Magma crawls out first. He moves the vines aside, looks out, goes still for a long moment, then reaches back and takes my hand. He helps me through the gap.
Outside, the jungle looks exactly the same as it always does. Green and deep and entirely indifferent to whatever just happened in there.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” I cannot quite look at him directly.
He is quiet for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “What I did was unavoidable. Your scent…they would have found us.”
Oh!
Okay…that makes sense.
I nod. “I understand. It’s…um…fine. I knew there was a good reason why you did it.”
I am praying that this is where it ends. That he doesn’t bring the other thing up.
Please let it go! Please!
My face feels hot. The heat has migrated down my neck and into my chest, and I am fairly certain that if I stood in front of a mirror right now, I would look like a stop sign covered in dried, peeling mud.
He swallows. I watch his throat work. He runs his tongue across his lower lip and looks away, and I think that maybe he’s thinking about bringing it up.
“We should probably get going.” I use my thumb to point, even though I have no idea where we need to go. I just hope that we leave and that we don’t talk again. We can just remain silent for the rest of this hell-hike. It would be safer that way.
I’m good.
We’re good.
It’s all good.
“We should probably talk about what happened.”
“Nope…I’m good. There’s no need.” I force myself to shut the hell up.
“I didn’t mean for you to…” He rubs the back of his neck and pushes out a breath. “I didn’t mean for you to see that…me.”
“It’s fine.” I lift one shoulder, aiming for casual, landing somewhere in the vicinity of desperate. “It’s one of those things. It’s normal and natural. I was just about to look away…I swear…I…um…was just a little shocked…that’s all. I froze…you know?”
Shut up, Carla!
“You froze?” His mouth twitches.
“Yep.” I nod too many times. “I had just got there, and I froze for half a second.”
“Half a second?”
“Yes…absolutely. I’m not a pervert. I swear.” I hold up both my hands.
“I didn’t think you were,” he says. I think he’s trying not to smile.
I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I want to be absorbed into the root system of the nearest tree and transported somewhere far away. That would solve all of my problems. Every last one.
“Okay,” I say. “Sure. Can we leave it? Forget the whole thing happened?”
He shakes his head.
