Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

The lines around his mouth cut deeper in the candlelight. He shows no sign of moving closer. What does he want from me? He says he doesn’t want anything, but then he kisses me, and that can only mean he expects more. Right? I wish Perpétue was here so I could ask her what he meant, what all of this means. I finger the knife’s worn hilt. I didn’t want him to kiss me, did I?

“I’m sorry, Ava. I never . . .” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Chaila.”

Miyole’s bandaged hands flicker in my memory. Rushil listening to my stories about the tea drinkers at work. Sitting with me outside Pankaj’s house. Squeezing my hand in the cockpit. I loosen my grip on the knife and look at him.

“Really, Ava. When you touched me, I . . . I thought maybe you wanted to, or I would never . . .”

I want to believe him, but something hard sticks in my chest. I need the truth. I will be tough, like Perpétue showed me, not some soft girl. “What do you want from me, Rushil? Let’s be true about it.”

His mouth hangs open. “Nothing, I—”

“Come on.” I step toward him. I feel heavy, thick and toxic with all that’s happened to me, happened to Miyole. “I’m not some innocent. If you want what Shruti says, at least say it to my face.”

“No, I don’t, I—”

“Then why are you acting so kind all the time? Making food? Fixing our ship?” I move close. My head only comes up to his chin, but he steps back. “What’s a Marathi Wailer doing acting the good heart?”

“I told you, I’m not a part of them anymore.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “And that’s supposed to make it all better?”

He looks to the river. “No, it doesn’t. Only it means I’d never hurt you, Ava.” He drops his hands to his side. “I want you to believe me. I haven’t run with them in five years. Not since I was a stupid kid. Not since I’ve had this place instead. But it’s always coming back on me.”

“Why’d you kiss me, then?”

“I . . .” He closes his eyes. “I like you, Ava.”

I lean against the fence. The lights on the river are almost gone. “Oh.”

“I thought you maybe liked me, too,” he says. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you . . .”

“Oh.” I look at my dirty, cracked fingernails under the perimeter lights. Something wet rolls down my cheek, and I reach up to swipe it away.

I clear my throat and concentrate on scraping away the dirt beneath my nails. “When I was growing up, my modries told me you only ever kiss the man you’re given to marry.”

And now I’ve kissed two men, and married neither.

Rushil’s eyes go wide. “I never meant . . . Here it’s only something you do to say you like someone.”

I close my hand so my nails dig into my palm. “I believe you.”

Rushil sits beside me in dirt. “Do you think you could like me back, Ava?” The wanting on his face is so plain it hurts.

“I don’t know.” I reach out and hook my finger around a broken link at the bottom of the fence. Luck, Luck, my heart twinges with every beat. How can I ever love someone who isn’t Luck? It feels like betrayal, even if I know I might not find him in Khajjiar after all, even if he might well be dead.

“M-maybe, but . . .” But it’s too much. I can’t finish. I can’t even think about it. I turn away and bury my face in my hands. I can’t let Rushil see me dissolve into tears, can’t let him see me weak. I bite my tongue so I won’t make any noise.

“Ava.” He scuffs closer to me. His hand brushes the hair above my ear, and it’s all I can do not to lean into his touch. “I’m sorry. Whatever happened, whatever people’ve done to you before, it’s not what I mean to do. I swear. Can you let me prove it to you?”

I sit with my face in my palms.

“Let me make you dinner tonight. You don’t even have to eat with me. You don’t have to give me anything or do anything you don’t want to. Just please, let me be your friend again. I want things back the way they were, that’s all.”

I sit up and rub hard at my eyes with my wrists. “Right so,” I say.

I come back from a twelve-hour shift at Powell-Gupta to find the sloop empty. Panic hits me. I hurry to Rushil’s trailer and bang on the door.

“Miyole?” I bang again. “Rushil?”

Pala barks from somewhere behind the trailer.

“Ava?” Rushil calls back, his voice muffled. “We’re over here.”

I walk around the back of the trailer and find Miyole and Rushil in the midst of a small wedge of garden I’ve noticed before, huddled around an old wooden baling spool turned on its side like a table. Cucumber vines wind up a makeshift lattice behind the table. A pile of scrap metal sit between them, and Miyole holds the burner I fixed for her.

“You have to do it slowly.” She holds up a metal shard for Rushil to see, and drags the burner’s white-hot point over its surface. “Like this.”

“Huh. I see.” Rushil catches sight of me and sits up straight. “Hey, Ava.” He smiles. “Miyole’s been showing me how to use a metal burner.”

Pala limps over and smacks her tail against my leg. I pat her side absentmindedly.

“I’m making a dragonfly.” Miyole bites the inside of her lip, thinking, and for a slip, she’s the picture of her mother. She looks at me. “Do you want to learn, too?”

Relief floods me. She’s out of the sloop. She’s making her creatures again. Mercies, thank you.

“I’ll watch.” I lean against the side of the trailer so I can look over her shoulder. She’s already outlined the basic shape of the creature and is beginning to slice out a delicate cutwork inside its wings. The metal itself shimmers with undertones of turquoise and rose.

“Oh,” I breathe. “Miyole, that’s some lovely.”

She cranes her neck up at me and narrows her eyes, as if she isn’t sure she believes me.

“I mean it.” I squeeze her shoulder and blink back a tear. I don’t want to spook her by crying.

Rushil clears his throat and stands. “Anybody want tea? Miyole?”

“Yes, tea,” she agrees.

He pushes his chair in. “Ava?”

“Please so.”

He opens a small door in the back of the trailer I’ve never noticed before and steps up into the kitchen. Miyole picks up her burner again.

I lean in the doorway as Rushil balances the kettle on the stovetop. “You got her talking.”

“Yeah.” Rushil spoons dry tea leaves into an old brass teapot.

“Thank you.”

Rushil darts a look at me and shrugs. “It was nothing.”

“I couldn’t do it.” I look over my shoulder. Miyole frowns in concentration as she rounds out the creature’s eyes. Pala has settled beneath her chair, and Miyole rubs the dog’s back with her feet as she works.

“Well, I have to know how to talk to kids if I’m going to be a counselor.”

I raise my eyebrows. “A counselor?”

Rushil’s face darkens. He speaks down at the cups he’s holding. “Yeah. For kids who are . . . like me. Like I was. Who want out of the Wailers and gangs like that.”

I step up into the kitchen. “Right so?” I’m not sure exactly what a counselor does, and I don’t know what else to add.