I pressed my ear against his chest and listened to the steady cadence of his heart. Beat. Beat. Beat.
If I listened hard enough I wondered if I could hear it breaking.
He smelled like cigarette smoke and something else that I couldn’t quite place. It smelled soiled. Wrong.
He shuddered with each intake of breath as though he wasn’t sure he should still be breathing.
He couldn’t run fast enough. The demons always caught him.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” he had whispered. I felt his lips in my hair. He touched me only as much as he could handle. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Not too much or he’d curl into a ball and disappear.
Just lips. Fingers pressed on skin.
“You didn’t. I can’t sleep until you’re here.” I had tried to reposition myself so I could look at him but he held me still.
“Don’t, Imogen. Please don’t.” He was hiding. So I did the only thing I could do. I crouched in his darkness with him.
In the lonely, pitiful darkness full of things neither of us wanted to see. Full of sounds that were painful to our ears.
“I thought about the beach tonight. I imagined sitting in the sand with you,” I had told him.
“I always picture it as this infinite thing. Going on and on forever.” His voice had quivered even as he had tried to hide it. “We’ll see it together. We’ll sit in the sand.” He wanted so much. And he hoped. Always, always hoped. It was the most beautiful thing about him.
Even when real life came crashing down around us with its brutality, he held onto a fantasy with battered fingers, waiting for it to become our truth.
I nodded my head, not wanting to give voice to lies. But Yoss relaxed, so I continued to speak quietly.
“I don’t even know how to swim,” I admitted softly, laughing a little.
“Me either. I guess we should figure out a way to learn,” Yoss replied and I felt his smile press into my skin.
“Or maybe we should just stay out of the water,” I suggested.
“No way. I want to swim in the ocean…” Yoss’s voice drifted off, relaxing into me as he fell asleep. His body battered and bruised. But his heart—his heart was whole. For that one moment.
I ran my hand along the curve of his fingers. Up and down his arm. “We’ll go far, far away, Yoss. Away from everything here. We’ll make a new life. Just for us.”
I fed him dreams I was terrified would never be realized. I used the words to soothe both of us. And it worked.
For a time.
Until the nightmares came. I couldn’t take those away.
He woke up that morning, not the Yoss that had clung to me desperately in his sleep, but a man who wanted to believe that his world could change in an instant.
He insisted on giving me all the happiness he could. So that morning when he suggested going to the flea market, I agreed, preferring the smile to the tears.
With his dirty money in his pocket, his lip crusted over and barely healing, we sifted through piles of unwanted toys and clothes. Things people were so eager to get rid of.
Sort of like us.
But it was fun.
“I can’t believe it!” I squealed a little too loudly, holding up the old doll with bright red hair and shimmery, silver pants.
Yoss, who had been looking through an old Viewfinder came over to see what had me so excited.
