After I had discovered the ring’s new position, it would have been too obvious to slip it on the other finger without him noticing. He had held my hand the entire time, and he was prone to watch me even when I didn’t suspect it.
“You’re straining,” he said, half asleep. “Tell me what’s going on inside of your mind.”
Waving a hand in a dismissive gesture, I sighed, snatching a pear from the basket next to us. The sparkling wine I had been drinking had started to warm me thoroughly; my blood felt hot, especially in my cheeks.
A bite of pear and then a drink of wine; combined they tasted like sinful felt.
“You do that now,” he said, his voice reflective as my mood.
I took another bite, another drink, enjoying the texture of the fruit’s meat against the fizz. “What’s that?”
He waved his hand, copying what I had just done in response to his question. I laughed.
“You never really did that before, before you left home. You’d always answer a question with a question. Now you have the dismissive wave.”
“How hot do you think it is today?”
He grinned; the tender flesh of his lip likely to split again if stretched any further.
“Pretty damn hot,” he said, winking with the good eye behind dark lenses. “It brings me joy. The rediscovering. It’s catching and getting to know the subtle differences. Mine.”
“One third of the year with Aphrodite and one third of the year in the Underworld with Persephone. The final third with whomever you choose, ah, Adonis?”
He stared up at me for a moment. “Whoever you are at the time, that’s who I choose.”
“I’ll always choose you too,” I whispered, the wine and pear feeling thick in my throat.
“The boring one.”
“Ha!” The reaction came instantaneous, flowing without constraint. “Boring?” I eyed his face dubiously. “Oh, I’d say between the two of us, you’re the one rocking the boat. I’m the one holding on for dear life, face pale, heart stuttering, knowing that at any moment we’re going to tip and I’m going to drown.”
“I’d never let you drown,” he said. “It took guts, and more than a fair share of stupidity, to follow those stairs down into that underground club.”
I lifted the Ray-Bans and set them on my head to get a better look at him. “You’re not going to forgive me, are you?”
He took my hand and placed it over his heart. “Fa male, Scarlett.”
His words twisted the heart in my chest.It hurts, Scarlett.
“It was just a dance—”
“No,” he said, lifting to his elbows, looking sideways at me. “Finish that sentence and you lie to the both of us. You belittle the suffering with poor excuses.”
I stared at the pear for a moment, at the alternate specs of light and dark green. “It’s tearing me up inside, what I did. How I acted on a whim. How I hurt you on purpose. Some things never change. You were right.”
He placed a hand over mine, stopping me from picking the skin from the fruit.
“You still care.”
“Of course I do,” I snapped, my eyes rising to meet his before I turned them away again.
“I still care.”
With some hesitation, I nodded. It dawned on me that he wasn’t pointing out the obvious. He had a point. If we didn’t care, our issues wouldn’t be issues. Indifference was the fatal wound.
“We’ll get through. We always do. We always will.”
My eyes glanced between him and the direction of the sun. I smiled, heart floating off to space, propelled by his promise.
