Chapter 60
Damien
Play - Fear of the Water by SYML
We were here
Blue eyes haunt me.
Blue eyes have stolen my sleep, my sense of responsibilities. They stole my control.
I can see them everywhere if I focus enough.
A sickening feeling squeezes my chest every time they appear. Need, confusion, torture, they all blend and punish me for wanting more.
The wind is colder here tonight. I lied to myself all week long, pretending nothing changed and that all I needed was air and distance to have some space to think.
But all I can think of is the fabric between us, and the way she looked at me like she wanted to break the rule as much as I did.
I hear her footsteps and when I turn she’s standing there like always, her sketchbook in one hand and on the other her cigarettes.
“You’re here,” I say.
She sits down next to me, and her eyebrow lifts before she replies, “You invited me.”
My eyes drop briefly to the sketchbook then back to her as her hand reaches out for the lighter in her pocket. The one I gave her. Her hair dances with the wind as she lights her first cigarette of the night. The ocean reflects in her eyes and all I can do is stare.
She looks like she was built for disappearing, and I keep standing in the way of it.
“I’m surprised,” I finally replied.
“Why?”
I shrug as she takes a long drag before passing it to me. “You usually disappear on weekends.”
Her expression changes and a small smile appears on her lips, “Apparently not this time.”
I don’t know how long we stay like that, sharing a cigarette, then another one. She looks thoughtful and confused even if the silence doesn’t seem to make her uncomfortable.
“Do you think smells can trigger you?” She asks, looking at me.
I turn my head slightly. “What do you mean?”
Her shoulders lift in a shrug before she speaks again, “Scents… Can they…I don’t know. Bring back things? Bad memories or feelings?”
She looks away and whispers, “It sounds stupid.”
I watch her for a moment, trying to understand what she’s not saying and reply, “It’s not stupid.”
My hand moves before I think about it, reaching to her jaw and gently bringing her face back to me. “Sometimes your body remembers things before your mind does.” Her eyes soften and I pull my hand back. “You don’t have to explain it to me before you’re ready. But know that I’m here.”
She sighs, as if this wasn’t important. But it is to me. Somehow, without making any sense, her feeling this way is important to me.
“You don’t have to perform okay around me,” I say as she looks back at me.
A laugh with no humor comes out of her mouth. “I don’t know how to.”
“Then fail at it, I can take that.”
The conversation ends without really ending.
She doesn’t offer more than that and I don’t push.
Instead, she opens her sketchbook. I watch as she finds the unfinished drawing from days ago, the one she started here.
Her pencil moves slowly across the page, adding lines to the flower that had been waiting for her.
“Why do you like it here?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer immediately. She rarely does when a question demands her to be honest about how she feels. Instead, she looks out at the horizon, where the line between the ocean and the sky has almost disappeared.
The sketchbook closes immediately after, as if she wasn’t in the mood for being creative tonight. Her gaze is fixed on the same invisible spot when she talks again, “The cliffs?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s nothing underneath our feet,” she says eventually. “And there’s nothing above us either. Only sky and water.”
I follow her gaze and for a moment I don’t know how I feel with her like this, opening herself up to the person she should push away.
“Yeah.” A useless answer, because I don’t know what else to say, and because I strangely understand it more than I want to.
There is something comforting about standing somewhere that reminds you the world is larger than whatever you carry inside yourself. For a few minutes, the past becomes quieter. The things you regret, the things you lost, the people you couldn’t save; they all feel impossibly far away.
Then she speaks again, “Do you know we’re made of stardust?
” I stare at her with a confused look. “Isn’t that fascinating?
” She continues as she looks upward. “Everything that makes us who we are came from something that existed before us. The elements in our bodies were created inside stars. Stars that lived for billions of years, then died, and somehow what they left behind became something else.” She pauses, her eyes moving back toward her hands. “Us.”
I’ve heard the phrase before. Everyone has.
We’re made of stardust.
As if the universe has spent billions of years taking things that were ending and finding another purpose for them.
I have spent most of my life believing the opposite. Things break, and sometimes they stay broken. Believing that there are things you lose that do not come back no matter how much you wish they would.
