with a match in one hand (and my heart in the other)

Chapter 5

Morning dawns cold and clear, steam rising in white curls from the black coffee in his mug and the sky a thin, pale azure. He checks his watch, decides there's still time to let everyone sleep a little longer, and settles back on the grass to just... be. The hollow sense of the past few weeks still remains, but it's an easier thing now, a quiet void that no longer pangs at every breath, existing peacefully beside both the sense of calm he thought he'd left behind with her bed and the warm thing he found in the night. It's okay, he thinks, cautiously testing out this curious new feeling. All of it. It's... okay.

In a few minutes he'll have to wake the others to break camp, and he'll lead them across the state to the potential hotspot they've been summoned to, and maybe a bad guess there will finally blow bits of him across the landscape. Or maybe it won't, and that's okay too. One of these days he will die (possibly, he thinks with a self-derisive snort at the irony, very soon, now that it no longer seems to matter), but until it happens, he'll have this moment of gentle peace with everything, and the next, and people will have their homes and bridges saved, and impulsive, spunky young women will be dragged out of freezing rivers.

It's okay.

He may have been a little harsh on Meera.

The jeep rumbles and bumps its way west along dusty roads that leave no room in the air for anyone to try to drag him into their backseat conversation and ample space for thought. If this is it - the last drive, the last job, the last time he throws his life back in God's face - is he comfortable with how he'll have left things with her?

Because there's something in the air today, a gut feeling or that ninety-nine on his scoreboard or maybe only a suspicious reaction to how peaceful he feels, and it's making him think he should decide now. Besides, if not today, this job, that bomb, it could be any other moment. There are many more cars in India, and the damn things never seem to give him time for a last thought.

Meera's reasons for taking his heart and slamming the door on it might have been rubbish, but they weren't to her. And she'd sacrificed something to them that day too. He may have sworn never to forgive her, but today that promise feels like only another pointless thing he's been trying to hold onto too long. And maybe truthfully, somewhere in last night's admission, he already has.

He stops at a chai stand, wandering off to stretch his limbs out while the others fetch drinks. And to send a text.

Are you happy? he writes first. Then stares at the emotionless little letters and huffs a frustrated little growl. Doesn't want to speak with her, but how is he supposed to distil this feeling and this wanting into a handful of electronic characters that can't be misconstrued?

That's what I should have asked when I had the chance. Is your real house comfortable? Does it welcome you home? Does someone? Do you still dance? And did I leave you with anything beyond the pain? You say you don't regret how we ended, and you know, maybe I no longer do either. But this is me trying to say, I don't want you to regret that we ever were. Please be happy, Meera.

He hovers his finger over the button for a while, then hits send.

They reach the city and its festival-clogged streets, and after checking in at a mobile base he's free to sit around and wait to be needed. And to open the reply on his phone.

I have a birman cat, Muffin, who vigorously welcomes me home . Home is an apartment by the park, where I bring very few people because it's perfectly, comfortably mine. I may be known to dance after too many Friday night drinks at the office. Or when a fundraiser goes off especially well. I still sing that song, and it always makes me smile. So this is me trying to say, yes. This isn't the life I thought I'd have, but it's turned out to be the one I'm happy in. Last month only drove that home. With no regrets, Meera.