All the Birds in the Sky(75)

He hadn’t quite let himself think that before, but now he realized it was true. He found himself saying it aloud, sort of by accident, before his brain’s normal functioning could quite be restored: “I love you.”

“Oh.” Patricia was staring down at him, from where he’d fallen into a puddle on the bed. “Wow.”

She was obviously processing this. Like, a non sequitur.

“I can take it back,” Laurence babbled. “I’m taking it back. I never said that.”

He looked up at her green eyes (wide with surprise), her glistening eyelashes, her half-open mouth.

“No, don’t take it back.” She shivered, but not in a bad way. “It’s just. Wow.” And then she looked at him straight on and said, “I love you, too.”

Even as Patricia said it back to him, she felt like her whole history was taking on a whole new focus, the landscape of her past rearranging so that the stuff with Laurence became major geographical features and some other, lonelier, events shrank proportionately. Historical revisionism was like a sugar rush, flooding her head. Her mind flashed on Laurence saying she had saved him, Laurence promising he would never run away from her again. It felt like something she had known a long time.

“Oh my god, I love you. I love you so much,” she started chattering, and soon they were pressed together and kissing the tears out of each other’s eyes and laughing. She touched his cock and even she couldn’t tell if she used magic to lift it up again or if it was just her mere touch, but soon he was inside her again. This time, they were f*cking and talking at the same time, and caressing each other’s faces. They kept rolling over and over so neither of them was on top.

“I don’t even know how I lucked out so damn much, you’re the most beautiful ever,” Laurence was saying.

“Let’s just never stop holding each other.” Patricia was laughing and crying. “Let’s just hold on like this forever and people can come and ask us questions through the door or bug us on the phone or—”

Patricia’s phone rang, having switched itself back on.

She pulled away from Laurence long enough to see that it was her parents calling. She hadn’t spoken to them in ages. She knew at once what this was about—Roberta had finally gone off the deep end, in spite of all her straight-edge resolutions.

“What’s wrong with Roberta?” Patricia blurted.

“Your sister is fine.” It was Patricia’s dad, sounding weary. “We just spoke to her. She’s safe, she was outside the impact zone. Unfortunately, we had just gone to Delaware for one of your mother’s seminars and we weren’t able to get out in time.”

“Wait. What happened? What’s going on?”

“It’s all over the news, we thought you’d seen. Allegra, it came ashore,” said Patricia’s father. “We’re in the basement of the convention center. They herded us all down here when the tidal waves hit. We can’t get the door open, and we think the building collapsed on top of us, plus the whole area is underwater. It’s a miracle we’ve got cell phone signal.”

“Hang in there, Dad.” Patricia felt her face soaking. Between the tears and the white flashes, she was blind. “I’ll find a way. I’ll get you out of there.” There had to be. There had to be a spell to get her to Delaware in a hurry, like a way to bend space. She just couldn’t think what it was, or just whom she could trick enough to pull off such a thing. Maybe just telling her father that she could save him was paradoxically a big enough lie that it would give her the power to save him. Maybe there was a magician in Delaware who could help—except anybody on the ground there was probably dead, or had their hands full. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe, she choked.

“It’s okay, PP. I just wanted you to know that even though we were hard on you, and we disowned you after you ran away from home, we always loved you, and I’m … I’m … I’m proud that you became your own person.” Patricia’s heart shattered. She heard Isobel in the living room upstairs, shouting for Laurence to come and see on the news the scope of the destruction, streets become canals, air choked with debris. Like the heel of God’s hand.

“Do you want to talk to your mother?” Patricia’s father asked. “She’s right here. She broke her arm, but I can hold the phone up to her. Hang on.” There was a scuffling noise. The line went dead.

Patricia hit the callback function a dozen times, and nothing. Part of her thought maybe she should just stay hung up in case they were calling her back too and they got her voicemail, but she couldn’t stop hitting redial-redial-redial, she was bawling and shaking and her naked body was freezing and Laurence put his arm around her and she slapped him and then clung to him and the sound that came from inside her was like all the wounded animals she had ever fixed in her life.

Then she pulled herself together. Her parents weren’t dead yet. The destruction was still happening. She could get help. Someone was doing this, someone was making this happen, and she could make them pay. There was some evil witch or most likely witches, and they had found a way to supercharge a storm system, and they were f*cking going down.

She was pulling her cargo pants on, her shirt, f*ck her bra and panties.

“Where are you going?” Laurence was still naked.