***
“Alright,” James said to me, “Again. And give me something that’s at least somewhat a challenge this time.”
I flew at him, swung my fist towards his face, which he blocked easily, swung my other fist up towards his face immediately after (which was predictable, I knew), and he expected me then to try to kick him between the legs, because as he knew from our many sessions practice-fighting like this that once I had swung both of my arms, it was my natural instinct to use my legs. But instead, I swung again with my right hand, clipped him hard on the jaw, and sent him stumbling a few feet. Once I had blurred towards him, I hurled myself onto his back and latched on firmly before wrapping one of my arms around his neck and squeezing.
We had rehearsed just like that for so many nights over our twenty-plus year imprisonment that I no longer let up when I was obviously winning. I was no longer concerned that I would hurt him, and he was no longer concerned that he would hurt me. As he sunk to the ground, unable to breathe, I did not let up until his knees had hit the carpet. Then, I let go, stood back, and went to kick him down onto the ground…
But he thrust his elbow back hard into my ribcage and knocked me flat.
“Ow! Fuck, James!” I yelled, because I was sure at least one of my ribs had splintered.
“Is it broken?” He asked.
“No.”
“Alright, then. Would you yell ‘Ow! Fuck James!” if we were out there right now?”
“No. Of course not…”
“Alright. Then don’t yell it in here.”
“Oh, my God, we are practicing! Why are you taking it so seriously?” I asked rather sensitively, because I was tired, my ribs hurt, and my mind was terribly distracted by my conversation with Tyre. It had been two days since we had gone back out to sea, and every day, I expected the Warden to call on me, either for our usual meeting or to threaten me for what I had done, and for two days, he had remained shut up in his quarters, silent.
“Awww, I’m sorry.” James said condescendingly, “You want me to go easier on you because this is just a practice run? Cuz you’re not feeling good? Cuz you’re a little, defenseless girl, and I’m a big, strong man, and it’s not fair?”
“I know you’re purposely trying to make me angry, so I will fight with more skill and with my usual rage, but I can’t do it tonight…”
“What, are you on your period or something?”
I stared at him, knowing he was prodding me, but when I saw that he was not smiling, I was able to convince myself that he was just being a snide, cruel son of a bitch, and I snapped.
“You motherfucker!” I shouted, before storming towards him, kicking him hard in the balls, grabbing the back of his head and pushing his face down into my knees, and then socking him in both his stomach and between his legs again, all within a second.
“I am not on my period, actually, but even if I were, I could have just as easily done that.” I told him, before pushing him down onto the ground with more force than I actually intended to use.
“You know it wouldn’t be over right now.” He told me from the floor after he had regained the ability to breathe. “If we were out there, I’d come back at you, and…”
“And we’d fight until the Warden or the other guards broke it up, or until I yielded. We cannot have either one of us looking too defeated. I know, James. It’s been twenty years. I know the drill, as they say.”
He was up, and even though I had not heard him shuffle to his feet, I felt him approaching me. I was standing by the window, looking out at the endless sea, at the shimmering reflection of two of Pangaea’s moons upon the surface of the water, at how even though those huge moons were so far away, they still looked close enough to touch.
James raised my shirt, instructed me gently to hold it up, and began to bind the green seaweed-like wrap around my middle.
“Baby, I’ve got everything under control.” He told me softly, “I promise. I set the wheels in motion, and we’re all going to be out of here within a month. Don’t worry.”
“It’s not the escape I am worried about, James. It is getting to the escape that I’m worried about.”
Once the wrap was stuck together and held firmly in place, he rested his hand on my belly and pulled me so my back was against his front. His lips pressed to the back of my neck first, then moved down to kiss the top of my spine, and then moved over to kiss slowly down my shoulders.
“I’m sorry. I got a little more aggressive than normal tonight.” He told me, “You know I don’t mean any of it, baby. But if we screw it up while we’re out there…”
“I know.” I turned to him and reached up to rest my hand on his face, “I know. Trust me, I do. I am just being a temperamental, overly sensitive, little…” I searched for the word but lazily chose the first that came into my mind, “…a-hole, James.”
