Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal

Author:Francesca Segal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

32

Charlotte sat very still, and waited.

The temperature of the room rose almost instantly as the ceiling fan above them slowed, and stopped. She could not—literally could not, she realized, raising it experimentally—see her hand in front of her face. This cosmic darkness remained for only a few seconds before Levi turned on the bright beam of a small torch, and used it to find his way to the kitchen table. When she rose to help he gestured for her to stay put, and a moment later he had found candles and lit them in glasses and holders round the room. Levi moved in and out of the pools of warm light, intermittently visible. Even with the windows covered, the air shifted slightly; the candles flickered.

“Now you’re getting the authentic Tugan experience.”

“When will it come back on?”

“Oh, this is it, now. If we’re lucky they’ll sort it out tomorrow, maybe the next day. You’ll have to wait a while to get back to”—he sat down heavily beside her and peered over her shoulder, shining the beam of his torch on the pile of papers at their feet—“‘Integrating telemetry data at several scales with spatial capture–recapture to improve density estimates.’ Don’t spoil the ending for me, now; we’re doing that for my next book club. Jesus, girl.”

Charlotte laughed and swatted at him and somehow found, though she had been pushing Levi away, still she had not quite let go of his wrist; that somehow her hand had then slipped into his, resting together on his thigh. Her breath caught in her throat.

Levi looked down at their fingers, interlaced. Charlotte followed his gaze. She said softly, “I’m glad you’re here.”

This did not encompass all she felt.

His rough thumb was slowly circling her palm. He had beautiful hands, she thought, recalling with new vividness all the places she had imagined them. But as he began to draw closer, she placed the flat of her palm on his chest, a gesture of instinctive intimacy, and yet stalling him at arm’s length. Her mind was racing.

“Wait. Tell me, tell me about what you just said, tell me more about your parents.”

Levi clutched at his hair and groaned. He stood up suddenly, moving away from her, and she felt a wrench at the abrupt distance between them.

“Guay de mi, you’re killing me, Dolittle.”

He threw himself down on the floor on the far side of the coffee table, an arm over his face as if in bright sun, or the beam of a searchlight.

“This is really how you want to spend our time, drawing family trees?”

When she didn’t answer he went on, “I don’t know. They solid folk. Whenever I messed up as a kid they gave me the benefit of the doubt. Unconditional love.”

Charlotte moved back while he was speaking, out of the candlelight. “You’re lucky,” she said eventually, from the safety of her shadows.

Levi cleared his throat.

“Well. No false pretenses here. What I know about love you could fit in one of those walnut shells.” He closed his eyes, and Charlotte wondered if he intended to fall asleep there, on the floor.

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