Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias

Author:Sabrina Vourvoulias [Vourvoulias, Sabrina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Crossed Genres Publications
Published: 2012-10-02T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

I don’t want to get out of bed.

There isn’t anything in the world better than waking up next to the person you love. I pity Father Tom for the fact he’ll never experience this. Of course, he says he knows a love much greater than what can be had on earth, but I can’t imagine it. Nothing bigger than this fits in the human heart without blowing it apart.

This is what I see when I look down into the circle of my arms this morning: Dark eyes like pools of ink underlaid with pain and an equal measure of joy. I know, without an instant of doubt, I fit in the latter and if you don’t think that does something to a man, you’re crazy.

“Why are you awake so early?” she asks, stretching but not breaking the contact along the length of our bodies.

“Melinda thinks there’s going to be a big story to break,” I say, then lean in to kiss her. “Strange days make for exciting journalism.”

“I could do with a little less strange and exciting.”

“The state of emergency can’t last forever. It’s expensive. Pile that on top of the ongoing expense of running the inkatoriums and all the lost ink revenues, something’s going to give. Just about the time the state budget has to pass.”

“You think it’ll ever go back normal again?”

“A new normal. Kids like Abbie and John and younger won’t even remember what it was like.”

“Speaking of Abbie and John, I wonder if Meche’s decided when exactly to drive them back to Smithville,” she says. “I thought Abbie was going to die when Meche made an offer on Blue Belle.”

“Good die or bad die?”

“Both. Abbie knows it’s a great deal. But that one forms such tight, unbreakable bonds.”

“Poor John.”

She smacks me.

“I’m going to miss them,” she says. “They’re lodged in my heart now.”

“Another one who forms unbreakable bonds.”

“Poor Finn.”

I shut my eyes, hold her close. Unbelievably grateful Finn, I think. But I don’t say it.

“I don’t understand the point of having a chambered heart if not to let people take up residence,” she says. “Meche and Abbie and John and Nely are all crammed into one chamber. Father Tom is in the same one as my dad. You’re in another.”

“See that you don’t make me share it, okay? ”

“Like anyone would fit in there with you.”

“Ha. You’re funny.”

She doesn’t go on to list the tenant of the fourth chamber. I don’t have to ask who it is.

I open my eyes to look at her. “Maybe we should name him. So we don’t always think of him as the baby.”

“I don’t want to think of him at all.”

“And that works for you?”

“No,” she says. “It doesn’t. But it seems to be the new normal.”

We stay silent for a while, but when I start to get out of bed she pulls me down to her.

“Is there time?”

“There’s always time,” I lie.

Later, she watches me get dressed. “Promise me you’ll be back before I even get out of bed.

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