Fifteen - Miracles
FIFTEEN
MIRACLES
HIS DOOR IS solid. Chocolate patterns over honey. Heavy wood, open grain.
The corner room, so the deck lights slant onto it sideways, casting shadows from both directions. They cross in the middle, dead center in my line of sight.
It’s all I can see. All I can think of.
Because the moment that stops filling my mind, I’ll have to move.
Have to knock. Have to speak.
Have to hold the knife by the blade and tell him there’s no hilt, no other way. While my hand bleeds and I pretend stitches can save it.
But Mom is… What she said this morning… It makes sense. Waiting for something to end is counterproductive. It seeps away your energy and, when the time does come, the heartbreak is the same.
But Ruin will go international soon, and I can’t be heartbroken by then. If it’s coming regardless, then I need time for it to scar. So I can focus when we’re there.
Yes. Yes, that’s perfectly logical.
This is simply not the right time. Right now, my focus needs to be on Ruin. And then the Olympics. And after the Olympics, we just need to keep flying up the ranks together. Then for sure there will be other opportunities that we’ll need to figure out, but yeah, it’s… It’s what we need to do.
It’s what I need to do.
Cold wind slits through my exposed neck, cuts through my eyes. I don’t blink.
My arm moves, brings my hand up. It doesn’t fist though, just hangs there, inert in the air, trembling. I strike it against the door just like that, two broken thumps instead of neat knocks. It’s all I manage. It drops right after.
My breaths are too fast. I press my eyes shut and hold the air in, as long as I can. Then all out, then all in, hold. It’s not helping, but at least I don’t have to listen to myself struggling, to how pitchy and pathetic I sound just breathing.
Didn’t even speak yet.
Then I flinch. Movement. Inside.
I can still run. No, he’d see me. It’d make it worse.
The door opens. Eli appears. Soft t-shirt, pajama pants. Then his warm smile, his loving eyes.
His hair is damp. He smells of the green apples from his shampoo. And I know I’ll never be able to eat one, ever again. Because it will bring me back to this moment.
The moment I killed love. Forever. With anyone.
Because it’s him, for me. And if it’s not him, then I don’t want it.
And it’s not.
So there.
“Hey,” he says. Like always. Like nothing’s wrong.
I can’t smile. Can’t do this here where there’s light. Need the night to cover me, so I don’t see what I’m doing. Or else I can’t.
Just get on with it. A thumb over my shoulder, I ask, “Can we go for a walk?”
And then a flick of a switch, a strike of a match.
Not sure what changes, but it’s gradual, quiet as if soft tissue catching flame, starting on one end, consuming all, leaving black ash and nothing else behind.
It takes a second, a veneer that wasn’t there when he opened this door and his smile for me.
Still a smile. Just not the same.
He knows.
Why I’m here. Why a walk.
It hurts. My chest, my stomach, my lungs. Everything.
Of course he knows. Yet he still smiles to spare me. And I can’t even gather the strength to do the same for him.
He nods. “Sure.”
Doesn’t grab a sweater. Doesn’t put on shoes. Just steps out, hands in his pockets, tugging down the waist of his flannel bottoms.
I don’t look. Rush away. He follows—I hear his steps behind me through the gravel.
Can’t stop. Keep walking. Keep moving. When I stop, I’ll have to. And I can’t.
Please, I can’t do it.
“Cassian.”
His voice. I stop, spin around, face him.
Then glance, side to side, everywhere. Shit, we walked so far. This round pen beside us, it’s…
It’s pen number three. Where I first saw him. Sitting like a kid, eyes on his sunset.
No, not here. I can’t do it here.
My eyes snap to him, then away, around. Then to him again because he’s smiling. For real smiling. Why is he smiling? If he knows then —
“I understand.”
…
What?
The smile on his face is not his anymore. Pressed, contained. Moonlight takes his eyes, shines them on me so I know I’m at fault for how they’re hurting. Of course I know. Just this morning, he—
Fuck.
Just this morning, he tried to reconnect, brought me cake, sat with me. Made me smile, made me breathe right again.
And now…
It takes everything I have, scraped from rock bottom, hacked from my walls. But I manage not to sob. Manage to whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no, it’s okay, you—” He lurches forward, head shaking, rushing to me. Just as fast, he stops, hand in the air, meaning to touch me but remembering, realizing.
That he can’t. Not the same way. Ever again.
My eyes blur and drop to the ground. To his feet, bare on the gravel path. It must hurt. Jagged edges directly on his skin.
I should’ve forced him to put some shoes on. Stupid—why didn’t I? And it’s so cold, too windy for a ratty t-shirt and pajama pants. At least a hoodie.
Can’t even take care of him properly when breaking his heart. He’s better off.
“If that’s what you decided,” he says, fists shaking by his hips, “then it’s the correct decision.”
I’d snort if I had the energy. “Is it?”
“Yes.” Just that. No doubt. No space for anything else.
“’Cause down the line you can live with the fact that you just did your best in this moment.
But you can’t with letting others choose your life for you.
” He pauses, swallows, tries to keep his smile.
It shakes, barely hanging. “As much as...they wished they could.”
I nod but not at him. At the ground, then at the empty round pen beside us. Where I once saw a cute stablehand performing a miracle on a horse, so sure that miracles didn’t exist. When my path was clear and the sidelines shaded away—off-track so off-vision.
Until my sunset bloomed. I look at him now, at the man who took my heart and squeezed it, over and over, pumping my blood when I couldn’t. In the end, he did the same to me, that stablehand.
Because what’s more miraculous than allowing a machine to live? Even if just for a few months.
All I can hope is that, to some extent…
I did the same to him.
For sure, he heard me yet again, like he always does when I say nothing. Because his smile is back.
And because he says, “Wouldn’t change a second.”
Another miracle, since I smile too.
“Me neither.”