I Fell in Love with Hope(82)

“Shhh–we’ll get caught if you keep talking,” he smiles. He sighs in relief, feeling my jaw, my neck, sliding his hands back down to my waist and pushing me into him. He recreates a memory from a few years ago when he was a tad smaller but just as mischievous. One where we hid in the bushes from our jailor and leering onlookers.

“You’re silly,” I whisper. Sam moves me with the music, a gentle rhythm we follow together.

“You’re bad at this,” he teases.

“So are you,” I tease back.

We dance and banter for a few songs. Needless chattering and clinking glasses don’t distract us. Even if Sam and I are rarely apart, we are rarely alone too. We take advantage of the time and the dark.

“Sweet Sam,” he whispers.

“Yes?”

His touch runs up my spine, his eyes soft and melting. “Let’s run away together like we talked about,” he says. “Just you and I.”

My body tenses.

“All those kids out there, I don’t envy them,” Sam keeps talking, his voice in my ear, his mask rubbing against my temple. “I don’t need anything ordinary. Henry ran away with his friend to join the army when he was only a little older than us. I don’t need anyone but you. So let’s just run away. We can dance every single night, we can raise the little plants you like and share a bed and see the world. Let’s run away, my love. Like this, but forever.”

“What about our castle?” I whisper. My limbs feel stuck in a loop with the music. But I’m no longer there. I’m spreading through the ground, the hospital’s body, it’s bricks, it’s concrete, it’s souls pulling me back. “We have to protect our patients, remember?”

Sam doesn’t respond. His breath gains another kind of quality. A quieter sort of disappointment that sags against my shoulder.

I bury my face in his neck. I breathe in his scent, the comforting notes of our home embedded in his skin. We sneak out, we trail the outskirts, but we’ve never strayed forever. Sam can’t stray forever. Even with barriers, his mask, his gloves, he can’t survive without his medicine.

He can’t be like the people on the other side of the fence.

“You’re right,” Sam says, rubbing his hands up and down my sides. “We’ll wait till we’re older, till I’ve gotten stronger.”

“Are you sad?” I ask, peering.

“No.” He presses my palm to his covered cheek.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I want you to be happy,” I say, desperation behind it. “We can still go on adventures,” I say like I’m trying to make up for the regret wallowing on Sam’s face. “We can eat sweet bread and pudding every day and–and play card games. We’ll sunbathe every morning and play in the park and–”

“Sweet Sam,” he interrupts.

“Yes?”

Sam leans in till our foreheads touch. The air is humid, thick, and cool. Sam breathes it in, slipping the mask below his chin. I shudder, but I know better than to stop him. His eyes become half-lidded, like suns setting beneath a hill.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks.

The couples dancing across the line hold each other close. They lose themselves in the music. They might even peck each other’s cheeks and let their noses brush.

But none look at each other the way Sam looks at me.

“Yes,” I say. And Sam doesn’t hesitate.

He’s sloppy at first, hungry, but his tenderness doesn’t waver. He hooks his arm around my back, the other cradling the back of my neck. I slip my fingers into his locks, the heat traveling through us like steam. The talking, the dancing, the singing–the noise of anything that isn’t us–disperse till we’re convinced no one else exists.

Sam’s never kissed before. Neither have I. Yet it isn’t like either of us imagined it would be. Like all things between us, it is electric at first, grand and revelatory, a flame settling in a comfortable fire. Soon enough, Sam is smiling, his eyes rolling on a high.

“You’re bad at this,” he teases.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m joking.” He picks me off the ground, purposefully falling backward into the wet grass. I shriek against his mouth, his chuckles vibrating through his chest beneath me.

“Wow,” he sighs, kissing me again, kneading the flesh of my legs and sides.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, keep kissing me,” he orders, pecking my face like a bird. On my brow, my cheekbone, my chin, my nose, my eyelids.

When he lays down, he keeps me with him, our sated hearts beating together.

“Look,” I whisper, pointing at the sky. “Our stars are out.”

“Yes, sweet Sam,” he whispers. He stretches his limbs like a cat on a rooftop and kisses my cheek. “Our stars are out.”





broken things




Hikari is vomiting. I rub her back as the acid burns her throat and her body pulses with coughs. Her head hangs in the aftermath.

“I’m sorry,” I say, making sure she rinses her mouth with water and swallows her medicine no matter how painful.

“Don’t apologize,” Hikari rasps. I walk her to bed and she tries to smirk at me. “You’re more nurse than lover now.”