Kat
“An old warehouse,as far as I know,” he says, looking up at the dilapidated building he’s brought me to.
Over a river, on foot. Through a sketchy forest. Past some very clear signage and through a literal fence.
“The river’s about twenty feet that way, through the trees. There used to be a lot of logging here,” he goes on, like this is a history lesson. “This is the only warehouse left. Probably because it’s brick. You coming?”
I am. I’ve got more questions and even more reasons that I shouldn’t let Silas take me inside a ruined building made of bricks, but I’ve got the odd feeling that I’m being led on an adventure by some sort of mythical elf-person, so I go with it.
Even though when I check back, it’s still Silas holding my hand, pulling me toward a doorway. Silas, pushing aside the vines and letting me through first; Silas, who’s grinning at me like he’s got a secret he can’t wait for me to see.
He lets my hand go and I look around: high brick walls, holes where the windows used to be, gaps in the brick where there were floor beams and a second story. The floor down to dirt, the corners of the walls uneven and crumbled.
No roof, only sky, and it’s made this crumbling building into a jungle. A secret garden, trees branching upward from between piles of brick, vines covering the walls that get the most sunlight. It’s strange and abandoned and pretty. It feels like a secret, a world self-contained.
And it’s very, very quiet.
“Last weekend,” he says, as I take it in, “you said you wanted to sit at the bottom of a well for a while, in the quiet.”
“You remembered that?” I ask, and I turn to him because he’s next to me again, hands in his pockets, looking pleased.
He shrugs. He looks at me, and his eyes are laughing, the corners crinkled, and I can’t stop staring: all the shades of blue threaded together, this close. The almost-freckles on his nose and cheekbones, exactly one shade darker than the rest of his skin. A few strands of gray in his hair, messy with sweat and dirt. There’s a leaf stuck in it, and I pull it out gently. Hold it between my fingers. I wonder how long I can stare at him like this before he minds.
“What else do you remember?” I ask, and my voice is nearly lost to the wilds around me.
“I remember you told me a story about a kingdom at war when I was having a breakdown outside a karaoke bar,” he says.
I glance away because Jesus, what a nerd, but Silas puts his fingers under my chin and guides my face back. My heart might stop.
“I remember you can’t see the words on a shampoo bottle from three inches away without your glasses,” he says.
“I was pretty sure,” I answer. My voice comes out in a whisper.
“I remember,” he says, and then stops, and now he looks away. He pushes a hand through his hair.
“What?”
“I spent way too much time thinking about you in college,” he says, and there’s an odd, bashful smile on his face. Like he’s embarrassed to admit it.
I have no idea what to say, and I think my face shows it, because he laughs.
“I think I’ve finally figured out why,” he says. “I remember I felt pretty bad when you cried in that meeting with the dean.”
“Oh, God,” I say, and can’t help laughing. “Fuck you for that.”
We find a spot next to a wall in the shade, sit down. The dirt sticks to the back of my legs and I can feel the damp through my shorts, but we crossed a river and went through a fence to get here. I don’t care.
“I could have been nicer,” I admit, eyes closed, face tilted toward the sky.
“Could you have been?”
“Fuck off,” I say, eyes still closed, but I can feel myself smile. “I could have been… less interested in making you follow every single rule to the letter and more interested in helping you actually learn earth science. I mean, who cares if you re-take a quiz as long as you learn the material?”
There’s a silence, and I finally open my eyes to see him staring at me.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just strange,” he says, eyes playing over my face. “I didn’t realize you were an undergrad back then.”