February 27th
Your eyes are open when I wake.
‘Hey,’ I say.
We’re close, I’ve been resting my head and arms on your mattress again. I wonder if you feel the ghost of me still on your lips.
‘How are you?’
You grunt.
‘A bit better then.’
Your eyes narrow as you study me. ‘The car?’
‘It’s dying, or already dead.’
You grunt again. Your lips part as you gather your breath,your strength. ‘Why’d you come back?’
I watch your tired face. There are a hundred reasons I could tell you. That I couldn’t leave you, that there was no release, that by killing you like that I killed myself too.
‘It didn’t feel right,’ I say. ‘I got as far as the petrol station, a bit further. Then I had to return. There was no resolution in how I left you. I couldn’t do it.’
I want to sayI’m sorry. I want to say I read about your art prize, and that I always knew you could do something like that. I want to say I kissed you in the night and then felt guilty afterwards. Instead, I rest my fingertips against yours, and this time neither of us flinches. I’m touching a felon—my kidnapper—and it feels almost okay.
You’re quiet for a long time, just watching me, not the way Nick looked at me, or even how you looked at me before. There is no hunger or anger in your expression, only acceptance, maybe even resignation, as if you are waiting for me to do what I need. Have you been waiting all along?
You make that grunting noise again. ‘I thought I was going to die,’ you say. ‘And you know what? I was fine with that.’
‘I thought you’d die too. I wasn’t.’
You shut your eyes, and I wonder if you’re going back to sleep. But then you pull your fingers away from me and close them in a fist. ‘You think we’ll just live out here?’
‘You thought so once.’
‘The mine sites…the roads…people will come…’
I think about the unanswered emails in my inbox. Yes, people will come eventually. Perhaps it really is impossible to be hidden forever. But, for a little while longer, emails and other people belong to another world that seems very far away.