“I missed you,” I said.
He gave me a sad smile. I saw it on his face, what he was ready to give up, for me. I wondered if he saw that same sadness reflected in mine.
“I need you to do something,” he said, and I said, “Of course.”
He moved away from me, and only I knew that was the last time. He moved away, unburdened by that, and he got up. “Let’s go.”
“Where to?” I said. “What for?”
“It’s time,” Novo said. Nothing more, nothing less. Just “It’s time.”
We slipped out of the house for the last time together and we walked the center line of the road with the end of the light following, the sun’s last rays spreading out in the sky behind. All the flowers in all the gardens lifted their faces in one brief show of bloom and then closed them for the night, nodding softly, tucking themselves under, saying goodbye, and the birds dipped in and out of puddles and a fox by the trash cans stopped in its tracks, the same way Novo had the first day I saw him, with nothing between us but the width of the street.
We walked away from town and up onto the cliff path and it was black-dark and moonless when Novo stopped. He let go of my hand and I couldn’t see him in all that darkness, but his voice when he spoke was very close.
“Do you want to fall with me?” he said.
“Of course I do. Always. But—”
“If we fell from up here, I would catch you.”
“And what would happen?”
“We’d be together. You would always have me here.”
“At what cost?” I said. “What’s the catch?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters.”
“Let’s do it,” he said. “Why don’t we just do it?”
I knew that if we did, I would feel what it was like to be him. I would fall without fear and always remember falling and never, ever have to land. Not without him. Not alone. I wanted that. It goes without saying. I wanted that more than anything else. I wanted to say yes. But love isn’t about what you want. Not really. Beyond that, it’s about what you give. Freely. Without asking for anything back.
“Do it with me,” Novo said, and I could hear the gray break of the water, way beneath us, against the rocks.
“Fall,” Novo said. “Fall in love. And I’ll fall with you.”
For a moment, in my mind, I let us go, like birds leave the land or swimmers push off gently from the side of the pool. I let us out, together, into the air, so we were heavy, and the rushing of it past me was so quick and quickly over that I felt every part of it, can feel it still, the weight of us, the flat of the water rushing upward. I could never tell a soul well enough what that was like. In my mind, I could have done it forever, falling and not landing. It is insatiable, oblivion. Addictive, action without consequence. Falling without landing is an impossible habit to kick.
But in the real world, I stepped back from the edge. Novo didn’t see it coming until it was done, my choice made, our last chance over, and there was nothing else but the word in the black air as I found my voice and told him, “No.”
TWENTY-THREE
Neither of us spoke as we walked back the way we had come, to the beach. So cold. The wind pulled at the top of the water, pulled at the sand. The moon was high now, the land and the water both silver, and Novo’s face when he looked at me was lightless and empty. Three cargo ships on the horizon, gray Lego blocks in the haze. We sat down on the cold ground and I stared at the line of stuff left by a higher tide—shell fragments and matte cuttlefish and the weeds lying brown like dead bracken, wet and rotten and all of it the lace-edged shape of the gone water. The sand was large and gritty. I picked up a fistful and let it leak between my fingers, and it left the palm of my hand white with fine, soft dust.
There was a cold, dark well where my stomach should have been. I swallowed and I could taste its blackness and I hated everything then. I felt it bloom in me and it was ugly, knife-sharp, and I wanted to press the whole world out like a flame. The mass of the universe never changes, and you can’t have something for nothing, and loss goes hand in hand with gain, and I knew all that but it didn’t make it any better. The gulls were screaming and my spine was stretched tight as elastic and the water slapped hard at the ground. Everything in that Now was cruel. Everything tasted bitter. I wanted to scream. I wanted to break things.
Novo put his mouth against my wrist. I felt him there, his lips warm, and the soft of his tongue. He spoke into me.
“Henry told you,” he said, and I said, “Yes.”
He shook his head, my wrist in his hand, his mouth still on my skin. He breathed out, slow.
“Don’t hate him,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because you should have told me. I deserved to know. And I needed to know to make the choice.”
“And why did you make it?” he asked me.
I brought his hand to my face and I kissed his palm. “You know the answer to that.”
“I will see you again,” he said. “I’ll always see you, even if I’m not right there with you. Even when you can’t see me back.”
“Do you promise? Is that true?”
“I wouldn’t lie now. I wouldn’t do that.”
“And will I ever see you?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said, wrapping his arms around me, so tight, so held, it seemed unthinkable that soon he would be gone. “I don’t know. But I’ll be everywhere.”
“I’ll always look for you,” I said.
He gave one last sad smile.
“How does it end? Where will you go?”
“You’ll see.” He grabbed my hand. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’m tired now.”
I should have known it would have to be like that, the way he left. Something as unstoppable and inevitable and irresistible as sleep. A door between one world and another. The thing that breaks off from this Now and starts a new one over. Nothing you could argue with. Sleep always comes, in the end, and takes you, whether you want it to or not. It’s what you’d die without, even if it also kills you.
At the very end, in my bed, I watched as his astonishing, electric beauty began to calm and empty, his frown dissolving, eyelids softening and going still. Such a privilege to witness. So proud that he would let me see. I felt him starting to go, almost falling anyway, until at the very last moment his whole body jumped, a controlled explosion, that drop that wakes you when you fall somewhere in a dream, that static, Frankenstein jolt. I saw it and I saw the near-miss in his eyes when he opened them, his pupils bottoming out, and I thought, He’s not going. He can’t leave. He’s going to stay here with me.