“You happened,” he says simply, and I glance back to him, see our too-short time together in his eyes. We’ve made do, come to know each other the best we can. Imperfectly, incompletely, our conversations like crumbs and yet these are flavors I’ll never forget. I’ll never forget the night we listened to each other’s fears, and the more recent one. As if recalling too, Hero’s cheeks pinken. “Your heart is set.” He shrugs, and like that night in the garden, the gesture reveals the very tension he tries to hide. “I don’t see how you could fail.”
Waves crash on the shore nearby. My voice is small in comparison. “I’ll come back for you.”
For a moment, Hero doesn’t reply. “I don’t think you will.”
There it is. That maddening honesty of his. “You don’t know that.” It hurts to hear him say it. A lot. Hurts more when he doesn’t refute me. When he offers me a hand, I don’t take it.
“Walk with me?”
I don’t respond.
“Please, Cee,” and I hear what he leaves unsaid. This might be it. Our last night.
I bite my lip and glance at Genevie. I don’t want to let her out of my sight.
Hero notices. “We can walk it, too.”
I take a breath. “Her.”
And so that’s how we end up strolling the moonlit shore, a mattress in tow between us.
Genevie is not as into the walk as we are, and Hero runs out of breath before I do.
“She’s heavy,” he says when I smirk.
“Not as heavy as a real boat.”
“You’ve carried a boat?”
Carried, pushed, climbed a ridge with a hull tied to my back. “Yeah. And Hubert was made out of metal.”
I say it to sound impressive but Hero actually looks concerned. “Wouldn’t that weigh…” A pause. “One-point-five tons?”
I laugh at the specificity of the number. “Want to know what I think?” I take the rope from his hand. “I don’t think I’m strong. I think you’re weak.”
“Am not.”
“Prove it,” I say, and yelp as he sweeps me into the air, only to lose his footing in the sand. We both go down.
“Thanks, love.” I roll myself onto my back beside him, arms spread wide. “Really needed to have my point demonstrated to me.”
“It’s the sand,” he insists, but there’s an undercurrent of laughter to his words and—sure enough—a smile to match on his face when I turn to look at him. The moonlight glosses his brown hair to black, an ink spill on the sand. His upturned right palm is mere millimeters away from mine. I could take it. I could roll over and take from him more than just his hand. But tomorrow, I will travel light, without him or his emotions. I may not know what the standard protocol is for leaving someone behind on an abandoned island, but this, this distance, feels right. This night feels right—clear and crisp, the polar opposite of the night that heralded his arrival.
Perfect departure weather.
“First impressions of me,” I say before my throat can close. “Go.”
“When I found myself tied to your bed?” Hero pauses. “That you were going to eat me.”
“Very funny.”
“Maybe I come from a scary land. A place where people eat people. Maybe I come from there.”
“The stars?” I ask, both our eyes on the night sky overhead.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Which one?” I ask, and look in the direction of the finger he points.
“The thing about stars,” says Hero, voice soft, “is most of them appear close together, but not many actually are. None are meant to pass each other in orbit.”
“That’s not true,” I surprise myself by blurting. “Binary stars.” Then: “My sister.” Hero will know what I mean. I’ve told him about our differences, from our hobbies to our personalities. Kay’s the one who would use terms like binary stars. I, in contrast, hear Hero talk about the stars and can’t help but wonder if he’s making some metaphor about us.
“We’re not stars,” I declare. We’re already in each other’s orbit. Hero’s business is mine, whether he likes it or not. “We get to choose the places we go and the people we find.”
“Do we?” Hero wonders. “I don’t think either of us came here by choice.” Fair enough. “And I think we have even less choice over the ones we’re meant to find.” He lowers his arm and folds it beneath his head. “That first day, I kept trying to put myself in your shoes. Couldn’t. It frustrated me, seeing the way you lived your life. Then I realized it was because I could never do it. I might have survived, but you … you kept yourself alive. Kept her alive, too. In here.” He taps two fingers to his chest. “So I know you’ll find your sister. Even if it takes you far away from here.”