In spite of the fact that the universe seemed to be conspiring to keep me in Egypt, we finally pulled up to the airport curbside drop-off. Neither of us made a move to get out of the car. In front of the windshield, a man in a hazard-yellow vest gesticulated wildly and angrily; we were taking up space and blocking the flow of cars.
I looked Wyatt in the eye. “I’ll be fine,” I said preemptively.
“Olive. If you need anything…ever. Dammit. I will do anything for you.” He caught my hand with his own. “Anything. Anytime. No expiration date.”
The truck began to fill up with words we hadn’t had time to say, fogging the windows and raising the temperature. I could feel myself being pulled toward Wyatt, and toward Boston simultaneously.
He raised my palm to his lips, kissed it, folded my fingers tight. “I love you,” Wyatt said.
I knew if I said it, I would never be able to leave: the transaction would be sealed, a vow given and a vow received. So instead I opened my hand like a star and let his words drift away, instead of keeping them. “I know,” I whispered, and I left without turning back.
—
WYATT DOESN’T SLEEPwith his door locked. When I slip inside, he is flung across his bed, the sheet tangled at his waist, his chest bare. The moon has painted him gold, as if he is her favorite model. I stare for a moment. Of course I’ve seen the gray threaded into his hair and noticed the fine lines at his eyes, but there’s something about seeing him like this that hammers home how many years have passed since I last saw him undressed. How he’s changed. HowIhave.
He bolts upright with a start. “Dawn? What’s wrong?”
“I love you,” I blurt out, and realize that it also accurately answers his question.
Wyatt seems to realize that he’s not wearing clothes, that someone who might as well be a stranger is standing in his bedroom. He gathers the sheets more tightly against his middle and looks up at me. “I know,” he says, and he narrows his eyes. “That’s the next line, isn’t it?”
“I should have told you fifteen years ago. But I thought if I did, I’d never be able to leave.”
“Why tell me now?”
I hesitate. “Because I don’t want to get to the end of my life and be sorry I never did.”
His eyes fly to mine. “Are you well?”
“I’m not dying anytime soon,” I say. “At least not that I know of.”
Wyatt relaxes. “Well. At least there’s that.” He pats the bed beside him, and I sit down. His words come slowly. “Fifteen years is a long time, Olive.”
“Yes,” I agree.
I stare down at the white sheet, where our hands are inches apart. His fingers brush mine, and I feel myself shiver.
Wyatt has touched me in the weeks I’ve been here. He’s passed me instruments and directed me with a tap on my shoulder and even helped me down the rope ladder. But this is the first time we have touched in a more deliberate way. I feel him looking at my face, asking what he cannot put into words.
Before I can think myself out of it, I kiss him.
It’s quick. And startling. A press of lips that is a prelude, an overture. He still tastes like butterscotch. I pull back before he can.
“You have another life,” Wyatt says.
I hesitate. “What if, for a night, I want this one?”
His palm curves around my hip. “Then I’m the luckiest mayfly ever.” Wyatt shifts, pulling me closer, and still giving me time to change my mind. Then his mouth touches mine.
All it takes is a brush of a match in the right environment to start an inferno. That is what I think when I taste him, and I am whisked backward through time, to another twin mattress and another stolen moment and the same arms around me. Wyatt is everywhere at once, setting fires. Unlike with Brian, this isn’t comfortable—it’s the wild plunge of the roller coaster, rather than the hand that holds yours as you go.
“Olive,” Wyatt scrapes against my throat. “Jesus.” We are a tangle of arms and lips and buttons and sleeves. But when he is about to pull off the last of my clothing, I grab the edges of my shirt together. Immediately, he goes still. “Second thoughts?”
I shake my head. “I don’t look like I used to, Wyatt.”
“You look magnificent,” he says.
“You’re saying that because you want to get into my pants.”
