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“I only have you. Take care of yourself for me. I take care of myself for you.”
- Gabriela Mistral
Mike likens feelings of safety to the blanket fort kept stubbornly upright in his basement. Here he sits, tucked away beneath a tree in the woods, and the sunshine that falls through the leaves reminds him of the floral sheet he used as a front door for El’s first ever home.
He has found a loyal companion in doom. Though it has splintered in the wake of El’s return, it is a persistent force, nearly impossible to shake. Mike cannot bring himself to trust the dim promises of freedom that she has been afforded.
If he examines the way he feels, Mike realises that simply having El out of his sight sets his teeth on edge. There’s a lot to unpack there, but it’s easy to ignore the turmoil once they are together again. Mike is flooded with such warmth that the murk lodged in his brain is mercifully stifled.
As El emerges from the trees, Mike is overcome by a lovesick smile. He doesn’t feel self-conscious about his obvious ardour. He’s conscious of nothing but El – her ochre eyes, her dimples, the bounce of her hair as she bounds over to him. Her honey waves almost brush her shoulders now. She crashes into his arms and her hair spills through his fingers.
“Mike!” El gushes. He recognises her hello.
“El,” Mike says, closing his eyes.
Even blind, he sees the light. The sun is bright, and so is the girl in his arms. So is the love in his heart. It’s overwhelming, so he keeps it under wraps. He finds other ways to express it: a lingering hug, a picnic date.
El is quick to notice the blanket Mike has laid out in the grass. She falls to her knees and traces a curious finger on the handle of the wicker basket.
“You brought the picnic,” she discerns, happily.
“I said I would, didn’t I?” Mike asks, lowering himself to the ground, stretching out alongside her. “Check it out. I got all your favourites.”
He flips open the basket lid, and pulls out the goods. Warm waffles, a jar of honey, a punnet of strawberries. El makes a soft sound and looks up at him with awe, more awe than Mike knows his efforts deserve.
It makes him feel nervous about letting her down. In the same instant, it makes him determined to do right by her.
“This is…” El pauses, grapples for the appropriate adjective. “Amazing.”
“Amazing?” Mike repeats, grinning.
“Better than amazing,” she amends. “What’s better than amazing?”
He gives it some thought, as he makes up her plate, giving her the widest waffle and the fattest strawberries.
“Hmm… There’s incredible, magnificent, stupendous…”
“Stupendous,” El says, intrigued. “Not like stupid?”
“No, but it sounds similar. Actually, those words almost mean the opposite of each other.”
“They’re like antonyms?”
“Kind of. Stupendous means impressive, awesome. But it doesn’t imply intelligence, so it’s not exactly an antonym.”
El nods, understanding. “Well, this picnic is stupendous.”
“I don’t know about that,” he says, bashfully.
El accepts her plate with eager hands and a grateful smile. Mike is glad that his mother suggested that he pack plates, because handing El floral porcelain feels much better than he knows it would have to offer her a creased napkin.
They’re quiet, while they eat. The food is sweeter than might suit lunchtime, but they both have a taste for sugar. This summer, Mike has been following his own rules. Pleasing El is more important than anything else, and she is clearly in heaven, humming through every bite.
A gentle breeze sweeps around them. El’s hair goes flying into her face and gets stuck on honey and lipgloss. Mike reaches out to brush it away and tuck it behind her ear. He lingers for a moment, entranced by the shell of her ear, the column of her neck. Sometimes, he wonders about pressing a kiss there – but never without blushing. El notices the colour in his cheeks and gazes at him in that intense, starry way he knows to mean he should kiss her.
He leans in and pecks her softly. She tastes, imaginably, like strawberries. El pulls away with a breathless smile, then stares at him with wide, thoughtful eyes. Her smile soon fades into something more pensive.
“Are you happy?” she asks.
Mike is not expecting a question like that in a moment like this.
