True Heroes (88 page)
The light to their floor lit up, but the doors didn’t open. “Are you sure you want to go out?”
Caleb eyed the stairs behind her as the door opened. “I’ll beat you downstairs,” he said while leaving her side and crashing through the stairwell door. He raced down the flights, skipping steps and feeling the warm blood circulate out the final fragments of fatigue. He hit every wall over-zealously and was soon leaping over entire sets of stairs until the bottom door felt his shoulder barrel through. ‘Not here yet.’ He moved into a hidden corner and emerged behind Alice as the doors opened, grabbing around her waist and swiftly kissing her on the cheek. As she giggled and squeezed down his head, he whispered into her ear. “Of course I want to go out with you.”
“I guess your energy is all back.”
“It was,” he said while smiling. “Free coffee?”
“Sure,” she said while still smiling widely. ‘Blissful little couple aren’t you?’
‘Seems so.’
They both walked across the open lobby and around the large, fake plants until they came to the medium-sized thermos atop the front desk. Two ushers—‘Automated smiling bots,’—watched on as Alice took her biodegradable cup of coffee and walked away. “You don’t want any?”
“No, I don’t drink it.”
“Ah, I thought it was just that one time.” He smiled widely as they walked through the automated doors, and was pulled back by her tightened hand. “Speaking of, there’s something wrong with this coffee.”
They made eye contact and smiled. “Oh, yeah? Let me be the judge of that.” He took the cup and wafted it in front of his nostrils. His free hand dipped its pinkie into the luke-warm liquid before tasting it. “By gosh you’re right.”
“It needs more sugar,” she said while leaning slowly forward.
“More sugar,” he said lightly, finding his entire body reacting to her lean. They kissed lightly, but couldn’t find the strength for the return journey, so their lock stayed hitched, hands exploring the bases of skulls on either person while lips stayed still minus flutters and murmurs from beneath the skin. They finally released with her head being carefully cradled between his arm and torso, and they began to walk again.
As soon as they stepped to the sidewalk, both pairs of eyes looked left and then right, stopping and switching between an ice cream shop and an accident scene a few blocks farther. She looked up and back to him, and he nodded before throwing her cup of coffee into a trash can. As they came up on it, both with eyes still warily watching the scene, Caleb asked, “What kind do you want?”
“You know what I like.”
“All right, I didn’t know if you wanted anything new or not.” She stood outside of the small hut and watched intently as he walked up to the counter. “Two scoops of vanilla with sprinkles in a cup, please.”
“Coming up. Did you hear what happened out there?”
“No, we just drove in.”
“Biker and his girl on the back of some Harley and got T-boned by a little hybrid car. Apparently, the girl was trapped under the bike and under the other car somehow.”
“Did she get out?”
“Yeah, get this,” he said while handing the large cup of ice cream to Caleb, “the guy got a rush of something and lifted the car off the bike, and then the bike off the girl.”
Caleb handed him a group of bills. “No kidding?”
“Yeah, it’s wild.”
“Yeah, it is. Keep the change.”
“Thanks.”
He snatched up a spoon and walked past Alice to the edge of the scene. She joined him and snatched the ice cream from his hand. “Do you know what happened?”
“Something amazing.”
She downed the bite while looking up at him, and turned to watch the scene now. ‘Not much to see.’
‘Never was.’
‘No, we just missed the incredible part.’
“What happened?”
Caleb tugged on her shirt and they walked over to a bench. His head was held up by his hands while his eyes bore through the cement. “A guy with an expensive motorcycle, who is obviously concerned with image, and who likes danger threw that all away. He threw everything away that he thought he needed to save a girl. He did whatever it took to save her. We missed the emergence of love by just a few minutes.”
She handed him a spoonful of ice cream. “That would’ve been nice to see. We know it’s out there. We know it happens to people, but to see it...well, I guess we’re lucky sort of.”
He licked the spoon clean. “Yeah we are. Maybe not even because we were here for the aftermath of this. Maybe there’s a chance at something higher.”
“Something more?”
“Something perfect.”
She nestled closer to him as they took turns eating vanilla ice cream covered in colorful sprinkles.
- - -
As the whitecaps crashed upon the darkened sand, two pairs of feet writhed and connected; semi-circular swings of shortened toes traced smiles in the air while larger grins nearly connected five feet further north on the horizontal plane. With the sun conducting its finale, a cloudless sky slowly transformed into a black canvas; small, artificial piercings allowing the migratory ball of light to keep watch over the safety of all the world. Along the line of illuminated end, Caleb and Alice lay with all of this upon their minds.
He continued to look into the vague hairs he could still see fraying between grains of sand. “Did I ever tell you that your hair is the same color as your eyes?”
“No it isn’t. My eyes are darker I think.”
“Same color, not shade.”
“Oh, then no.”
He smiled and wiped the sand from her forehead with his lips. “Your eyes are darker, no question. Still, your hair just reminds me of your eyes every time I see it.”