He tried to fight it, but the grin spread across his face, and within a second after I had said it, he was laughing hysterically. I rolled my eyes, trying to hold onto the anxiety and the unrest that I had been feeling only a moment before, but as usual, James’s good humor was infectious.
“I have never heard you call yourself or anyone else an ‘a-hole’ before.” He said as his hands encircled my waist, “And though you are certainly a little sensitive tonight, which is wildly out of character for you, I cannot say that your sensitivity is so excessive that you are acting ‘a-hole-ish.’”
“Well, thank you.” I said.
“Something’s going on. Tell me, sweetheart.”
“I just want to go.” I said, “I want to get off of this ship. I want to disappear into the woods, and I never want to look back ever again, James. I don’t want to remember any of this anymore. I don’t want to feel this feeling anymore.”
It was a feeling that was almost totally indescribable. It struck me at random, and when it did, it rolled my stomach and thrashed my heart from side to side the way no other feeling could. It left me feeling dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented. It was when I could feel the visceral sensations I had felt back when my father and Michael had been over top of me, or right after they had left. It was a sick feeling, a hopeless feeling, and it made me want to cry, and scream, and hate myself, and hate them. It was the result of my past, certainly, but I remembered my past all the time, so why was that sudden, sickening resurgence of that terrible feeling necessary?
“Just hold me.” I told him, and when I reached out and wrapped my arms around his neck, he tightened his own around my middle. “It will pass, I just need a few minutes.”
“Okay.” He said, and he did not push the issue. Instead, he held me, rubbing his hands up and down my back all the while. Trying to brighten my own mood, I thought to myself that it was getting easier for him to touch me without hurting me, and that happy thought made the sick feeling pass more quickly.
“We’re going to be out at sea for a while after this last stop, baby.” He told me, “They fueled up good this time.”
“So it’s going to be harder for us to see each other.” I said, and I felt my throat clench just at the thought of it.
“Yeah, but we’ll see each other, baby. We always do.” He replied, “And the next time we stop, we’ll be ready to go.”
I nodded.
“Don’t talk about it.” I whispered, “I feel like he has ears everywhere. I feel like all of them have ears everywhere. Tyre said again that he has spies close to me, and I just can’t figure out who they could be. I know he wouldn’t say that they were close to me if it were only friends of a friend, or something. It has to be someone really close.”
“Baby, he’s screwing with you.” He told me gently, “He’s trying to make you paranoid. He knows how you would react if you thought one of us was reporting to Tyre behind your back. Don’t let him get in your head like that. He’s done it before.”
“I know. He is very good at getting into my head.” I pulled away and looked at him, “Like today, he told me he looks at me like I am hi
s daughter. That he loves me.”
“See? He knows where to prey on you. We’ve known this whole time that he thinks our relationship and your relationship with Adam are the result of you not having a dad growing up, and maybe they are, but who cares?”
“He does, apparently.”
“Of course he does, because he thinks it shows weakness in you that he can exploit. He thinks it will break down your defenses and make you trust him, and maybe, from that trust, you’ll want to join him someday.”
“I will never join him.”
“I know you won’t. Neither will I. I’m good at faking it, but I could never hang out with these people all the time. They are so dull.”
I giggled at that, and he grinned. As usual, he was able to make me laugh even though my whole being felt like it had spent days on a torture rack. Physically and mentally, I was stretched to my furthest limits, and there he was, making me smile like nothing was wrong, like we were back at home.
“Like, even their sense of humor is dull.” He continued as I sat down on the daybed and he sat in front of me with his back to me on the floor, “And you know how guys sit around and talk about girls? They do that, but in these like, puritanical terms.”
“No, they do not!” I exclaimed through my laughter, “Give me an example.”
“Okay, so, obviously, they know that I used to date you or whatever. Now, back when I worked Security, and then when I was training the military kids, and we’d all be sitting around shooting the shit… Oh, my God, woman, you’re a goddess.” He told me, because I had started to massage his shoulders, “So, we’d be sitting around shooting the shit, and they’d say, all conspiratorially, ‘So what’s she like, man?’”
“James Maxwell, if you shared intimate details of our sex life with strange men, I am going to cut off this impromptu massage so that I may kick your ass from here to next week, as they say!”
