Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (13 page)

“Mizithra?” she cried. “That’s too salty. And it would taste horrible with coriander. Blech!”

Boricio shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “It’s a perfect blend. It’s what the gods would eat if they ever ate breakfast.”

Rose laughed, shaking her head furiously back and forth. “Sorry, but that sounds terrible. I feel like
I’ve been
sucker punched.”
 

“Have I ever lied to you before?”

“No,” she said. “Not that I know of. But I’ve only had five minutes to catch you red handed.”

Boricio wanted more of her, maybe more than he’d ever wanted anything else. He wanted to give her a lifetime to catch him red handed in all the lies he would never dare tell her. Boricio’s desire made him bold. “Promise you’ll try it,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose and said, “Okay, I promise I’ll try the
Boricio Breakfast Bomb
. Someday.”
 

Boricio waited through three seconds where he almost didn’t unleash his heart, but swallowed and said, “How about I make it for you? I make it even better than Schooner.”

“If you make it better than they do,” she said, “then why come here?”

“Because otherwise I’d never have the chance to meet you.”

Boricio was as surprised to hear himself say
Because otherwise I’d never have the chance to meet you
as he had been to hear himself speak in the third person.
 

Boricio ate at Schooner or Later because he liked to leave the house on Sunday morning, and get away from Black Island, where he stayed rent-free in one of the small furnished houses provided by the Guardsmen who paid his salary. Paddock was a short ferry ride, the place was nice, and he loved to chew his food while staring out at the water.
 

Rose knew the truth by the following Sunday, and had lived it with Boricio each Sunday since. Now, several months later, the day Boricio was waiting for had finally arrived.
 

He had been planning the morning for a month. Boricio was taking a short vacation, and wasn’t scheduled to be back at Black Island for the next five days. Rose had delivered the final pages of her manuscript the week before and had little on her plate until she started her next novel in November. They would spend five days together, uninterrupted, and after breakfast, they could spend them celebrating their engagement.
 

Boricio rolled to Rose’s side of the bed, empty but warm. She was probably making coffee. He was about to yell for her to stop, because Boricio had wanted to wake up nice and slow and sleepy with her, lying in the coziness of freshly laundered sheets for a while. They could caffeinate themselves later.
 

Boricio knew things wouldn’t go quite according to plan when he heard what had to be the sound of Rose weeping in the bathroom. He tore off the sheets, leapt from the bed, and then sprinted down the hallway and burst into the bathroom.
 

“You okay, baby?”
 

Rose nodded, shook her head, then nodded again. Boricio looked down at the thin strip of white plastic in her hand, then at the blue line dividing the middle.

Oh. . . Wow.

He had to hide his surprise, lest it come off wrong, and said, “It’s okay, baby,” as he pulled her body against his.

She mashed her face against his chest as her soft cry fell into a full sob. Boricio swallowed on repeat to keep his tongue in his mouth. His words had to be perfect. Rose was too fragile, shuddering against him as her swirling emotions were licked by uncertainty’s fire.
 

They had barely grazed through the one or two conversations they’d had about having children. Their relationship was still young, even though they both considered their union inevitable. Boricio was certain Rose felt the same as he did — they would spend the rest of their lives together. But she’d also feared having kids and how it would change things, as it had for so many people she knew.

For the first time in her life, she was truly happy. Everything had lined up — her career, her finances, and her relationship — in perfect harmony. Having a child would disrupt that harmony. The only question was, to what extent?

As Rose held the piece of plastic in her hands, Boricio imagined all the thoughts racing through her mind that they’d made a horrible mistake — that they’d done something wrong, something to jeopardize their perfect future by accelerating their present.
 

Life was hard enough without having someone kick you from the inside, but there was something remarkable about creating something from nothing. Becoming a parent turned humans to gods. Though Boricio had harbored fears, they melted away seeing Rose holding the strip. Maybe he wouldn’t be perfect, but he wouldn’t be the monster his father had been.
 

This was a blessing.

And there was no better time to propose, than the day when you found out you were about to spend the rest of your life being a father.
 

Rose was scared. Maybe terrified. Boricio had to be careful, especially since a big part of her fear was likely his fault. He had always been evasive when their conversation drifted toward his childhood, the vicious years before Will. He had never said anything specific, but Rose was sharp, smart enough to see that Boricio’s early life had bled far outside the lines of a healthy childhood, and she had likely hypothesized at the many marred hues which colored Boricio’s personal history.

His life with Will had been mostly blue skies, but life before that was dark — spilled ink that still blotted his dreams with repellent memories of monsters that no amount of therapy, pills, or hugs could ever hope to erase.
 

Boricio owed it to Rose to open the drapes on his past, if for no other reason than to give her the truth of who he was. True love deserved nothing less, just not today. Today was about their future, not his past.
 

Boricio continued to stroke her hair as Rose cried herself to a sputtering shudder. He pulled her deeper into his arms, then pushed her slightly away, crouching a third of the way to the floor so their eyes aligned.
 

“Baby,” he said. “I’ve never lied to you, right?”
 

She nodded her head.
 

“Do dogs have three eyelids?”

Rose nodded.
 

“Does the human brain generate enough power to light a light bulb?”

She nodded again.
 

“Does mizithra with coriander kick unholy ass?”
 

She laughed then cracked out a half-broken, “Yes.”

