Chapter 68 Chapter 67: So Wrong Yet So Right
They had dropped me just down the road, a final, small courtesy to maintain the crumbling facade of my old life. The porty hummed away into the twilight, leaving me standing alone under the blood-red, flickering glow of The Apostrophe’s neon sign.
It was Wednesday night. One week. A single, surreal week since I had last seen her, since I was last me. Now, I stood frozen on the pavement, debating with myself how to even push open that familiar, scuffed door. My hand went to my com, a nervous tic. Five unread messages. I swiped the screen open, my heart lurching as I saw three of them were from Silver. Three out of five. Not bad, I thought with a grimace, immediately closing the screen, too much of a coward to actually read her words.
I looked like shit. I was dressed in the simple, functional black tunic and trousers we called night clothes in Polli-Nation, what any Sylvan would dismiss as casual wear. Here, in this context, I felt absurd in so many ways, and my appearance was the least of them. The hero of Sylva, the Nate who had faced down assassins and Karns, was now utterly fragile, scared to face the music of my own life. I could feel a cold sweat on the back of my neck, my hands trembling slightly at my sides.
I took one last, deep breath, pulling the smoky city air into my lungs, and plunged into the fog of the bar.
It was only 19:30 on this Wednesday night, and The Apostrophe was subdued. Only a handful of punters were scattered around, heads bowed over their drinks as if in prayer. The air was thick with the smell of stale beer and old smoke. And there she was. Silver was leaning over the far end of the bar, not serving anyone, just staring intently at the screen of her com, her brow furrowed. My heart hammered against my ribs. Using the haze, the bad lighting, and the muffled grunge music as a shield, I sneaked through the room, my movements feeling both too slow and too loud. Thankfully, in the gloom of the bar, no one seemed to notice or care about the ghost who had just walked in.
“Silver,” I whispered, the name a prayer and a confession.
Her head snapped up. For a split second, there was only shocked disbelief in her eyes. Then, a dam broke. She vaulted over the bar with a fluid, desperate grace, ignoring the few patrons, and threw her arms around my neck, pulling me into a deep, frantic kiss. It was a kiss of relief, of fear, of a week’s worth of pent-up terror. I melted into it, the solid reality of her a pull on my frayed soul.
But just as quickly, she wrenched herself away. Her hand, a moment ago caressing my cheek, swung in a sharp, thunderous arc. The slap echoed through the near-empty bar, a sound as shocking as a gunshot. My head snapped to the side, my skin stinging with the force of it.
“First you leave me!” she seethed, her voice trembling with a fury born of sheer panic. “Then no contact for a whole week! Not a word! And then you just… you just walk in here like nothing happened?!”
Before I could even form a response, she surged forward again, pulling me into another, softer kiss, this one laced with salt as she began to cry, her tears soaking into the shoulder of my cheap black tunic. Her body shuddered against mine.
“I wrote,” I managed, my voice hoarse. “Every day. There was no net. I couldn’t send them.”
“I know,” she choked out, her words muffled against my neck. “I’ve been reading them all day.” She shook as she said it, the weight of my unsent fears now hers to carry.
Confusion warred with the sting on my cheek. “Then why did you hit me?”
She let out a wet, shuddering sound that was half a sob, half a laugh. A pained smirk twisted her lips. “Because I was so scared for you.”
It made no sense. The logic was a tangled mess of fear and love and relief. But in that moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t need it to make sense. All that mattered was that the Polli I loved was finally, truly, in my arms.
“You’re a Nate,” she said, the words whispered against my neck as her crying softened into hiccupping breaths.
The statement hung in the air between us, simple and profound. “Yes,” I replied, my own voice a low rumble I was still getting used to. I held my breath, waiting for her reaction. “Is that a problem?”
She leaned back just enough to look up at me, her tear-streaked face breaking into a wobbly, genuine smile. Her eyes, still glistening, held no rejection, only a deep, weary affection.
“No,” she purred, the sound a vibration against my chest. Then, slipping into one of her silly, mock-Barbie voices she used to lighten the heaviest moments, she added, “You can play my big protector tonight.” She nestled her head back into the hollow of my shoulder with a contented sigh, as if my new form was just a different kind of blanket to curl up under.
The tension that had held my body rigid since Sylva finally, completely, drained away. In the space of a single sentence, she had accepted all of it, the journey, the danger, the change. She wasn’t just welcoming back the Polli she missed; she was welcoming me, all of me, exactly as I was in that moment. And in her playful request, I heard the unspoken truth: her body needs mine as much as I need hers.
The next few hours stretched and compressed, feeling like a lifetime contained within the dim, smoky confines of the bar. It was a torturous, beautiful purgatory. My world had narrowed to the orbit of Silver's movements. Every second was a paradox: the profound joy of being near her, close enough to breathe in the familiar scent of her shampoo, to feel the fleeting, electric brush of her fingers against my arm or back every time she had a spare minute from pulling pints. Each touch was a brand, a promise of what was to come, a reassurance that I was real, and she was real, and this was happening.
Yet, with each touch, the need to escape grew more desperate. It was a physical ache, a craving to be away from the muffled music and the occasional, oblivious chatter of the last patrons. I wanted the silence of her apartment, the weight of a shared blanket, and the absolute certainty that the rest of the world was locked firmly on the other side of the door. The bar, once a haven, now felt like a cage delaying the only true solace I needed.
I watched the clock, each minute hand's crawl a small agony. I watched her, memorizing the way she wiped down the bar, the way she cashed out the till, the final, ritualistic shutting off, of the lights. And then, finally, it came. The sound I had been waiting for: the solid, heavy thunk of that familiar bolt sliding across the door, sealing the public world away.
We stepped out together, and the crisp, virgin air of the night hit us like a blessing. It was cold and clean, washing away the stale atmosphere of the bar, carrying with it the silence and the promise of the private hours ahead. The city was quiet. The world was ours.
She stared laughing and then crying again, I pull her into me “What is it” I said, “I have been dreaming of this moment for days and now it’s come, it’s so wrong yet so right” she laughed again “Take me home”.