“They weren’t intimate details, per se. And really, I never said anything. Sometimes I just nodded. Other times, if I knew the guys pretty well, I’d shrug, or make faces and incomprehensible noises. Because that’s what you’re like.”
“I nod, shrug, and make faces and incomprehensible noises while we are in the throes of passion? What am I, a malfunctioning cyborg?”
He laughed one of his raucous laughs, which prompted me to laugh harder.
“Not you, it’s me! All men behave like malfunctioning cyborgs when there is sex in the equation. And though you may be offended, madam, let me tell you that every one of those men said, ‘I knew it!’ and one guy said to me, ‘She just looks like she’d be sexual dynamite, man.’ Which, as we both know, you are.”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered by this, or terribly offended. I am leaning towards the latter. It is so… objectifying, James.”
“Oh, Lord…” He sighed in joking exasperation, “Brynna Olivier, love of my life… I would never dream of objectifying you. All guys talk, baby. Don’t you ladies sit around talking about how your men perform?”
I did not reply, because of course we did. How many times had Rachel and I sat around in Shadow Village talking about Joe and James’s epic lovemaking skills? How many times had Janna and I compared notes on Adam and James? I had no right to be offended, so I chose to be bemused.
“She is silent.” James said to himself, “Because she knows her strapping boyfriend of twenty-plus years has trumped her with his logic.”
“Shut up!” I told him through my giggles, “I suppose if you never gave any criticism or complaints, then I cannot be mad, as I have spoken very frequently of your sexual prowess with my very good friends.”
“Any complaints? Anything strange?”
“Only that you last about as long as virginal teenage boy and call me ‘Mommy’ throughout. They found that very peculiar. And hilarious.”
“Oh!” He exclaimed, before his raucous laughter took him, “Look at her go, ladies and gentlemen! That was good.” He reached back and shook my hand, which he then brought to his lips and kissed, “That was really good. You win. You win for the rest of the night. The rest of the week, actually.”
“Thank you. I suppose I should not ask this now that I have made that joke, but did you ever give any criticism or complaints?”
“Baby, I could not come up with something that witty or hilarious as quickly as you did, so you needn’t worry about asking. And no, I never did.” He kissed me, “I could never say a negative word about you, Brynn.”
“I know, baby.” I replied, “And contrary to what my joke would have you believe, I have never said a negative word about you, either. At least not when it comes to our sex life.”
“Oh, good.” He replied, “I mean, because obviously, over everything else in the entire universe about me that you could criticize, my manly performance is the absolute last thing I would want you to criticize. That, and my hair.”
I laughed so hard that I had to stop massaging his shoulders so I could hold my stomach.
“Oh, James, you know I could never criticize your hair.”
“Thank God. You know how proud I am of my grooming.”
“I do know. And believe me, James Maxwell, I adore your grooming, you handsome devil.”
He laughed, and then he reached back, took one of my hands that was still massaging his back, brought it to his lips, and kissed it.
“You know it’s been twenty-five years since I met you?” He asked, tilting his head back into my lap so he could look at me. “Twenty-five years since that bar in D.C., Brynna Olivier.”
“God…” I sighed, “And here we are.”
He turned to face me, rose onto his knees, and kissed me. His lips held to mine for several long seconds that filled me up to the brim with that warmth I had been so afraid was lost to me forever. My arms wrapped around his neck, and my legs wrapped around his middle. By tightening my legs around him, I pulled him closer to me, and kissed him a little harder once our bodies were pressed together. After a moment, our lips broke apart, and our foreheads rested together.
“We made it.” He said, “Everyone thought we’d be a flash in the pan, but here we are.”
“I didn’t think we’d make it, but we did.” Lightly, my lips grazed over his, “And I love you as much today as I did back then. More, even.”
“Do you think me not aging made it easier for us to stay together?” He asked, “I heard someone say that in Shadow Village. ‘Oh, if he aged, and she had to change his diapers when he was too old to take care of himself, she’d dump him for a younger, hotter model in a second.’”
“That is so not true!” I exclaimed, and perhaps my rage was slightly out of proportion, considering it was just something said by one of the stupid gossip-mongers whose need to breathe lustfully to each other about mine and James’s relationship was as pathetic as it was disturbing. “You know that is not true. Don’t you?”
