Chapter Twenty-Two
ANDA
It is a peculiar and astonishing thing, kissing.
I never understood it. Lips are for speaking, for eating, and for conjuring the necessary turbulence and resonance for whistling. They split when they’re too dry; they constantly invite my teeth for a bite.
But when I kiss Hector, it isn’t just flesh on flesh. Hector tells me things he’s never said aloud. How he appreciates the puzzle that I am, the question with no answer. How he wants to give himself to me, though I’ve never asked for such a sacrifice. How he invites me to something far more precious than he’s ever given before. Something both holy and almost destructive.
My fingers tingle, and I’ve forgotten that they’re around his neck. I pull so hard on the both of us that I slowly draw us backward. My spine soon drapes over the wood floor beneath me and Hector hovers above, sheltering me from the ceiling, the roof, the disapproving sky.
You will regret this. Stop—
But I don’t want to listen to her.
I’d been traveling further and further away from this. Before, there was the path forward to convergence with the storms and no way to reverse it all. To be like my sisters and leave my father’s side of me behind forever. I thought that was what I wanted; in passivity, in my search to avoid pain, I let it happen.
But now I’ve taken a step off the path. It is terrifying, this wilderness. And yet I’m not as lost as I thought I would be.
You will regret this.
Like you regret Father? Like you regret me? I ask.
She doesn’t answer.
I’ve stopped kissing Hector, and he puts his hand behind my neck. “Are you all right?” he whispers.
I don’t answer right away. His hand is warm, spare, and steady.
I want to stay here awhile. I want to stay.
So I ignore her and answer Hector’s question by pulling the belt loops of his pants toward me. His body, though lighter and thinner now, is still taut and solid. I pull him close until we are hip to hip and his chest covers mine. I want the weight of him on me. It’s such a delicious alternative to the heaviness of the airy sky on my shoulders. Atlas never was so burdened as I have been. It is one thing to hold up the heavens, another thing to resist their alluring call in November.
He stops kissing me long enough to complain. “I’m squashing you.”
“Yes,” I say, seeking out his earlobe to live between my lips. Perhaps for a few decades.
We kiss for hours, it seems. Hector envelops me in his arms as if I might disappear, and I appreciate feeling so precious. I am used to using my other senses—pressure, and temperature, and the rise and fall of the living beings on this island and lake. They’re fine-tuned instruments in my body, though I don’t understand how they work. They simply do.
So there’s a relief—almost a guilty simplicity—in letting my human form explore this tangled knot we’ve become. My bare legs entwine with his. I pull his shirt over his head so my hands can touch his scars, the ridged and erratic turns on his skin. There are collarbones and gently pulsating carotid arteries nestled between the ropes of neck muscle. Acres of skin I’ve wanted to sense, but hadn’t. And there is his mouth. He is endlessly thirsty for me, and it is astonishing, being needed in such a way.
Sometime when the moon has arced away from the window and the cabin has become pitch dark, and we’ve stained ourselves with hearth ashes from our tumbling, Hector pushes against the floor, creating space between our bodies. I frown.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
My lips are swollen and I’m half drunk on something that can’t be bottled. I nod.
“Hungry?”
I shake my head. It’s a partial lie; I can’t bring myself to put words to what I am.
“Are you tired?” I ask, in return.
“No. Are you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t need to sleep.” His eyes crinkle in puzzlement, and I add, “But I should like to sleep every night if I could sleep with you.”
He smiles. It’s so genuine and unrehearsed, like some I’ve seen on the island. A slight panic rises within me, a fear that something might blight that smile forever. Something has tried to wrest his happiness away before. He hides whatever it is, though it’s lurking there. I’ve seen it. And I don’t wish for it to return, not yet.
A strange urge wriggles in my center. I have the oddest desire to give him something. A gift. For the first time in my world, I am worried. Perhaps he won’t like what I have to offer. And the wriggling turns to fear.
Anda, this is a mistake. You don’t really know what fear is. Don’t invite it in.
I deliberately turn away from the window and the sky. “I want to take you somewhere.”
“It’s the middle of the night. Where do you want to go?” He pulls me up but immediately places his hands around my waist. I like them there. “Can you stop time?” he says. His smile is disappearing. “I wouldn’t mind if this night went a little slower.”
Slower. I don’t really understand, but then again, time has always been on my side. I think to myself, where could I take him, where time stands still?
This is a mistake.
I pull him toward the door, leaving her warnings behind us. “I know where we can go.”