“They’re connected to me, ya know. If you’d just look down here, you might even see both at once.”
His cheek nuzzled against her hair, and his eyes closed. “I think your hair likes the attention.” His hands worked underneath the shoulder-length blades of dark brown and cupped her skull’s base, the pads of his fingers sliding between the planted rows across the upward slope. “Warm hands and soft hair aren’t such a bad substitute are they?”
Her fingers tightened their grip on the back of his bare arm while a wave crashed louder than her voice could manage. “What did you want when you were little?”
Caleb smiled. “That was random, but I’ve told you what everybody wanted me to be.”
“Don’t blame it on everybody. What did you want to be?”
He moved her tucked head with a bit of laughter. “I had never given it thought because I was always told what I would be. Looking back on my mom, Carol, my few grown-up friends and the three I had in high school, I only reacted to what they wanted. Under my new way of thinking, I guess I just wanted to make everyone happy, whatever profession would allow that.”
“Know what I wanted to be?”
“I don’t think you ever told me, besides be a mom.”
She was silent for a few moments. “Oh, yeah during our night I talked about that.”
“Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Is there a more fitting name?”
“To us, no. What’d you want to be?”
Caleb felt a burst of laughed air hit his naked chest. “A wife.”
“You made it sound like you always wanted to have a certain job.”
“No, no, no I never thought I’d be any good at jobs because I couldn’t ever think without everyone else hearing. David and the rest always told me I’d be great as a wife and a mom because I always took care of everyone. Can you imagine me doing that for a living?”
“Taking care of people or becoming a wife and-or a mother to every other person?”
“Well, both. Either.”
“Could I see it? Yeah that’s not too far of a stretch, but you’d never be happy. You’d be like you were with half of that group: you’d date them because taking care of them is what needed to happen, but it would wear off because you have nothing in common besides your disease with them. You’d never receive real happiness, but you’d always sacrifice that for them. You weren’t ever meant to stay with them, but you could never leave them either.”
“You know I don’t do that with you right?”
“I do,” he said as his hand brushed her cheek. “Well, with parts of me at least.”
“You’re the only part of you. The Prince is something else.”
“Either way, you’re a saint for putting up with both of us.”
“No, I’m serious, I don’t put up with anything that you do. It’s…just natural to be with you and talk to you. What’s that about?”
“I hope it means we were meant to be here and together, but I just don’t know that yet.”
“When you do, will you tell me?”
“Of course. Without a moment to spare.” He rolled over onto his back. “Why did you bring up marriage?”
“I wasn’t saying we should get married.”
“But you were. You were testing the waters with the statement and went from there.”
She hovered over him with relaxed eyes. “I’ve been thinking about you and me for a while. My mind drifts. That seems like a pretty natural place for it to drift to.”
He smiled with his hands folded behind his head. “I agree, and…someday. If I still make you happy.”
“So if the sun rises tomorrow?”
He made a face at her. “Honestly, we’ve got to be sure.”
“I know. Thanks to you, I know.”
His arms unfurled and gently pushed Alice to the sand before standing. Power infused with his eyes and slightly rose from his skin. ‘Nobody’s around.’ Caleb’s feet broke into the steeper grade beyond the horizon of water and sand, and illuminated a low hue of blue from beneath the water. “Do you want to see what I can do thanks to you?”
Alice, he saw through his power, was hugging her knees with a wondrous smile.
From under the water, he pushed up and around, creating reverse geosynchronous orbits of phosphorous glow until the water dripped harmlessly back to the ocean at the top. One joint felt Alice’s hand permeate the guided salt water and Caleb gently traced her hand with the glow, dropping the track of droplets from her forearm and into the sand. “This is me, you’ve got yours, I think the only question left is what can we do together?”
The water rejoined with the larger body and Caleb became himself completely before her again. “We could find out.”
- - -
Action was constant within the depth of night. With the human glow cased and boxed, projecting, blooming from hundreds of sources, both figures created action. From core to limb, they always moved; without thought did the constructed flail snap together—with clear sparkles of electric current—flesh of connection. Constantly they flung themselves together in a beat of three—action-stop-action, action-stop-action—with intimacy ingrained within the flung sand amongst the wind.
His hand moved down her arm and gave a gentle grasp to her shoulder. Her hand ran up the ripples of his chest and across the over-arc of deltoid. As they remained close, they stayed far, gathering with full inhale the image of the wildness each embodied. Breath never seemed to leave again; the exhale did not come. His hand ran across her face in altering grace. Her mouth opened to fail at breath; she found his leg traced from toe to thigh by her touch. He felt crackling stillness rummage the silence around his mind. Together they danced until their heads fell together with an invisible glisten, and found a sanctimonious, unanimous exhale fly from their dry lips and engulf the other in torrent warmth throughout sensation.
Intention swam where it would once drown. Nothing of the cape of selfish thought wrapped their minds, and from buckled horizon to global pinnacle, there was an encompassing moment that swirled further than their arms could reach.
- - -
