“Yeah. It wasn’t pretty, but the older kids like that shit. It makes them smile, and that’s why we’re here.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“In the Médecins sans Frontières tent. They’re pretty awesome, and some days they need cheering up as much as the kids.”
Rhys could well imagine. A long conversation with Marc a few days ago had confirmed his worst fears about disease and sanitation in the refugee camps. “Hell on Earth,” Marc had said. “And it doesn’t get any better, no matter how many Guardian articles good people write. Only the governments can fix this now.”
He hadn’t seemed optimistic about that happening.
“I miss you,” Rhys whispered.
Jevon smiled and ducked his head, his dreads falling into his face. “I miss you too. I’m sorry I left without saying a proper goodbye... you looked so peaceful, man. I just couldn’t face it.”
“It’s okay,” Rhys said. “I’m glad it played out that way. I probably would’ve taken you hostage otherwise.”
“Some days I wish you had.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do, Rhys. You don’t understand.” Jevon covered his face with his hand and sighed brokenly. “This place is so much more than where I was before... it’s too much. I can’t—fuck—I can’t see how I can ever leave while it’s like this, you know? How I can ever come home, but then the idea of staying, of not seeing you or Efe or my family for months on end, is killing me.”
Rhys was sorely unprepared to see Jevon so upset. He sucked in a shaky breath and tried to imagine what he’d do if Jevon was right in front of him. What he’d say. How he’d fix something that was so fucking unfixable. “It’s not going to kill you. It can’t because it’s where you’re meant to be.”
“I know that. I just—it just feels wrong, Rhys. And it’s so big, it’s like it doesn’t matter how long we’re here, nothing gets better. We’re not helping these kids because we can’t. No one can while—shit.I only called to say hello. What the fuck’s wrong with me?”
“You’re overwhelmed,” Rhys hedged. “The camp’s bigger than you’ve dealt with before, and you can’t see the difference you’re making when the scale is so huge. It’s like a mass-casualty incident when you scrape a couple of people up and patch them back together. It doesn’t seem to mean much when double that number don’t make it.”
Jevon let his hand drop. His eyes were bloodshot but still warm. “But the people you saved still got to live. One life matters as much as twenty.”
“I know that today,” Rhys said. “Just never when I need to.”
Jevon sighed. “I’m so fucking emotional right now. I’ve never felt like this before. Makes me wonder if I’ve been in some kind of bubble my whole life.”
“Would it matter if you had been? You can’t control how you feel.”
“I wish I could.”
Rhys touched his phone screen again. “So do I.”
“Do you love me, Rhys?”
“Yes. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I think I did.”
A silence fell over them. It wasn’t the way Rhys had planned to reciprocate the sentiment in Jevon’s letter, and the new conflict in Jevon’s face tore him apart, but a layer of heaviness left him. Like confessing his love had set a sliver of him free. “Tell me something good,” he said. “Tell me what’s made you smile since I last saw you.”
“Memories,” Jevon said. “I keep seeing you and Efe huddled in that corner taking the piss out of me, and it makes me want to bottle you both and keep you in my pocket.”
“I like Efe.”
“She likes you too.”
“What else?” Rhys pressed on before the conversation got lost in separation again. “What are the kids like?”
A smile no man could fake bloomed on Jevon’s face. “Amazing. Sometimes we’re the only ones there when they get off the boats. We take them to the reception centres and start playing games straight away, and some of them seem to forget that they’ve just spent twelve hours at sea. Kids are incredible.”
“So are you.”