Afterglow

They lay there for a long time. The sun was gone now and the sky was deep purple, stars beginning to show. The waves continued their rhythm. He was still inside her, softening, and neither of them moved to separate.

He kissed the back of her neck. Gently. Reverently. His brown hair brushed against her shoulder, soft and damp.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?"

"For waiting so long."

She turned in his arms until she faced him. She touched his face, traced the scar, the lines around his eyes, pushed the damp brown hair from his forehead with a tenderness that made his chest ache.

"Don't be sorry," she said. "You're here now."

He held her against his chest, and she could hear his heartbeat, fast at first, then slowing, steadying, and she pressed her ear against the sound and let it lull her.

"Stay," she said.

It was one word but it held everything. Stay tonight. Stay tomorrow. Stay through the exhaustion and the wariness and the damage. Stay through the age gap and the cultural gap and the thousand reasons it shouldn't work. Stay because the alternative is going back to being the man who looks away, and she would not let him go back to that. Not now.

"I'll stay," he said.

She closed her eyes. The stars multiplied above them. The sea whispered its old language against the sand, and two people who had been alone for a very long time lay tangled together on a blanket that smelled of salt and sex and something new, something that did not have a name yet but that both of them recognized, the way you recognize a place you have never been but somehow remember.

His hand moved slowly up and down her spine.

Her breathing deepened.

The night held them, and they did not let go.