City of Lost Souls

I love you as one loves certain dark things

—Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII”





8

FIRE TESTS GOLD



Maia had never been to Long Island, but when she thought of it at all, she’d always thought of it as being a lot like New Jersey—mostly suburban, a place where people who worked in New York or Philly actually lived.

She had dropped her bag into the back of Jordan’s truck—startlingly unfamiliar. He’d driven a beaten-up red Toyota when they’d been dating, and it had always been littered with old, crumpled coffee cups and fast-food bags, the ashtray full of cigarettes smoked down to the filter. The cab of this truck was comparatively clean, the only detritus a stack of papers on the passenger seat. He moved them aside with no comment as she climbed in.

They hadn’t spoken through Manhattan and onto the Long Island Expressway, and eventually Maia had dozed, her cheek against the cool glass of the window. She’d finally woken when they’d gone over a bump in the road, jolting her forward. She’d blinked, rubbing at her eyes.

“Sorry,” Jordan had said ruefully. “I was going to let you sleep until we got there.”

She’d sat up, looking around. They’d been driving down a two-lane blacktop road, the sky around them just beginning to lighten. There were fields on either side of the road, the occasional farmhouse or silo, clapboard houses set far back with picket fences around them.

“It’s pretty,” she’d said in surprise.

“Yeah.” Jordan had changed gears, clearing his throat. “Since you’re up anyway… Before we get to the Praetor House, can I show you something?”

She’d hesitated only a moment before nodding. And now here they were, bumping down a one-lane dirt road, trees on either side. Most were leafless; the road was muddy, and Maia cranked the window down to smell the air. Trees, salt water, softly decaying leaves, small animals running through the high grass. She took another deep breath just as they bumped off the road and onto a small circular turnaround space. In front of them was the beach, stretching down to dark steel-blue water. The sky was almost lilac.

She looked over at Jordan. He was staring straight ahead. “I used to come here while I was training at the Praetor House,” he said. “Sometimes just to look at the water and clear my head. The sunrises here… Every one is different, but they’re all beautiful.”

“Jordan.”

He didn’t look at her. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about before. About running off, you know, in the navy yard.”

“It’s fine.” He let his breath out slowly, but she could tell by the tension in his shoulders, his hand gripping the gearshift, that it wasn’t, not really. She tried not to look at the way the tension shaped the muscles in his arm, accenting the indentation of his bicep. “It was a lot for you to take in; I get that. I just…”

“I think we should take it slow. Work toward being friends.”

“I don’t want to be friends,” he said.

She couldn’t hide her surprise. “You don’t?”

He moved his hands from the gearshift to the steering wheel. Warm air poured from the heater inside the car, mixing with the cooler air outside Maia’s open window. “We shouldn’t talk about this now.”

“I want to,” she said. “I want to talk about it now. I don’t want to be stressing about us when we’re in the Praetor House.”

He slid down in his seat, chewing his lip. His tangled brown hair fell forward over his forehead. “Maia…”

“If you don’t want to be friends, then what are we? Enemies again?”

He turned his head, his cheek against the back of the car seat. Those eyes, they were just as she remembered, hazel with flecks of green and blue and gold. “I don’t want to be friends,” he said, “because I still love you. Maia, you know I haven’t even so much as kissed anyone since we broke up?”

“Isabelle…”

“Wanted to get drunk and talk about Simon.” He took his hands off the steering wheel, reached for her, then dropped them back into his lap, a defeated look on his face. “I’ve only ever loved you. Thinking about you got me through my training. The idea that I might be able to make it up to you someday. And I will, in any way that I can except for one.”

“You won’t be my friend.”

“I won’t be just your friend. I love you, Maia. I’m in love with you. I always have been. I always will be. Just being your friend would kill me.”

She looked out toward the ocean. The rim of the sun was just showing above the water, its rays lighting the sea in shades of purple and gold and blue. “It’s so beautiful here.”

“That’s why I used to come here. I couldn’t sleep, and I’d watch the sun come up.” His voice was soft.

“Can you sleep now?” She turned back to him.