Last Light

by Claire Kent

Curiosity is like sympathy. It will kill you in the end.

When I come back, Travis is still sleeping, but he’s tossing slightly like he has unconsciously sensed something’s different. I settle myself on the rock again, and one of his hands reaches out toward my foot. His fingers wrap lightly around my ankle. I check his face, but he’s still asleep. I don’t pull my foot away. He holds on to my ankle for the rest of the night.

“I have a man,” I say without thinking. “She’s got a man.” The voice follows on the heels of mine. Lower. Gruffer. Louder. Travis.

say. Men can’t make it now without women any more than women can make it without men. We need each other.” He clears his throat and avoids my eyes. “I need you. Like you need me.”

Maybe he doesn’t know how to grieve anymore. It’s one of the things that was lost when the world fell apart.

I’ve known that life is hard since my parents died, and for four years I’ve known it’s even worse than that. It’s brutal. Merciless. It takes everything and rarely gives back. So I never expected to find this.

It matters, taking care of someone else, even at the end of the world.

Sometimes we gotta cry ’bout the smaller things because the big things are just too big.”

And love might be the biggest risk of all at the end of the world.

“Damn it, dog. You and her both.” “Him and me what?” I asked, intrigued by the vague statement. He shakes his head at me the way he did at the dog. “You and him both. Gonna ruin me.”

It matters—even at the end of the world. Doing right by the people you love. I’ll hold on to him tonight. And I’ll let him go tomorrow.

I thought I couldn’t cry over people anymore. I thought the worst had already happened to me, but I’ve only now reached the thud at the end of the fall. This is it for me. At last. The end of the world.

I jerk in surprise when I hear Travis’s hoarse voice saying, “I get a bullet in the chest, and she decides to take a li’l nap.”

You’re not gonna lose me, Layne. But I’m tryin’ to tell you that you don’t have to fuck me to keep me. You have me, even if you never want me to touch you again.”

“You know what?” I turn to Travis with a smile. “If you just take a snapshot of the view, you’d never know if the sun was rising or setting.” Travis frowns. “You’d know by the east or the west.” I give him a gentle poke. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just talking about the view. Out of context. You’d never know if it was the sunset or the sunrise.” He’s quiet for a minute as he thinks about that. He picks up on my mood. Murmurs, “Yeah. Yeah. That’s true.” “We all live our lives in just a snapshot of time. Maybe it was never the sun setting on us. Maybe it was always the sunrise.”

“You smell like mine.”