They set off, and she asked, “Do you want to come to my hut? I have some honey and those figs you like. I…I picked them this morning.”
Just that morning, after he had made love to her and left her. Had she picked them just for him?
She had, and he knew it. She disliked the fruit, hated it in fact, with a real and vibrant intensity and made no secret of it. His chest hurt; he was sure if he touched a finger to that chest of his, he’d feel his heart breaking right there below the skin. “Yes, thank you.”
They turned up a grassy path. She said, “You know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t regret it. None of it.”
His head ached now too. The pressure building in his brain was from his mind trying to tell him to stay silent, to not put into words the feelings he had managed to hold at bay for so long. “Oh?”
“I don’t. Not going. Not being your sex slave, and being your sex slave,” there was a laugh lurking in her voice, but there was sadness in her words too. “I don’t even regret having killed that being that tried to kill you. In fact, I would kill any who would try and never regret it.”
She stopped walking. The sun lay on her face and hair, and there were silvery tears running down her face now. His thumb pressed against the bottom of her eye, rubbing one tear away. He said, “Margie, you know why this can’t be.”
“Because you can kill people, blow things up just by wanting to. Because you are afraid that you will somehow get me pregnant and that our child will die.”
Now was the time to tell her that he had to go. That he probably wouldn’t come back.
He said, “Let’s go inside. This is private.”
Her crestfallen face hurt him to the core, but she didn’t argue, and for that he was grateful.
