring?”
‘No,’ Daye said again. The only thing she wanted from the city was Rory. But that was the one thing she could no longer ask for.