Theta hugged her knees to her chest. “You miss her?”
“Yes,” Memphis said, keeping his eyes on the shadowy hills. He drank from the flask. “Yes, I surely do.”
“You got a lot of nice stories,” Theta said softly. “I don’t have that. I don’t have an origin story. Just fuzzy memories and this one dream that’s like a memory, but I can’t really see it, not all the way.”
“Tell me what you do see, then.” Memphis offered Theta the flask again, but she shook her head.
“It’s white, like… like miles of snow. And there are funny red flowers in the snow, spreading everywhere. I hear screaming and horses whinnying and there’s smoke and then there’s nothing. I wake up.” She shrugged. “That’s the only story I got.”
“We could make our own stories,” Memphis said. “You and me.”
For a week, Memphis had been rehearsing this speech in the bathroom mirror. But now all his words failed him. So he took Theta’s hands in his, watching the light sweep across the room. “Theta…” He cleared his throat, started over. “Theta, I love you.”
Theta’s smile vanished. She didn’t answer.
“That wasn’t quite the response I was hoping for,” Memphis joked, but his stomach was as tight as piano wire.
“Gee, Poet. I just… I didn’t expect that.”
“Theta,” Memphis said, “I feel I need to warn you: In about five seconds, I’m going to tell you that I love you. There. Now you know to expect it.”
Theta still wasn’t smiling. “The last fella who told me that… it didn’t go so well.”
“Well, I’m not the last fella. I’m the right fella.”
There are things you don’t know about me, Theta wanted to say. Things that might change how you feel about me. She didn’t think she could bear that disappointment. Theta bit her lip. She ran a finger across the back of Memphis’s hand, an idea forming. “When you heal people—”
“Used to. Haven’t tried it since Isaiah.”
“Sure. But when you used to do it at the church, could you heal anything?”
“Most things, I suppose. I couldn’t help my mother,” Memphis said, and Theta gave his hand a gentle squeeze.
She looked up into Memphis’s face. “Can you take something away with your healing?”
“What do you mean?”
Theta didn’t know how to say it without telling Memphis everything. “What if somebody had something about them that wasn’t a disease, exactly, more like a…” Theta searched for the right words. “Like a bad Diviner power. The opposite of healing. Something that could harm.”
Memphis laughed. “I never met anybody like that at the Miracle Mission.”
“No. No, I guess you wouldn’t.”
“What’s all this about, Theta?”
Theta forced a smile. Inside, she could feel herself drifting further away. Who could love somebody like her? “Just curious, Poet. That’s all.”
She should leave him. That was the noble thing to do. Before he got hurt.
Memphis kissed her on the temple, soft and sweet, and Theta knew she was far from noble, because she didn’t have the strength to give him up.
“I love you,” he said again.
“I love you, too, Memphis,” Theta whispered.
“You just made me the happiest man in Harlem.” Memphis grinned. “Now you got more than one story, Princess. This lighthouse, this moment—I reckon it’s our origin story.”
“Guess so,” she said. She hoped everything would be okay.
Memphis kissed her then, and Theta kissed back. Their kiss was warm. It traveled through Theta’s body and made her want more. They sank to the floor of the lighthouse. Memphis moved on top of her just slightly. She could feel him against her stomach and it made her go liquid inside. Without warning, Theta’s thoughts flashed back to Roy. It was Roy she saw on top of her, holding her down on the bed that last terrible night in Kansas. The uninvited memory raced through her like a swift fever. Heat pooled in her palms. It shot out to her fingers like the survival mechanism of a frightened animal, as if in that moment her body couldn’t tell the difference between Memphis and Roy, love and violence.
Terrified, Theta pushed Memphis away and sat up abruptly, breathing heavily. She tucked her hands under her thighs, feeling the warmth begin to subside.
“I do something wrong, Princess?” Memphis asked, confused and concerned.