The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

50: Blue in Green

Don't look down, Zeph.

I shuffled on my knees toward Will, looking anywhere but at the cliff edge as I sat. Will was muttering into the breeze in rapid-paced Farsi, eyes closed and legs dangling over the precipice, the churning waters of Santa Elena Bay glistening below him.

The sunny Sunday morning was taking its toll. My brain was a shrunken lump of danmuji rattling around in my cranium, and my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth every time I tried to speak. I didn't trust my reflexes to save me if I stumbled too close to the sheer drop into the North Pacific.

"You OK, Zeph?" Will wrapped a warm arm around my shoulders, concern corrugating his forehead. "You look kinda...green."

"I'm good. Just tired." Luke would tease me mercilessly if he knew that I'd gotten my first hangover, especially since I hadn't drunk that much in Lavanderia. At least, not so much as I used to.

"I was gonna come alone. You coulda stayed in bed."

"I don't wanna waste time sleeping when I could be with you." I gave Will what I hoped looked like a brave smile; I probably resembled bad taxidermy. "What did you wanna say to your Mom anyways?"

Will pulled me tighter against him. "Just...that I'm happy."

Mozhgan had always assumed, or pretended, that Will and I were together, either for her own comfort or to spur us toward each other. I wished then that she'd lived long enough to hear anything but denials about us fall from Will's lips. I wished too that I'd found out how to keep the promise I'd made to her, to be Will's zephyr and ocean. The fact that I was leaving California meant that I'd already failed with the first half of the promise, and with only a few days left together, it wasn't likely that I'd ever find out what the second half of the promise had meant, let alone fulfil it.

I took a long breath. The resin-charged air under the forest's canopy was slowly soothing my bubbling stomach. "Can't decide if I'm gonna miss the forest or the beach more."

Will squinted out toward the long sunlit rollers beyond the cliffside rocks. "Since you told me you liked salamanders I always thought about you when I ran pass the ponds. But that was long before we..." He pressed a kiss to my hand. "Now the piano, the beach, my bed, are all gonna remind me of you. Everything reminds me of you these days."

We both felt it, pulling at the piano strings that linked our hearts. The dread of being apart forever.

Will moved from the painful future to the sunny present, to enjoy the precious minutes ticking away. "I'm done talking to her today. Let's go have breakfast."

"I don't know if I can handle breakfast. I never used to get hangovers. I'm getting old."

"Old?" Will swung his legs away from the precipice. "Then my hangovers must be killer."

"Did I do anything dumb yesterday?"

Will patted dust off his jeans. "No. You were just funny. And talking in Korean the whole time. And," a grin spread across his beautiful face, "I'm still waiting for that blowjob."

"I offered you a blowjob?" I dropped my face into my hands. Why was I always throwing myself at him?

Will pulled my cringing palms away from my face. "Don't worry. I liked it." He tipped my chin up for a kiss. "But I appreciate that you're far from horny today."

Sweet innocent Will.

His dick in my mouth was the best hangover cure I could think of.

"Yeah I'm horny. Just too hung over to be good in bed."

Will's eyebrows waggled. "Have breakfast, take a shower, get more sleep if you wanna. Then lie back, and I'll do all the work." He popped a soft kiss onto my neck that made me shiver in the morning's heat. "Doret begardam[1]."