She shakes her head “No, I don’t regret remembering. But I do feel a bit off center. Changed, somehow. I used to have my feet firmly planted on the ground, and now I feel as if the ground may cave in at any moment.”
“You won’t cave in. I’ll keep my arm around you always.”
She lets those words warm her in their embrace.
“We keep talking about me. How about you?” she asks.
“What about me?”
“Were you different? Have you changed by being with me?”
He smiles and shakes his head. “I’ve pretty much always been this way. Maybe it has to do with age. You’re younger than I am. Still growing, changing. Whereas I’m pretty set in my ways.”
She imagines him like a boulder, standing against wind and time. Waiting.
“But isn’t that unfair?” she asks.
“Why?”
“When I was out there experiencing life, you were stuck alone.”
He laughs. “You don’t seem to have a good outlook on monogamy. I did feel alone. But not stuck. I had my music and the Dreamers. I also had my quest. I was fueled by the hope of reuniting with you. My life was not full, but it was not intolerable either. I was not interested in just having someone to be a warm body next to me.
“This,” he says and squeezes her hand, “is infinitely better.”
They enter a train station and descend to the level where trains leave from Lysithea to Callisto. Aris remembers something.
“The red design on the train tunnels. Did you put them there?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Like bread crumbs from my past self to follow. But I don’t have any memory of doing it.”
“Don’t you find that strange? If it wasn’t you who put it there, who did? For what purpose?”
“I don’t find anything strange anymore. I spent most of this cycle looking for you. I was so afraid of not finding you, then suddenly you appeared. Nothing is in our control. I’m just grateful.”
Sadness descends and drapes her with its gray veil.
“We have a month left,” she says.
“Thirty days.”
“That’s all.”
“Seven hundred and twenty-two hours. We’ll make each count.”
“You said the same thing to me in my dream.”
“I guess I haven’t changed,” he says.
“Do you think people do change?”
“Over time, we become a better or worse version of who we are. But I don’t think our cores change.”
“Benja believed people change over time.”
“Do you?”
She leans her head on his shoulder. “We may change our habits and the way we see the world. But I think our essence remains.”
“Here’s my stop,” she says.
They step off the train. First to her apartment for a change of clothes and the helmet. Then Bodie.
The commuters weave through each other as they head toward their destinations. She feels a tug at her hand and turns. Metis is rooted to a spot on the platform. He pulls her to him and places his hands on her shoulders.
“Wait,” he says.
People walk around them. Aris feels as if they are a permanent part of the station, like a tree or a statue.
“I need to tell you something,” he says.
“Here?” She looks at him, puzzled.
“In the past, I had planned to ask you to marry me at Strawberry Field, but I looked over at you, and you were so beautiful. And I couldn’t help myself. The words just fell out of my mouth. We were standing here.”
Aris looks down at the circle around her feet—her favorite circle. It makes sense now.
“How did you ask?” she asks.
“I don’t remember the details. It was kind of an existential moment.”
Metis looks unsure and nervous, like a young man asking a girl out on a first date. The self-assured genius pianist is, for the moment, missing.
“How would you ask me now?” she asks.
His eyes change. A deep pool of feelings stirs in them.
“I would say . . .” He takes her hand. “A year, four years, a lifetime, or an eternity is but a marker in this life. But when I am with you, those markers fall away. Everything falls away. Time stretches and bends in ways that render it insignificant. I know you worry about what’s to come, but all I want is to just hold your hand. For as long as we both shall live. Would you please be my wife?”
Aris feels as if her heart is floating above her. She looks at him and knows that for as long as he dreams of them, he will try to find her through all the cycles to come. Love is no longer pointless if it spans a lifetime.
“Yes,” she whispers, and the word vibrates in her bones.
Aris does not remember how they got to her apartment. The only thing she is aware of is Metis’s warm lips crushing hers. His palms move from her sides to the neck of her blouse, stretching it over her shoulders.
“Let me help,” she says and pulls the top over her head. Her long hair sprays over her back.
His hands are on her bare skin. Hot and urgent. He pulls her forward as his lips travel down to the crook of her neck, nibbling and tasting as they go, tickling her. She is reminded of a documentary she once saw where a lion was feeding on a young gazelle.
She giggles and says, “Wait. Let’s talk some more.”
He makes a frustrated noise in his throat. “You’re joking.”
“Yeah, I am. Wouldn’t it be funny if I wasn’t?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he says and flips her against a wall.
She is blinded by its whiteness. His hands move to her hips, slowly releasing her pants, then her undergarments. She feels the softness of silk around her ankles.
The heat of his breath is on the small of her back. His hot tongue travels up the canyon of her spine, sending shivers through her. His long-fingered hands knead and caress the plains of her body. She is clay.
“Do you want to go to the bedroom?” she asks, her voice trembling.
He answers with the sound of his belt unbuckling. She hears his
