To Catch a Firefly

by Emmy Sanders

“How do you catch a firefly?”

“Do you wanna tell me your name?” Lucky asks. “You don’t have to.” I clear my throat. “Ellis.”

“Hey, Ellis? I’m glad you’re here. Maybe this won’t suck so bad after all.”

Taking a step forward, I tip Lucky’s chin. His eyes catch mine and his lips pop open, and when I lean down to press my mouth to his, his fingertips dig into my arm. Not pushing, though, holding. I’ve never kissed before, either, but Lucky deserves a first with someone who loves him. At least I can give him that.

“If you ever decide to love someone,” he says slowly, “they’ll be very lucky.” He already is.

“We’ll never be done. Me and you, we don’t have an ending.”

“Not everyone is going to understand you, Ellis. But it’s not your job to make them.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Me and you, right, El?” “Me and you,” I answer.

I was ten years old when I met Lucky. I knew it then, and I know it now. He’s a firefly. Luminous and wild. He was never meant to be trapped. Not here and not with me. And in a few days, I’ll finally watch him fly away.

I love you, my brilliant firefly.

He is a mountain of a man but the gentlest soul I’ve ever met.

He’s still wearing his dirty jeans and work shirt, the logo on his breast pocket showing a smiling piece of corn. There’s a baseball hat on his head, and he gives me a smile that just about stops my heart. Beautiful.

I grin, and before Lucky can react, I pull him off his feet into a fireman’s carry. He shouts. “Fucking hell, Ellis! What are you—” He goes silent when I swat his ass, and in the starkly quiet aftermath, my heart starts to pound. I set him down quickly, turning away and fiddling with the beer. My cheeks feel hot. I don’t know what I was thinking.

“When you’re…gone, you… You share your life. With me. Your adventures and… And your joy.” I set my gaze on the corn as I go on. “It means the world to me, Luck. To be a part of that. I… Please don’t stop just…just because I was…” Scared, I can’t say. I can’t.

“I don’t ever want to lose…the place I have in your world.”

“Have you ever wanted someone so much,” I say slowly, “that it feels like your atoms are vibrating when you’re away from them? Like you’re half of a whole, and your body knows it. And until you’re in their arms again, every single piece of you is straining toward them because…because they’re your home. They’re part of you. Your beginning and your never-ending. How? How do I move on from that?”

But then I remembered the waterfall. The looks Ellis would give the guys I was with. The easy affection and nervous blushes. The way he was broken that day I got the job at the magazine, even though he tried so hard to hide it. How sad he was when I finally left town. How happy he always is to hear from me, same as I am with him. The parrotfish. The glass sailboat. Fuck, the picnics in the back of his truck. Nights under the stars. Our windmill.

“Wish you were safe,” I tell him. “I am,” he says. “I’m always safe with you.”

I bring his palm up to my lips, kissing it gently, and his expression softens.

It’s that feeling of home I’ve only ever had with him. It’s the rumbling of mountains and the kiss of wind through the fields, and it’s love. God, is it love, wholly, pure, and absolute.

Lucky stutters almost to a stop when he sees me, his smile widening. The surprise only lasts for a moment. He picks up his pace, runs, and then, he flies.

Before we get moving again, the pair of us stop to relieve our bladders. I can hear Lucky snickering as we stand behind our respective trees deep under the forest’s cover. I shush him without ire, but he only laughs harder.

I store this memory—just like the Aurora Borealis and the parrotfish in the Caribbean Sea—in a place I can always return to. But I know, no matter how many pictures I take of the man before me, nothing will ever compare to standing in his presence.

“Images of you by my side, in so many different places. I have more pictures of you in my head than anything or anyone else.”

“Do you want to know what the most remarkable thing in my life is?” He doesn’t say a word. “El,” I rasp. “It’s you.”

“You say I’m your firefly?” I nod. Yes. “Well you’re my goddamn moon, Ellis. You call, I come.”

“I love you, too. I have for years. I loved you then, and I love you now, and I won’t ever stop. I’m not capable of it. You’re it for me, El. You’re my big goddamn romance. And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you.”

Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I did it once, and I won’t ever do it again. I missed you every day I was gone. I wondered, more often than once, if I’d made a mistake. And every time I stayed away a little longer, it felt like I was losing my breath. Like I had less oxygen in my lungs. I was starved of it without you, El. You don’t make me feel trapped, okay? Never. You’re the air I breathe.”

I floated the idea of cutting it shorter for the occasion, but Ellis didn’t like that. He grunted and then proceeded to thread his fingers through the strands and fuck me slowly until I forgot what day it was.

I feel your pull, and if I am your moon, as you say I am, then I promise to always call you back home. You are my world, Luck. And even when all goes dark, I will look for you. I will find you, blinking for me in the endless night, and I will be with you always. My brilliant firefly. My love. My Luck. Forever, I’ll be waiting.

“And I never did thank you.” “What for?” he asks. “For reminding me of my courage the last time you were here. I needed that.”

But it’s the first time I’ve seen a glimpse of the man Ellis will become. Not because of the tux. But because of the fact that he’s standing in my living room in the first place, ready and willing to accompany me to an event he has no interest in just because I told him I wished I could go. He’s kind and endlessly patient, and his heart is too big for his chest.

“If I ever get married,” I whisper, “I want it to be just like this.” He hums. A questioning sound. “Nothing fancy,” I explain. “Just me and the open air and the people…and person…I love.”

“It shouldn’t matter.” “What’s that?” I ask, turning my head to look at him. “Who you love,” he answers, arms crossed over his knees. “People who judge…” He shakes his head. “Love is big. Important. I think…people could love most anybody…if they only opened their hearts to it.”

I draw my finger over the dirt near my leg, writing out the letter E. Next to it, I add L. Ellis plucks the flower from his tux, setting it on the ground below my scrawl. I do the same with mine. As we sit beside a sea of corn in our wrinkled, black tuxes, our declaration of love on the ground between us, I twist my fingers with his and make a promise. “I love you, too, El. Always.”

I caught a firefly.

Papa said I was named for the night, after all. He said the moon is his most favorite thing.

The Never-End