“Yeah,” he says, anyway, with a goofy, giddy grin. “I’m perfect, actually. I’m having waffles for lunch, and I’m with you.”
El does not share his levity. Her smile is so weak that it makes his disappear.
“You’re not always with me,” she says, quietly. “How are you when I’m not there?”
Everything inside Mike freezes up. He should understand, he should know that El means this is the most literal sense, but panic erupts within him. He can think of nothing but a cracked-open blackboard, a departing cruiser.
“What do you mean?” Mike blurts.
“I mean when I’m not next to you,” El says.
She reaches for the anxious jumble of his fingers and holds him with care. Mike takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself. It becomes more difficult when she untucks his fingers from her grasp and touches the raw, red tips.
“I worry about this,” she murmurs.
Mike looks at his fingernails – all bitten down to the quick, all surrounded by skin he has picked at and peeled off. They look sore and vulnerable. They expose him, putting his anxiety on display for anybody observant.
It seems that he does not have many observant people in his life. El is the first person to ask him about the mess he has made of his own fingertips.
He feels caught. He swallows, unsure what to say. He’s nervous to look at El and see so much truth, but he’s brave enough to try. When he lifts his gaze, he finds that she is already looking at him. Her eyes are dark and watery and so pretty it makes him ache.
“I want you to be happy,” El tells him, gently.
Nobody has ever told Mike that in such explicit terms before. He doesn’t know if it would occur to most people to say it like that, and reflects on the fact that El is objectively the person who loves him most in the world.
El, who may or may not know what love means.
“You make me happy,” Mike says, though he knows it’s besides her point. “I just… Look. As long as I have you, I’m okay. However I am when I’m away from you, it’s okay when I get to be with you again.”
Is that enough? He wants to ask her if it could be enough. El is so insightful, wise in a way that eludes the measures of books and logic. He knows that her answer would be the one to abide by; it makes him afraid to ask her.
“I understand,” El says. “I feel the same way.”
It doesn’t surprise Mike to learn that El is suffering in his absence. The reasons for her sadness seem unconquerable, at times. Mike imagines that he will spend his entire life fighting them, by her side. He is saddened by the prospect; he doesn’t like to think of her being haunted.
Nor does he like the idea that her moments of joy are limited to him – even if a deranged part of him is gleeful to be an exception to her misery, he doesn’t see her enough to be all of the light in her world. He looks back down at his ruined fingers and knows that he is hurting her every time he hurts himself.
“I don’t mean to do this,” Mike says, as if that makes a difference.
El stares at him sceptically, not quite glaring, and he smiles, amused by her expression, pleased by how well she knows him.
“I didn’t even realise it, until you pointed it out.”
“Nobody else asked you?” El asks, her brow furrowed.
“Nobody notices me except for you,” Mike says. “Nobody… cares as much as you.”
Mike sees everything in her expression – her dim satisfaction, her abundant agony. Their shared feelings, their shared pain, because that’s what being in love is, Mike has found. Empathy twisted into something obscene.
“I’m sorry people don’t notice,” she says. “But I’m not sorry I care most.”
That’s a nice way of looking at it, Mike thinks.
“Me neither,” he agrees. He cares about her most, too, and he isn’t sorry for that. He knows it would be impossible for anybody to love her as much as he does, and so he doesn’t begrudge them. Jealousy emerges at the very thought of it – of someone else building their life around El, orbiting her, treating her as though she is the world, the same way that he does.
“Talk to me about it,” El says, then. “What are you worried about?”
On instinct, he clams up. He envisions a shell curving over a pearl, concealing its opalescent shine, and wants to laugh at himself, for comparing his weary heart to something so precious. Even if it’s how El sees him, Mike knows it isn’t true.
Still, she wants to know. And he can’t imagine denying her anything. He’s convinced even before she deals her final card.
“Mike, it’s me,” she reminds him. She reminds him that it is different with her, that she will keep him safe. And he tells her about his pain.