“I never thought about it.” He told me, “Until recently. I just thought about how it would fare for us if I were going to end up old and grey while you were still young and spry and beautiful.”
“Baby, as long as you could keep it up for me, to put it vulgarly, I would be with you until the very end. And even if you couldn’t, well… I know how to take care of business myself. You could just lie next to me and talk to me, and I would get myself off.”
He laughed raucously.
“Oh, I would keep it up for you. Even if I had to sell my soul, I’d find a way. On Earth, they had drugs, and here, they have all those natural enhancers. Remember the stands in the square?”
“I remember. I always wondered, if our sex life was already so freaking spectacular, and we added in natural enhancers, would we both die from the sheer, mad pleasure of it?”
He laughed again, even harder than before.
“I can’t even imagine it. If there’s one thing we can say, baby, our sex life has always been on point, even when our relationship has gone completely to hell.”
“Oh, our relation
ship only went to hell for a little while there, and the other times it went to hell, it wasn’t our fault. The craziest thing for me is when I imagine that first moment I saw you, when you reached out to light my cigarette, and how I never could have imagined that you and I would be sitting here, twenty-five years later, stronger than ever. Now, maybe the fact that you and I went through the traumatic experience of our world ending and starting over anew helped keep us together, and maybe it’s because we’ve been kept apart all these years, and that keeps the spark alive, but I like to think that you and I are just linked, James. I like to think that no matter the circumstances—whether we were here, or on Earth, whether we are immortal, or if you got older and I had to change your diapers while I was young and spry and beautiful—we would have found each other and stayed together.”
I always knew when I moved him with what I was saying because he was always quiet for a few seconds after I stopped speaking. He would look at me, his eyes soft, smiling very slightly, taking in my words, feeling them. If I allowed myself to peek into his mind, I would see very deeply, past the point of the thoughts he acknowledged consciously, the question of comparison ‘Has anyone ever made me feel like this?’ He could not quite put words to what ‘this’ was, all he knew was that it felt so good, and from there, he realized that it felt better than anything else anyone had ever said to him, and then he had the answer. For once, I was not narcissistic when I saw how I trumped all the other women (and there had been several, as we all know by now). I could see how the words touched him so deeply. I was happy for him, happy that I was there to tell him, in all truth and from the bottom of my heart, all the things he had not known he had wanted to hear, all the things that he had not heard before.
One of the things he did that made me internally swoon was when he reached out and used the tips of his fingers to tuck my hair behind my ear. When he did it, he always looked into my eyes, and, as though by a magnetic pull, I would lean in to kiss him. That time, when he tucked my hair behind my ear, I closed to the space between us quickly, almost frantically, and kissed him hard. For several long, intense moments, my lips moved against his, and then, they began to slow, kissing him softly, holding still, kissing him softly, and holding still.
“What was that for?” He asked, “Because I dug it, so let me do whatever I did to provoke it again.”
I chuckled, rested both of my hands on his face, and ran both of my thumbs in his stubble, as I always did.
“I just love you. Is that okay?”
He smiled, and kissed me again, and when his hand ran up my neck into my hair as his lips pressed to mine, I breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly.
“It’s fine by me, baby. So you love me, even after all these years? Even when I should be old and shriveled and gray?”
“Even if you were old and shriveled and gray, and for another twenty-five years, and then for another, and another, and another.”
He pulled me to him so I was sitting in his lap, facing him, with my legs on either side of his torso.
“A million years?” He asked, with a smile at the memory.
I smiled back, as I remembered that night in the cell, when the tears were pouring from my eyes, and he was promising me an eternity together. I remembered how I had wanted nothing more in the entire world than the opportunity to live that eternity with him. Here we were, twenty-five years in, when everyone said we would never last, when I had pushed him away, when he had made such terrible mistakes, when I had fallen in love with Adam, when he had grown so fond of Janna, when we were imprisoned for a quarter of a century, as the world raged and fractured and died slowly around us, we were together, two unthinkably strong parts forming an indestructible whole.
I kissed him, rubbed my nose against his slowly, and kissed him again.
“A million years, and then a million more, James Maxwell.”