Boricio squeezed her hands inside of his. “This is the best news ever. Especially this morning. So thank you.” He smiled. “This is great for us, I promise. Right now, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. And I’ll stay that way until this afternoon, and then I’ll be even happier.”
 

Boricio took Rose by the hand, then led her to the bedroom. He stopped in front of the bed, turned back toward her, then lifted her hands over her head.

Boricio pulled her tee shirt from her body, and while he was always especially attentive to her breasts — he called them her rosebuds — he quickly passed them after a light kiss, dropping to his knees and burying his face in her belly. His lips lingered at her button, then he finally stood, pushed her back to the bed, and peeled her pink panties down her legs and past her ankles.

Boricio showed Rose how happy he was until they both fell asleep.
 

**

They woke up nearly two hours later, closer to lunch than breakfast. Boricio’s arms were still wrapped around Rose. He lightly squeezed her to see if she was awake.
 

“How was your rest?” she said, turning toward him.
 

“Amazing, you?”

“I never really fell asleep. I was thinking instead.”
 

Boricio brushed the side of her cheek. “Me too,” he said. “I was just keeping my thoughts in the middle of my snores.”

“You mean your thunder,” she laughed.
 

Boricio lightly slapped her cheek, a tickle really, then climbed over her body, hopped from the bed, held out his hand, and pulled her from bed. They kissed again before heading into the hall, then into the bathroom for a quick shower together.
 

Boricio dried off, then threw on a pair of jeans and a black tee. He grabbed the step-stool from the kitchen while Rose finished applying her makeup, then, as quietly as he could, he crept back into the bedroom, over to the closet, then up on the ladder. Boricio reached for the small black box shoved all the way at the back of the top shelf.
 

He lifted the lid, smiled at the ring, then slipped the box inside his pocket.
 

Boricio returned the stool to the kitchen, then poured a tall glass of orange juice for them to share. She was suddenly in the kitchen, smiling. “You seem so mysterious this morning,” she said.
 

“No mystery,” Boricio said. “That’s just change you’re sniffing. And I think you’re the one who started the morning getting all Darwinian on me.” He opened the door, waited for her to step out, then followed and closed the door behind him. “I always figured that if you don't like something, it’s your job to change it,” he said. “And if you can’t change it, well then you have to at least change the way you think about it. But since the day I met you, Rose, I haven’t wanted to change a thing about my life, or any of the ways I think about it. But this change is good. This change is great.”

Boricio opened the door to her Mini Cooper and kissed her softly. Rose kissed him back hard, like she wanted to pull Boricio back into the bedroom. He wanted that too, but he wanted breakfast and all that would come after even more.
 

The drive was mostly silent — a sky of sunshine fine with Boricio. The flat of his foot kept slapping the pedal, coasting through the empty four-way stops, and quickly closing the short distance to Schooner or Later, where he would ask Rose if he could watch her wipe cheese from her lips every Sunday for the rest of their forevers.
 

Quiet was best — it gave Boricio time to reflect, and perhaps even perfect his proposal. He thought about how grateful he was to have someone like Rose calming the grizzly that had been waking inside him, the same bear who had been sleeping at the mouth of Boricio’s cave as long as he could remember. Just when Boricio thought the old monster was finally ready to open its eyes, stretch its arms in a yawn, then amble outside the cave, Rose came along to wave it back inside.
 

Boricio had spent the last month obsessed with the idea of marrying Rose. She would probably want a wedding, maybe invite her sister, Mary, from Missouri. Boricio would be happy to go to the courthouse on Tuesday, since he still wanted to spend Monday in bed.
 

Boricio had even started looking for a house. They were comfortable in Rose’s place, where Boricio had been staying recently — though he still kept the place on Black Island for nights he worked late — but if they were going to raise a family, they’d need a bigger place, something Boricio had considered a few weeks before he had seen the blue line neatly dividing the center of the white plastic.
 

Boricio found a pair of houses that would be perfect for the two, and now three, of them. Both lay in Paddock island’s interior, where houses were much cheaper, though Boricio thought buying a house somewhere else, off the island, would be better. Boricio’s work at Black Island wouldn't last forever, and Rose could write anywhere in the world, though she preferred to live near the water. But the US of A was a mighty big place, with several long coastlines to choose from. Besides, who said they had to stay in America? Boricio would live anywhere with Rose, wet or dry; red, white and blue, or any color of the rainbow.

Only one dark cloud sat in the middle of Boricio’s otherwise perfect blue sky. But it was ink black, and held every memory of his monster father, the demon who murdered his childhood, then flooded it with ghosts who never stopped haunting.

The ghosts were still there; they lived in the cave with the bear. But they were afraid of the air around Rose, which was one of the million reasons Boricio wanted to draw his breath beside her. On the short drive to Schooner, those wretched memories were only a flutter, flickering through his mind like the final shot in a fading reel.
 

He would be a great father. All Boricio had to do was be the opposite from the heap of unspeakable that had been his father. Boricio wouldn’t tell his son to be a man; he would show him how to do it. And if he had a girl, well then, he’d spend the rest of his life loving his junior Rosebud more than any other girl in the world, except for her mommy.
 

Schooner or Later was one block away, nestled between calm water and the rest of Boricio’s life. He looked over at Rose and wondered what she was thinking and if she had any idea what was going to happen, any clue about what he’d been planning.
 

“We’re going to Schooner or Later?” She said as she realized where their route was taking them, then shook her head. “I thought we were doing something different this morning. A surprise? I’m not even sure I’m hungry.”