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They’re not unhappy, they’re never unhappy. Their days are filled with bright sunlight and peaceful ocean and each other, and when those days turn into weeks, then those weeks into months, they’re only happier.
They’re not unhappy, May knows, but something else grows in her as those days stretch into weeks and months. She tries to hold it in, to study it, figure it out before Phil sees it. She wants to have an answer for him when he asks what’s wrong.
Of course, he sees it despite her efforts. He never had any trouble seeing her. “May,” he asks one day, “what’s wrong?”
He’s propped up in bed, reading. It’s been a low-energy day for him. She’s in her armchair, supposedly knitting, but really contemplating him.
She sighs, thinks for a minute. He doesn’t rush her, just spreads his book face-down across his lap and watches the thoughts cross her face.
“I’m happy,” she says finally. “I love you, and I’m happy.”
“I love you, too. Is that what’s wrong?” He chuckles. “I mean I get it, we’ve mostly been in one danger after the other for most of our lives -
“No,” she shakes her head. “It feels right, that I’m happy. That we’re happy. But... there’s something else, too. I look at you, and... I don’t know what.”
“You’re sad.”
“No, I’m not sad. I’m happy.”
“Well, sad doesn’t mean unhappy.” He pushes himself up against his pillows. “You can be happy and still be sad. You know this, May, you of all people.”
“I know,” she sighs. Of course she knows. She carries sadness with her always. She knows how sadness makes the happiness sharper, brighter, how happiness in turn can make the sadness heavier sometimes. “I just meant that that’s not what I’m feeling. I know that I’m sad, and that I’m happy. There’s something else there, though, that I can’t... I can’t name.”
“Hmm.” He doesn’t say anything else, just sits there, smiling softly at her, letting her puzzle it out. He always gave her space to think, always listened patiently when she needed to work through something. She loved that about him.
Wait.
“That’s it,” she whispers. “I’m missing you.”
She looks up at him, still there, still smiling at her, still with those crinkles around his eyes. Still waiting patiently for her to go on.
“I’m missing you,” she repeats, “already, even though you’re still here. Because I know you won’t be one day. And every extra day I get with you, it’s good, but... it’s a reminder of that.”
She looks down, pushing back the lump that’s suddenly risen in her throat. “I catch myself thinking about you in the past tense,” she murmurs, “like you’re already gone, even though I don’t want you to be.”
Phil folds his book shut, slowly reaches to place it on the bedside table. His careful movements tell her his muscles are aching again. But he holds his arms out to her anyway.
“Melinda. Come here,” he whispers, and she does, setting her knitting aside to crawl into bed next to him. He wraps his arms around her, she melts into him, settles her head into its place on his shoulder.
Feel him, she thinks. Here and warm and alive in your arms. She focuses on the slow rise and fall of his chest.
“Do you remember,” he says, and she feels the vibrations of the words in his chest, “what you said to me on our Sanremo mission? Way back?”
“I said ‘that tie makes you look like a dork,’ I think.”
“Yes,” he laughs, “and it did. But after that. We were about to go in, and you looked at me, you held my gaze and said, ‘Hey. I’m with you.’ You remember?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve said that a lot,” she mumbles into his shoulder.
“You have,” he concedes. “And I remember every time. But this time in particular sticks out to me, because it’s the first time I felt it.”
“Felt what? That you loved me?”
“Oh, no. I knew that from the moment I met you. No, this was the first time you said, ‘I’m with you,’ and I felt it. I felt you with me, in my soul, you know? Like I knew, at that moment, that you’d be with me from then on, always. Even when you weren’t.”
“Oh.”
He brings a hand up to stroke through her hair. She closes her eyes at the touch.
“I’m with you, you know that,” he whispers. “I always will be. Even when I’m not. You’re allowed to miss me. God knows I missed you so much when you were gone, even though I still felt you with me.”
“Is it wrong that I sometimes feel like I miss you now? When you’re here?”
“I think I understand that. It’s like a small part of you is trying to prepare for when I’m not here anymore. And it’s like you said, the knowledge that I won’t be here one day is kind of slipping into the present. I think that’s normal. Neither of us are strangers to grief, after all.”
His voice breaks on the last word, trailing into a little cough. She brings her hand to his chest to soothe it, to feel his heart still beating under that old scar. He puts his hand over hers, holding it there.
They stay like that as the sun begins to set, golden light slanting through the window, falling softly on their faces. With each other now, for a little while longer, and forever after that.