A shy public reference librarian, and a college dropout who was disowned when she refused to submit to conversion therapy, encounter each other in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over...
We head north on the interstate. The radio is on, playing something classical, but neither of us is really listening. He keeps his eyes on the road; I look out the window without paying much attention to what I'm seeing. We don't talk, nor do we brush hands like we usually do when we're in the car. I'm afraid I'll start to weep if I so much as open my mouth.
Or worse, that I'll make him weep.
اوووه! هذه الصورة لا تتبع إرشادات المحتوى الخاصة بنا. لمتابعة النشر، يرجى إزالتها أو تحميل صورة أخرى.
Midsummer Eve.
We drove to one of the massive suburban parks that circle the larger metropolitan area to the north like a long emerald necklace. Like any other park, it's closed to the public after dark, and patrolled, which is why he parked the car in a parking lot about a half a mile away from the park entrance we accessed, and why we've been walking in shadows to our destination, a formation of three hundred-million-year-old ledges and boulders that overlook a lake.
When we reach them, I look up in awe. The boulders are huge – some of the rocks are the size of small houses. They're dwarfed by the ledges themselves, which soar above the trees.
He says quietly, "This used to be an ocean bed. These sandstone ledges used to be mud and silt; when the ocean dried up, the stone was lashed by wind until the boulders and ledges you see here were made. The rock formations, made of conglomerate sandstone, a soft and brittle rock if ever there was one, then somehow managed to survive multiple ice ages, and glaciers three miles high and as wide as the continent they covered, glaciers that flattened the terrain and left not just till behind when they melted, but also deep grooves in the earth, and a series of massive lakes. These rocks and ledges remained through it all. It puts a certain perspective on things, doesn't it? Eromene, are you certain you want to do this?"
"Yes."
"What we do will be permanent. These are not just vows. We are binding our souls together."
"My Erastes, our souls are already bound."
"They will be more so, after this."
I don't see how that could even be possible. How could the two of us be more knotted and interwoven than we already are? I smile and swallow past the lump in my throat. "I accept. This is what I want, my love. I think it's what I've always wanted. I'm tired of running. I thought we had this discussion."
"We need to be certain. There will be no undoing what we do. Not in this life, nor in what is to come. It will be forever. You are certain, then, that this is your Will?"
