Page 113 of Creatures Like Us

His cheeks bloom pink. “I am.”

“I’m yours too. For as long as you’ll have me.”

“That’ll be a long time, then, ’cause I never plan on letting you go.” He squeezes my hand, hard enough for me to feel his pulse. “Are you okay with that? Are you okay with living, with clinging to life with me for a little while longer?”

“Not just a little while longer. More. I want more than that.”

He smiles and looks down into his lap. “Me too.”

“Ash.”

He looks up. “Yeah?”

“I mean it. I don’t want to anymore.”

“What?”

“Die.”

“Oh.”

I frighten myself with my own confession. It feels so absolute—so certain when the word passes my tongue, but?…?I can never truly know. I’ve been in the darkness for so long that I can’t know if this passing into light is only fleeting, or if it’s truly the way my life will be from now on. It feels like it right now, though, and in a way, that’s all that matters.

“I want to do other things,” I say.

“Like what?”

“I’d like to?…?to travel.”

“Travel?” Asher scrunches his nose. “But you hate going outside.”

“I don’t. I just don’t like people.”

“Well, it’s pretty hard avoiding people if you’re going to travel.”

I can’t come up with a reply to that, my mind hazy from the painkillers.

“Me neither,” Asher says after a while. “I don’t like other people. I like you though.” His voice softens. “You see me, right? The way no one else does.”

“I see you. Do you see me?”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I see you, Noah.”

We gaze into each other’s eyes, and I feel weirdly shy all of a sudden, heat rising to my face.

“So,” Asher says, “they said you can leave soon. What do you want to eat when we get home?”

Somehow, we’ve reached an unspoken agreement that he’s going to follow me home. That my house is his home now as well as mine, and that we’re going to live there together. It’s what I’ve always wanted. What I never dared hope he’d want too. I’venever really known happiness, but I think I can glimpse a sliver of it when gazing into his eyes. Watching them glitter, watching him smile back at me?…?Yeah. There it is.

It’s been a long journey—a painful one—with many lonesome nights in the dark, but I think I’ve found it at last.

The light.

Epilogue 1

Asher

Three months later