He turns to face her. He’s still holding the ring gingerly. He tears his gaze up from the ring to her eyes, and I suddenly know what is going to happen next. Claire opens her mouth to speak, and I clap a hand over her mouth. She glares at me, and I wink. I lower my hand. Peter is grinning. He knows, too.
Sean drops to one knee.
Victoria flushes and then pales and then flushes again.
I pluck at Peter’s coat sleeve and draw Claire with me. Claire cooperates, though she’s clearly confused as we retreat around the engine. On the other side of the train, Peter says in a mild voice, “Every time I begin to wonder why I bother with you, you surprise me.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult?” I ask. Beside me, Claire climbs up onto the side of the engine. I rise up on my tiptoes to peek through the engine window, watching as Victoria launches herself into Sean’s arms. They tumble to the ground amid the junk. I assume she said yes.
“Depends. Are you planning to say ‘thank you for rescuing me’?”
“Are you planning to insult me?”
A ghost of a smile passes over his face. “I neverplanon insulting you.”
Claire drops upside down, her legs holding on to a bar on the train. Her pigtails dangle. “He teases because he likes you. He thinks you’re beautiful, clever, funny, and beautiful.”
I raise both my eyebrows. That’s not the kind of thing that Peter says.
He executes a flawless bow.
“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
That’smuch more like what Peter would say. And even though I know he’s teasing me, my breath hitches in my throat. His eyes, when they lock on mine, are dark and serious.
Tearing my gaze from his, I peek again through the cab of the engine. I can’t see Victoria and Sean. They must still be on the ground. “Claire, come down from there.” If they’re, um, celebrating their engagement, I’d rather she didn’t see. I can talk knives with her, but I’m not volunteering to havethatconversation with her. I also carefully don’t look at Peter again, at his intense eyes or softness of his black hair or the strength of his arms and bare tattooed chest. I wonder what it would have felt like if he’d welcomed me back from the void the way Victoria had greeted Sean, and it takes every bit of self-restraint not to look at his lips. “Let’s give them privacy.” I lead her around the house, and Peter follows.
Up ahead, I hear a noise. An unexpected, familiar, beautiful, crazy noise. Like waves, crashing on the shore. Speeding up, I round the corner of the house...and see the ocean.
A quarter mile away, waves lap at the desert. The dust storm swallows the ocean beyond, but the waves crash and crash and crash again on the sage brush and mesquites.
Peter stands next to me. I’m conscious of the warmth of his body near mine, and I think I will always know when he’s nearby. “Yours?”
“I don’t think I lost an ocean.” Except maybe I did, in a way. I had been thinking about the ocean while I was in the void. It can’t be a coincidence.
I’m walking toward it. Shortly, I’m kicking off my shoes and walking over the desert sand. It doesn’t feel the same as beach sand under my feet. It’s drier and hotter, but my eyes are glued on the beautiful, blue-and-white, wild, sparkling-in-the-sun waves. I’m aware of Peter behind me, watching me with his dark, beautiful eyes.
I inhale the smell of sea. It smells right. Salt water permeates my senses, filling my lungs so that I feel as if it’s leeching into my blood. The crash of the waves drowns out all other sound.
I wade in. The cool salty water wraps around my ankles and then withdraws. It hits again with enough force that I wobble. I put my arms out for balance. The horizon is shrouded in dust. But there’s ocean enough.
I wade deeper. Water pulls on my clothes, dragging them down around me, a weight. Soon, I’m up to my knees, my hips, and then I stretch my arms in front of me and glide forward. I feel the water curl around me.
I twist onto my back and look up at the sky.
It’s empty and blue, and for the barest instant, I feel as though I’m home.
Through the water, I hear splashing. I raise my head, and my legs sink. I tread water. The ocean floor, the desert, is close enough that my toes brush against it as I kick. Peter is wading into the water. He’s shed his trench coat and is shirtless. I stare at his tattoos, black feathers and swirls that curl over his chest muscles and around his biceps. Someday I need to ask him what they mean. He halts a few feet from me, the water halfway up his chest, just under his nipples. He looks like an angel, lost from Heaven, fallen into the sea.He thinks I’m beautiful,I think. I shake my head as if to clear that thought.
“You lost this ocean,” he says.
It’s a statement but I hear the question in it anyway. “Yes. I used to swim all the time as a kid.” There are memories upon memories in that simple sentence, a lifetime of moments drenched in salt water, of dreams and daydreams that I dared imagine while I floated on my back, of afternoons that didn’t end.
