71
NOAH
THERE IS SOMETHING DIVINE ABOUT seeing my mother’s faded words incarnated in the girl beside me. Even while sleeping, she looks like a deadly goddess, an iron queen. Mara is anything but peaceful—even in repose she is a silky gray cloud, bright with the promise of lightning. I will not find peace with her. But there will be no greater passion.
She sleeps with her cheek on my chest as my fingers trace the blades of her shoulders below the sheets. I imagine wings cutting through her skin and unfolding around us, blanketing me in velvet darkness before I close my eyes.
But I startle in my sleep, as if I’d dreamed I was falling over and over and over again. I wake up remembering fragments of dreams; Mara bending to smell a flower, watching it die under her breath. Her stepping barefoot into the snow and watching it bleed red beneath her feet.
Her sleep seems untroubled, her breathing deep and even. Peaceful. How could everyone be so wrong about us? It is impossible that she could make me weak. Next to her, I feel invincible.
I don’t know what day it is, or what time; I left the hospital feeling like I could sleep forever, but now I’m restless, so I leave Mara in bed. I descend the stairs. Jamie and Daniel are nowhere to be found. The view beyond the windows is dark, though the sky is edged with gray. They must still be asleep.
I wander the house and end up in what appears to be an apartment converted to a music room. There’s a drum set, a keyboard, and a few guitars lying about, as well as a piano at the opposite end of the room, by the garden doors. I head for the piano and sit at the bench. I want to play, but I can’t think of any music.
“Is there anything you don’t play?”
Mara’s standing at the foot of the stairs. Blocking my exit, I notice.
“The triangle,” I respond.
She manages a smile. “We have to talk.”
“Do we,” I say. I’m caught, I think.
She holds something in her hand. I think it’s my letter, the one from my mother, and I tense, until I realize its hers.
“I don’t care about that,” I say, and mean it.
She shoves it into my face anyway. “Read it,” she says. “Please.”
I know the second I begin what it will say, and what will happen when I finish, and with every word my body slackens and I dissociate. We’re going to have the same fight again, but this time, for the first time, I feel like I deserve to lose.
I look up when I finish. “What do you want me to say?”
“You heard what your father said about us.”
“I’m not deaf.”
“And you read what the professor said.”
I narrow my eyes. “The professor?”
She blinks and gives an almost dreamy shake of that dark, curly head. “Lukumi, I mean.”
I hand the letter back to her. “I’m not illiterate.” I want to provoke her, to taunt her, to distract her so she doesn’t say what I know she’ll say next.
She says my name. It sounds like good-bye.
I want to tear up her letter, pull the words my father spoke, the words Lukumi wrote, out of her brain. Instead I get up from the bench and open the garden doors. It’s drizzling outside. I don’t care.
She would be right to leave me, after everything. But I’m a coward and can’t bear to hear it. She follows me out anyway, of course.
“I’ll love you to ruins,” she says, and my eyes close. “I get what it means now.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I say stupidly, because I can’t think of anything else.
“My ability negates yours. With me you’re—”
“Powerless, weak, et cetera. I know.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “It’s real, Noah. That you’ll die if we stay together.”
I don’t respond.
“You died already, once.”
So did you. “And yet, here I am.”
“I need you safe.”
“From what?” I ask.
She takes the bait. “Me.”
I face her then, armed with my argument. I have no defense for what I allowed to happen to her, what I did to her, so like the asshole I am, I go on offense instead. “You mean you want to protect me from yourself.”
“Yes.”
“The way my father was trying to protect me?”
A shadow passes over her face. “Fuck you.”
A thrill travels down my spine. She’s never said that to me before. “Good,” I say, and take a step toward her. “Get angry. It’s better than listening to you talk in that voice from hell about doing what’s best for me as if I’m a child. As if I don’t have a choice.” I should be screaming. I want to. But the voice that comes out of my mouth is dead and flat. “How could you treat me that way?” I ask, sensing an advantage. “Like him?”
Her nostrils flare. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“Tell me.”
But she doesn’t, so I speak instead. “I have a choice. I can walk away from you anytime I want,” I lie.
“Can you?” she asks. “Can you really?”
That’s when I know I’ve lost.
“Your father said—”
“Don’t ever begin a sentence with ‘Your father said.’ He’s nothing.”
Mara ignores me. “He said you can’t help but want me. That it’s like a side effect. I’m not a choice for you. I’m a—a compulsion.”
I shrug, as if the thought doesn’t wound me the way it wounds her. I don’t want to believe it. I can’t believe it. “I don’t believe anyone can help who they love.”
“What if you could?”
“I wouldn’t want to.”
She pauses, unsure. “Would you risk it, if you were me?”
I already did. “I trust you enough to let you make your decisions for yourself. I wouldn’t make them for you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says plainly.
“You keep hearing and believing that I’m going to die if we stay together. But when? Has your fortune-teller told you that?”
She is silent.
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t, but if I do, it isn’t because of destiny or fate—it’s because everyone dies someday. We get one life, Mara. You might live forever and I might die tomorrow, but right now we’re both here. And I want to spend the time I have with you.”
She looks up at me, and I can tell she’s going to say something mean. “You didn’t want to last night.”
“Wrong. I did want to. But considering I gave you a lethal injection not twenty-four hours ago, I thought you might not be in the mood.”
A smile flickers on her lips. I move closer. “I don’t know how to make you understand what you do to me. Just thinking about kissing you is enough. Feeling your tongue against mine. The way you taste. The sounds you make. Everything. I’ve wanted you so much, for so long, but in the way you want things you’ll never, ever have. Like no matter what I do, you’ll always be just out of reach. But when you kiss me? It’s like I’m on fire.”
Her breath catches, but I’m not quite sure why. Her face is unreadable.
“I want to touch every part of you,” I go on, because if I flinch now, it’s over. “I want to touch you now,” I say, and close the distance between us. I wrap a curl of her hair around my finger and give it a little tug. She shivers. “Maybe I didn’t have a choice in the beginning because I didn’t understand what I was choosing. But I do now. I know now. You are what happiness means to me. And I would rather have today with you than forever with anyone else.”
I can tell she wants to believe it, and I pray that she does, because I don’t think I can stand to lose her. I can’t let her go. Not yet. I take her face in my hands. “We will do this while we can, and when we can’t anymore, I will remember the feel of your mouth on me and the taste of your tongue and the weight of your hands on mine, and I will be happy.” I whisper against her skin, “If you choose me.”