What would happen if I pursued what I feel for all three of them? The world would judge, certainly. Call me greedy, immoral, confused. Slut. The tabloids would have a field day.
But here, among people who've been forced to create their own definitions of family, of community, of what matters, the arbitrary rules of conventional society seem less important.
"You're somewhere else today, Angel," Maria observes as I lower my camera after capturing an elderly man named Walter with his beloved dog. "Your body's here but your mind's off playing hide-and-seek."
I offer her a half-smile, fidgeting with my camera settings to avoid her perceptive gaze. "Guilty," I say with a sigh.
She squints at me over the rim of her chipped coffee mug. "Ah... I recognize that sigh. Love and its complications, am I right?"
"Something like that. Saying it's complicated is an understatement."
"Love is complicated. Messy. Unsettling. And more times than not... It hurts. It ends, leaving you bruised and battered, trying to pick up the pieces of your heart and your life."
I look at her, startled. Maria rarely talks about her past.
"Then, why put yourself through it?" I ask.
"Because 'we're creatures of contact regardless of whether we kiss or we wound.' And to this I add, regardless if we suffer."
I recognize the quote from David Rakoff. The one that uses the metaphor of the Scorpion andthe Tortoise to advocate that it's better to drown than to stay dry, but alone on the shore.
And there’s the irony, Ethan, Declan and Mateo are in my life because I almost drowned. Rakoff was right. Better to drown in something real than stand dry and untouched, alone on the shore.
"It's not... conventional," I say tentatively. "I don't even know if that's the correct term. I think it's the type of thing that would be, at the least, frowned upon."
Maria's weathered hand covers mine, stilling my nervous movements. "Look around you, Angel. What do you see?"
I glance at the encampment. The makeshift community built from necessity and shared struggle. People who've lost everything but still found ways to care for each other.
"People who've been abandoned by everyone who was supposed to protect them," I say quietly. "People surviving anyway."
"Yes," she agrees. "But also people who've created new kinds of families, new kinds of love. Out here, we can't afford to turn away connections just because it doesn't look like what we were taught it should."
She squeezes my hand. "Love is love. It may take many shapes and forms, but in the end it is just that. Love. The world will judge, but the world judges us all anyway. Might as well be judged for loving too much rather than too little."
Her words settle in me. A permission I didn't know I needed. Before I can respond, something yanks hard at my shoulder.
My balance tips forward and I gasp. My backpack is gone.
"Hey!" I shout, spinning to see a figure sprinting away, my camera bag bouncing against his back.
I'm on my feet, about to chase, when a blur of motion slams into the thief from the side. A body. A man.
They both crash to the ground in a tangle of limbs and gravel.
The thief scrambles to his feet and sprints off empty-handed. My bag is left behind.
But I'm not looking at the bag.
I'm looking at the man who holds it now, rising to his full height in a slow, furious unfurling.
Ethan.
His jaw is clenched, eyes blazing with fury, not just at the thief, but at me.
I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it.
"Say your goodbyes," he cuts me off, scanning the area with the hypervigilant gaze I've come to know so well. His eyes linger on Maria, on the others watching curiously from a distance. The coldness in his voice stings, but I understand the tight control he's maintaining. I turn to Maria, who's watching with unabashedinterest.
