Talking at Night

by Claire Daverley

It is early winter and the wind slices through the forest, but still they remain outside. It is better than being at home, warm yet uninterested in the television.

The wind has dropped. The air, without the fire, is like glass, cold and still. And when she sings, it is a sound unlike anything Will has ever known. Choral, and pure.

She is hungry, in every sense of the word. She thinks about walking out of the door, with her hair wet and the snow about to fall, straight into the Norfolk night.

He laughs at this, so quietly he could simply be breathing, and something floats up and through her.

He hasn’t felt this upward tilt before; as if everything inside him, the soles of his feet, his diaphragm and his deltoids, are being lifted toward the sky.

And when she turns the light off, she feels fine. In control, and on the right path, with someone who’s noticed and cared. She falls asleep with no tension in her jaw. Wakes up feeling lighter and readied, like all the tiny grains of her life are stacked just so.

Will feels something move inside him then, if it hadn’t already been shifting; like an anchor, catching in place.

He does not say all that he wants to. That she is meant for more. That she should have someone who burns for her; who crawls beneath her own skin.

But I wish I’d just stopped, for one damn second, and realized I was trying to do the right thing for everyone else, which just made everything wrong, in the end, you know?