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“Listen, I wanna tell you something.”
She knows what's coming. The words that’ve been waiting, lingering. The feelings that she’s been avoiding. But here, in this world of heat and fire, she can no longer hide from it. She has no choice but to hear him, the way his tone shifts, his voice softens. She knows, and she can’t bear to look at him.
“No- No… n-”, she chokes.
“What? You got somewhere you gotta be?” he interjects.
“God, you are gonna say something heartfelt ‘cus you think we’re gonna die.” she’s holding back sobs. “And I don't want to cry right now!”
“I-I might say something hateful!” he stutters, “You don’t know!”
“Yes I do, I know what you're going to say!” At this point, she’s begun to scream just to hear herself over the fire. “You're still in love with me.”
“Wow, the arrogance!” He yells back.
“Am I wrong?”
Time slows in their foil world. She waits for him to affirm her statement. She knew she was right, yet she waited. At least– she was pretty sure she was right. Pretty sure she knew what he wanted to say, every time he’d tried to ‘talk about it’. She was also pretty sure she wasn’t ready to talk about it. But leave it to their new world to rock any sureness out of her.
“No! Okay? No you’re not wrong! Of course I still love you.” he pauses. A miniscule pause. A fraction of a second. But under the tarp, it feels like a lifetime. A lifetime of unspoken hurt and sorrow, before he asks, “Do you?”
“It doesn’t matter!” She yells into her arm without a second thought, as the flames roar.
Because it doesn’t. Because she won’t let it. He’s only telling her this because they're going to die. And if she were to say it back… She can’t. She’d be admitting defeat and she can’t do that. Even if they survive this, what then? He’ll go back to being her sergeant, her superior, the man who broke her heart.
“So that’s a yes.”
“Ugh!” She shouts over the roaring flames. “You are infuriating!”
“I know!” He yells as the flames engulf their world. “I know”, softer this time.
He wraps his arm around her, and she leans into him. She feels his hand cradle her neck, her head. She braces herself, burying her face in his chest, the additional body heat better than the heat of the flames. She hates how right it felt, even when everything felt so wrong. She couldn’t help but think that like this, wrapped in his arms, wasn’t such a bad way to go out.
What feels like hours pass. More likely minutes. Maybe just seconds. The fire roars and whips at their shelter, and Lucy tries to distract herself. She thinks of her friends, her coworkers, her family. Of how much she loves them. Of how she may never get back to them… she won’t get to watch Tamara grow into herself, she won’t be able to learn anything else from Angela and Nyla, she’ll never again laugh with Nolan or mourn Jackson or– anything. Everyone who means anything to her is outside. Everyone, except the one who means the most. And now their friends outside will continue on, without them.
Oh how quickly her tears jolt her back to reality. She swallows, hard. The air in their foil world is hot and dry. She tries to quiet the flames, to ground herself, to breathe. For a moment, it works. It’s almost quiet. But the quiet isn’t enough for her to make out his words, barely more than a whisper.
“I’m sorry.”
“What?” She unburies herself to look up at him as he repeats himself, louder this time.
“I’m sorry, Lucy. God, I’m so sorry.” He paused, swallowed, continued. “For all of it.”
“No.” She shouts. He’s doing it again. He’s getting sentimental because they're going to die and he knows that and maybe he’s better off. At least he’s accepted it. But she can’t. She can’t accept it and she can’t let him convince her.
“Yes! Please just let me say this.” He screams. “Just… Please”
She doesn’t say anything. The fire had become background noise. Within their tarped world, it’s silent. She waits, and he continues.
“I just… I shouldn’t have given up. On us. And I’ve regretted it everyday. I gave up, and I hurt you and I can’t take it back, and I know that. But I wish I could’ve. I’ve been working on it. But what happened at the Gala? I missed you, Lucy. I’m just so sorry. I love you. I still do. I never stopped. I don’t know if I ever will.”
Again, she’s quiet. Of everything she could say to him, from beratements that she knows he would take, to question after question, why? after why?, there’s only one thing she can manage to say.
“I love you too.”
She knows the moment she’s said it, she’s given up. She resigned to the fact that there is no world outside this tarp, not for them at least. But it doesn’t stop her from watching his eyes widen, his expression soften. The ramifications of her words linger in the hot air.
They still love each other. And they would die here, in their little world. They would die alone, but together.
They hadn’t realized it, but what felt like confined silence had begun to grow. The flames had gone silent. For a moment, the only sound was their own breaths. They were calmer now, less ragged. Tim reached to feel the foil material of their shelter.
“It’s cooled down.” He reported. “We’re… we should be good.”
She peers out from the tarp, then tears it away.
“Told you we’d make it.” He said, his voice hoarse.
“Only ‘cus I made you.” She replied, equally hoarse.
They had survived. Somehow, impossibly, they’d survived. She listens as he picks up the radio.
“Control, 7-Adam-100, we are code four.”
Static breaks through before they hear Lt. Grey’s voice. “7-Adam-100, please repeat.”
She meets his eyes as he responds, “We are code four. I repeat, code four. We could use a ride”
“Copy that. Help’s on the way.”
As the static cuts out, she looks out on the miles of burnt terrain before she feels Tim wrap his arms around her. The unexpected contact doesn’t break her out of her shock– They’re alive. She’s alive. They survived. – but instinctively, she falls into his embrace.
There they wait. It feels like time has stopped moving. It’s ages, an eternity before she can process what happened. They survived, they made it, they’re waiting for rescue. And… and everything she said under the tarp is infinitely more real. In that moment, the weight of her words washed over her.
“I meant what I said.” she croaked.
“Me too,” Tim swallows.
She lets the words sit in the air for another eternity. He doesn’t say a word. But she has to.
“But…” She feels him tense. “But I can’t. We can’t.” Her throat runs dry. “I’m not ready. Not yet.”
She looks up at him, as he looks out to the hills. His expression is unreadable for a quiet moment before he asks.
“Will you be?”
She knows what she wants to say. She wants to say that yes, she will be ready. Eventually. But she doesn’t know how long that ‘eventually’ will last. And she can’t bring herself to say that, when she knows he would wait. She’ll be ready eventually , but what if it's not for years? She won’t do that to him, she can’t. So she doesn’t.
She doesn’t say a word.
And anywhere else, after anything else, it would’ve felt improper. Incomplete. But here, alone in what remains of the forest, the silence in answer in itself. And for a final eternity, they await their rescue. Neither of them let go of each other, both hanging on to the feeling of being the only ones in the world.