Chapters (41)
“Hmm. And you’re fine with the lie?”
“Some lies are fine, I guess. Sometimes. If no one gets hurt. Let her have the spotlight if she wants it.”
I look up again at the sky. One of the points of light that I thought was a star moves, so it must be a plane. When you wish upon a jetliner.
“And you?” I dare to ask. “You don’t mind the lie?”
“As long as me and you can just leave all of this. But no more—no more making decisions for the entire universe anymore, Hayes,” he says out of the corner of his mouth. “You’re not Figueiredo. You’re better than that.”
I don’t let the lance of guilt show in my face. “Alright.”
He’s quiet again for a long time, so long that I think he fell asleep, though his eyes are still drinking in the stars when I look back at him. I spot the hope there—like that night a few weeks ago when he was on the balcony overlooking a weirdly unfamiliar Boston and dreaming up our future—and know that whatever happens, I can’t let him down ever again. I’ll spend our whole lives making up for whatever pain I caused him.
“Where should we go, now that all this is over?” he asks.
“I’d say some new city, but I think the both of us have done enough exploring for a while.”
“Familiar might be nice.”
“You could teach again.”
“I’d love that. And you need to finish Genesis’s doc.”
“I can do that anywhere. Like Oxford. You think they’ll take you back?”
“In this specific scenario? Why not?”
“So we move to Oxford, the real one, and you can show me around.”
He makes a small noise that might be a hmm in agreement, his eyes lost up at the sky again.
“We’ll open a bar and call it the Prince of Cups.” I squeeze his hand that’s beneath the blanket. “Huh?”
He blows air out of his nose as a laugh, rolling his eyes at me. “I’m not wearing tights again.”
A breeze blows past us, smelling of the dry, red earth. The hood of the car isn’t super comfortable, but here, we’re both safe. And when we done with stargazing, we’ll head back to our little temporary house for one of the last nights ever, and we’ll fall asleep in each other’s arms.