We left the café around noon without any plan, which was new for both of us. Nanna had always been a planner. I had always been the person who planned around her plans. But she said, “I don’t know this city well enough to have an opinion about where we go,” and I said, “Neither do I,” and somehow that felt like the most honest thing either of us had said.
We walked. We got briefly lost in a neighbourhood of steep, narrow streets where the buildings were painted in faded ochre and rose. We found a viewpoint where the whole river opened up below us and Nanna went quiet in that way she did when something moved her, and I stood beside her and didn’t say anything, because some things don’t need words and I was finally learning that.
At some point she said, “This is the road trip, isn’t it.”
I looked at her.
“The one we always said we’d take,” she said. “We never planned it. We just kept saying we would.” She smiled, and it was the smile I’d missed most, the one that arrived slowly, like it had to travel some distance to reach her face. “I suppose we’re doing it backwards. The destination without the road.”
“Maybe the road was the fourteen months,” I said.
She considered that. “That’s a very long road.”
“We’ve always been slow.”
She laughed—a real one, the kind that surprised her—and the sound of it did something to the afternoon, made it feel lighter, made the city feel like it was leaning in.
—
We were back on the promenade by late afternoon, the light gone amber and long, the river holding the colour of it in a way that made everything look like a painting of itself. We’d been walking for hours. Neither of us had mentioned leaving.
Then Nanna’s phone rang.
She glanced at the screen. “Ioanna.” She answered it, and I heard, even from where I stood a step away, Ioanna’s voice—quick, warm, startled. Nanna said, “Yes, I know. I’ll explain later.” A pause. “No, Ioanna. Later.” She hung up.
“She saw us from the flat window,” Nanna said. “She has a view of the promenade.”
“Of course she does.”
“She’s going to have a lot of opinions.”
“She always does.” I paused. “Are you going to listen to them?”
Nanna was quiet for a moment, looking at the water.
“I listen to Ioanna because she loves me,” she said carefully. “But I spent fourteen months listening to everyone except myself. And what I keep coming back to—” She stopped. Started again. “What I keep coming back to is that the only times in the last four years I felt like the best version of myself were when I was with you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“That’s terrifying to admit,” she said. “Because it means this matters. And things that matter can go wrong.”
“They can,” I said. “They did.”
“So why are you here, Marcus?” Her voice was steady, but her eyes weren’t. “Not the research trip. Not the coincidence. Why are you really here?”
And here was the moment I’d rehearsed and then forgotten how to rehearse, the moment that had been waiting inside every unanswered message and every early morning with the eastward light.
“Because I read your messages and I thought: she went to Lisbon,” I said. “And you went to Lisbon because it was the place we always said we’d go together. And I thought—maybe that’s not nothing. Maybe that’s the closest either of us knows how to get to saying something true.” I looked at her. “I love you. I didn’t stop. I just got afraid that love wasn’t enough on its own, and I made the mistake of thinking that meant I should go quiet.”
The river moved. The light held.
She stepped forward and took my hand, both of hers around mine, the way she used to in cinemas when something onscreen moved her and she wanted to hold onto something solid.
“Don’t go quiet again,” she said. “That’s all I need. Just don’t go quiet.”
I turned my hand in hers so our fingers were properly linked, the way they used to be, the way that had always felt like arriving somewhere.
“I won’t,” I said.
And the city went on around us—the trams and the river and the amber light on the old stone—warm and unhurried, like it had been waiting for us to catch up.
WhatsApp
Telegram
Email
Categories
- AI & Technology
- Contemporary
- Corporate Control
- Creepypasta
- Crime Thriller
- Cyberpunk
- Dark Fantasy
- Enemies to Lovers
- Fairy Tale Retelling
- Fantasy
- First Contact
- Forbidden
- Genetic/Body Horror
- High Fantasy
- Monster Hunter
- Mythic/Folklore
- Paranormal
- Portal/Otherworld
- Post-Apo
- Post-Collapse Society
- Psychological Thriller
- Romances
- SCI-FI
- Second Chance
- Slow Burn
- Space Combat
- Spacepunk
- Surveillance State
- Survival Thriller
- Thrillers
- Time Travel
- Treasure Hunter
- Urban Fantasy
- Witchcraft/Curses
Tags
10min stories atmospheric atmospheric fantasy atmospheric fiction contemporary romance Creepy creepypasta crime thriller dark fantasy debt dystopia emotional fiction enemies to lovers ensemble cast epistolary fantasy first person forbidden romance found text framed narrative high fantasy love story magic Memory mystery Paranormal psychological horror psychological thriller romance sci-fi second chance second chance romance short fiction short story slow burn space station speculative fiction supernatural Survival survival thriller suspense thriller travel romance witchcraft workplace romance
Leave a Reply