“You want to stop?” I said with a scowl. “This was your idea, not mine.”
“I’m not saying that – just wondering if you would still like me then.”
“This is a fucking stupid conversation.” I sat back against the wall and played with my cigarette.
“You should stop smoking. It’s bad for you.”
“What the fuck, Theresa?”
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I brought the cigarette back up to my mouth and sucked hard before flicking ash out over the water. I watched it float off, spinning around in the wind until it hit the black water and disappeared.
“Bastian?”
I took another drag on the cigarette, not wanting any of this last little peace of mind to be wasted. I didn’t look at her.
“Are you all right?”
“Sure,” I said. My voice sounded dead, even to me. I took the final drag off the final cigarette, cringed at the taste of burning filter in my mouth, and tossed the butt into the water.
“What happened to her?”
“Who?” I asked, knowing full well who she meant. How she knew I was thinking about her, I couldn’t fathom. Women’s intuition, I guessed.
“Theresa.”
My shoulders tightened, and I closed my eyes for a second before looking back out over the water. I slowly closed the flap back up and moved myself back before lying down a couple feet away from her. I shifted, tried to find a more comfortable position on my back and stared up at the dark canopy.
“She killed herself,” I finally said.
I heard Raine scooting across the floor, moving closer to me. I turned my head to look towards her and saw her reach her hand out to me. Her fingertips met the hair near my temple, and she stroked down over my jaw and cheek, and then under my chin before she reached back up to my temple and started all over again. I flinched at first but didn’t back away, and she didn’t stop.
Raine moved a little closer to me, and I felt my breath lodge in my lungs and refuse to come out as she wrapped her arm around my head and brought me against her shoulder. Her fingers kept tracing over my cheek.
All my muscles tensed up, and I simply didn’t know what to do, so I froze. For a few minutes, I did nothing. With closed eyes, I lay there on my side next to her and just felt her fingers caress me. Of its own volition, my hand reached out and tentatively crept over her abdomen until my arm encircled her waist. I pulled her against me and opened my eyes, looking up at her.
I could only barely make out her face and her eyes in the darkness, but I could see her sad smile, and her eyes held an expression I didn’t think I had ever seen before. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I just stared at her for a while as she ran her fingers over my face. Eventually I tilted my head back down, settling against her shoulder, and letting the darkness swallow me back up.
* * * * *
The situation was becoming more desperate.
There was a day’s worth of water left, assuming I didn’t start cutting the amounts in half. I didn’t really have much choice. I decided to cut myself back more than Raine – I really didn’t think she could afford it.
I heard her waking up behind me and handed her a half cup of water without saying anything or meeting her eyes. I didn’t understand exactly what happened between us the previous night, but I was about as uncomfortable with it as I could be.
“I think I felt better after eating that fish,” Raine told me.
“I’m sure you did,” I said with a nod.
“Will you try to get another one tonight?”
“If I do, you better be in the mood for spinal fluid. You can’t eat any more fish.”
“Why not?”
“Because the water level is getting low,” I told her, trying not to sound too pissy because I was pretty sure we’d been over this shit before. “It doesn’t look like there’s going to be any rain anytime soon, so no protein. It takes too much water to digest proteins. Don’t drink any more than I give you and only one and a half of the ration bars today, too.”