She seems to believe something different. She looks at a dead star and sees the beginning of something. And I want to reply, but Mireya only speaks like this when we’re on top of the cliff, alone, and the sky is dark. So I’d rather hear everything before saying anything.
“Talk to me,” I whisper.
She laughs sadly, taking a long breath in and looks at me.
“When I was a kid, I was scared to try to reach the stars,” she says. “They felt impossible. Like something you could only look at and never touch. But every time I made a wish and threw that star paper up, I felt like I could reach them for a second.”
She looks down at her hands again, brushing her fingers against her scars gently. And I want to reach out and touch them myself. “We’re all made of stardust anyway,” she whispers softly.
And there it is. That impossible thing about her. She says things like that and doesn’t seem to realize what they do to me. Despite everything she has been through, she has somehow kept the part of herself that believes the universe is still capable of giving something back.
I have met plenty of people who survived.
Survival is common, but hope is rarer.
Maybe that is what draws my attention every time she speaks.
Just after that she gets up, brushing the sand from her clothes, and then turns toward me, offering me her hand. For a moment, I just look at it.
I have spent years learning how to read situations before they happen. How to recognize risks. How to understand consequences before anyone else notices them. And I know immediately that this is dangerous. The way I feel when I am around her.
I take her hand anyway, my fingers barely touch hers before she starts walking, but the contact is enough to make me aware of myself in a way I haven’t been in years. The warmth of her skin. The softness of her grip. The fact that something so insignificant can feel like something I will remember.
I let go before I have to question why.
We walk along the shore until the cliffs rise around us and the waves crash against the rocks below.
“Give me your keys.”
I hand them to her without asking as she kneels beside one of the rocks and begins carving into the surface. When she turns back toward me, she is smiling.
We were here.
A small lily sits beside the words. Still missing a petal.
Next to it is another engraving. Older and worn down by years of weather. The writing is messy but it’s readable.
To purgatory and back.
I smile despite myself. “Is it new?”
Her fingers brush over the older letters as if remembering the exact moment this happened, then she replies, “Hayzel and I did this when we were younger.” She looks at the one she just carved, then back at me. The exhaustion disappears from her gaze, replaced by nostalgia. So much of it.
“Now we have our own,” she whispers.
When she stands, I realize too late how close she is. The change in her breathing. The way her expression shifts when she becomes aware of the same thing. The space between us is small. And suddenly I am reminded of every reason it needs to stay that way.
My hands remain at my sides, because I know myself. I know exactly what would happen if I allowed myself to forget who I am supposed to be.
“A secret?” I ask quietly.
Her eyes find mine. They’re a terrifying shade of blue because they make drowning look gentle and I wouldn’t mind the pain of it. I’d let her trap me in them, and that scares me. Everything does when she’s involved.
Her. This. Us.
And maybe she sees the same thing in me. Maybe that is what makes this so difficult. Not wanting someone passionately, but being known, being seen completely.
“A secret,” she repeats in the softest voice.
I hate how something so innocent can feel like a confession. I can hear the ocean, the wind, and my own breathing changing. But still, her eyes held mine, and for a moment I forgot every reason I should look away.
“We should go.” The words come out before I can stop them. I look away first, toward the path back up the cliffs. “You need to rest.”
In two days, she will be sitting in front of me again. There will be other people around, other voices, the familiar distance put back into place. She will call me by my title and I will act like this evening was only an evening.
I am still her professor and she is still my student. That’s why I reach for my keys, instead of letting my fingers brush the long strand of hair that is covering her cheek. “Come on.”
She nods, and we start walking. I don’t look back at the rock because I don’t need to.
I know exactly what we left there.
I have spent years forgetting names, faces, and places. It is part of the job. Yet, I already know I will remember the way she looked at that piece of stone, carving proof that one moment of her life had mattered. And I was lucky enough to be a part of that memory.
The moment we arrive back at the building, she turns around, offering me a soft smile and murmurs, “Goodnight, Damien.”
Goodnight, Mireya…
We both walk to our own rooms, but when I arrive at mine, something falls at my feet and I bend to pick up what appears to be scrap paper.
Each man kills the thing he loves.
- Oscar Wilde