“I’m okay,” she says. “Chocolate helps.”
I smile and reach out to stroke her white hair. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Head all right?”
“What head?”
I chuckle. “And you’re not sore down there?” I gesture at her stomach.
She shakes her head.
“Good.” Of course, her PMS is probably why she feels more emotional than usual.
“What time is it?” she asks, stifling a yawn.
I pick up my phone. “Just after nine.”
“We could go to bed now, as we’ll be up with the sun.”
“What time is sunrise?”
“6:47AM.”
“You didn’t even have to look,” I joke.
“I checked earlier, although I tend to know the moon and sun cycles, roughly. You get in tune with Mother Earth when you spend a lot of time alone with her.”
I look around the cottage. The rain is still pattering on the tin roof, but the worst of the storm has passed. It was weird—a little scary, even—just how dark it was when the lights went out. “It’s funny to think of you spending time alone here. Are you ever worried?”
“No, never. I love it.”
I wonder whether her self-consciousness about her albinism has directed her down the road of isolation, or whether she would have been like that regardless of her coloring.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” she says, and gets up. I watch her walk across the bedroom toward the tiny bathroom. It’s the first time I’ve seen her completely naked. She’s not skinny, but she’s on the slender side. Her breasts are more generous than I remembered from the evening of the ball, full and attractive. Her pale skin is flawless, unmarked by freckles or moles. She looks carved from alabaster, but she’s not cold at all.
She closes the door, and I lie back and look up at the four glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. We’re supposed to spend all day here tomorrow, and one more night. It’s hard to tell how she’s feeling about the fact that we’ve had sex. Did she cry because she regretted it as soon as it was over? Or was she upset because she enjoyed it, and she knows it can’t lead to more?
Briefly, I picture us dating, maybe even living together… coming home to our apartment or house on the beach and finding her there… spending our evenings together, going to functions with her, having her in my bed every night… I frown,my stomach giving an uneasy flip. It’s impossible to ignore the feeling that I’m throwing away a perfect relationship here. But what other choice do I have?
The door opens, and she comes out. She’s removed her makeup, so her eyebrows and lashes are now pale, and she’s tied her hair up in a loose bun.
“Can you put the lamp on?” she asks, gesturing at the bedside table on her side. She goes into the living room and starts turning out the lamps.
I lean over and see it for the first time. It’s an LED projector lamp. I flick it on and… oh… as it starts up, it begins casting a moving pattern of colors across the ceiling and walls that look like the Aurora Australis—the Southern Lights, complete with twinkling stars.
She turns out the last lamp in the living room, then comes back in and climbs onto the bed. “What do you think?” she asks as she slides under the duvet again.
“It’s fantastic.” I smile at her. “It’s very you.”
“I like the stars.” She lies back on the pillows so she can look up at them. “I have a telescope in the other room. I spend hours outside, looking at the moon and the planets.”
I slide down beside her. “You’ll have to show me tomorrow.”
“If the weather’s better, yeah.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and encourage her to turn onto her side away from me and move so her back is against my chest. Then I draw the duvet over us and hug her tightly.
