He gives her whatever she asks – of course he does. He has always been willing, would have pulled his heart from his chest from her and served it on a platter for her, had she asked And he takes, too, takes in every inch his lips can find and they are a swirl of strawberry and black, taking and giving, both insatiable in their hungers.
Her words run over him, another thrill, the validation that he is not alone in his feelings (because even like this, wrapped in her as he is, he so often doubts that his feelings are matched, despite all evidences to the contrary).
“When I came back – when the memory of you came back – I looked for you. As if whatever spat me back might have gotten you, too.”
He remembers those days. Walking the beach and calling her name into the waves, as if he might blink and she would walk out.
(But that had happened, hadn’t it? And he hadn’t been there.)
Her next words, though, are enough to beckon reality back into his thoughts. He’d been so caught up in her, in this jubilation at their reunion, that he had not thought of time, that she might fall apart again.
The lord giveth, and the lord taketh away.
And if that happened, he would follow her again, wouldn’t he? Try this whole terrible thing again.
Except –
He thinks, with a hot burst of shame, of Agetta. Of their daughter, the future children they had spoken of, so cautiously. That glimpse of family, of stability.
He swallows and thinks of ocean water. How the salt burns the throat. He does his best not to think of the future anymore.
He is here, now, with her. This impossible dream, made manifest.
He doesn’t speak of time. Of whatever it might mean. Instead, he says her name.
“Tabytha,” he murmurs, and he thinks of time, grains of sand spilling between cupped palms, “I love you.”
Because he has to say it. Whatever happened, he has to. To remind her, as if she could have possibly forgotten.
@[tabytha]