“It’s either this or that.” I pointed to one and then the other. “You can either choose love or you can choose hate, because where one lives, the other will die.”
Damian kept his eyes on the two objects, equally torn in both directions.
“Tomorrow morning, whatever you leave on the table will tell me, whether we part ways in Paza del Mar or not. Whatever you choose, Damian, know that I will always, always love you.”
He looked at me, with eyes that punched me right in the gut. “I told you I would only disappoint you.”
I cradled his face between my hands. “You told me ‘love don’t die’.”
I left him there, on the flamingo couch that was still stained with his blood, knowing there would be no sleep that night, not for him and not for me. And I knew with resounding finality that there was nothing fair about life.
I OPENED MY EYES AND reached for Damian. Morning had come, but he was gone. Today was the day we were going to visit MaMaLu’s grave, and sitting on the coffee table was an answer to the question I’d left Damian with. I sank back under the sheets, not sure if I really wanted to know.
Two brilliant yellow butterflies flitted through hazy sunbeams. Sometimes birds went in and out of the open windows, sometimes geckos and the kind of bugs that would have had me screaming bloody murder at one time. Damian had changed me, and I had changed him. We were like the shells we had once picked for MaMaLu—all the hard parts worn so thin that we could see right through each other. And no matter what happened today, no matter what lay waiting for me on that coffee table, we would always be like those iridescent slivers of light, pieces of a time and space removed from everyone and everything else.
I walked into the kitchen and poured myself some coffee. It felt too quiet, padding around by myself, avoiding the one thing that was screaming for my attention. I turned on the CD player. “Roads” by Portishead. Bleak, vulnerable, desolate, beautiful. It sent an icy chill running down my spine. Or maybe that was just the apprehension of walking into the living room. I scanned the walls, the fan on the ceiling, the indent on the couch where Damian had been sitting, until my eyes ran out of excuses, until I couldn’t avoid looking at what he’d left behind for me.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .
My gaze fell on the coffee table. I was doomed to cry either way, whether I found the gun or the paper giraffe. But Damian had spared me the dark, shattered tears. There, lying on the glass was his folded note, propped up on four spindly legs. His gun was sitting on the shelf, like a piece of retired memorabilia, along with dog-eared books and mismatched souvenirs.
I put my coffee down and picked up the giraffe. It was so much bigger than the space it took up, so much heavier than it weighed. I knew what it must have taken Damian to lock up his demons, but he had done it. For me.
A distant whoomp-whoomp-whoomp mixed in with the music. I figured the song was transitioning into the next track, but the noise grew louder. It was coming from behind me now, close enough that I could recognize it. The whirring, sonic boom of helicopter blades.
Fuck.
I ran outside, barefoot in a t-shirt, knowing Damian had gone to get mangoes for me, like he did every morning. One helicopter was already on the ground, while a second was landing on the beach in a flurry of sand and grit. Armed men in camouflaged gear were everywhere, running towards the jungle.
“Miss? Miss Sedgewick?” One of the men pulled me back. “Are you all right?”
I tore free of him and ran towards the mangoes that were scattered in the shadows of the trees. They were covered in blood.
“Where is he?” I grabbed the man who was yelling something about getting me to safety. “Is he hurt? Take me to him!”
But he wouldn’t listen. He started dragging me back to one of the choppers. The sickening bratatat of machine guns came from the jungle. Another helicopter swept over us, scanning the ground below. A crackly voice issued rapid commands over the man’s radio device. The air was thick with the hunt for Damian—all these men tracking him down—but all I could see was the trail of blood that led from the mangoes.
Damian had been coming back to me when they’d ambushed him. I closed my eyes and lived the horror of it: a bullet ripping through him, mangoes rolling to the ground, his blood staining their spotted yellow-green skins; Damian picking himself up, stumbling into the trees for cover, while I poured myself a cup of coffee.
A cup of fucking coffee.
I knew exactly where to go. I knew where Damian was—holed up in the wooden shack, as they closed in on him, with nothing to protect himself, because I’d made him give up his gun.
Oh God. What I have done?
I broke free and ran into the trees, not caring about the bullets that were zinging past me and ricocheting off the trees in flying splinters of wood and bark.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” someone screamed as I stormed into the shack. I knew they wouldn’t shoot as long as I was with Damian, as long as there was any chance I’d get caught in the crossfire.