He nods. He has no energy to soften the blow, not this evening. He unscrews the lid of a nearby jar. The smell floods the room. He unzips the mesh cage, takes a butterfly and drops it in.
The fluidity of the action reminds me of Alex. He screws on the lid. I tell myselfI will not watch it die, I am tired of the desperate pump of mackerel gills, the frantic grasp of cuttlefish tentacles, but, in the end, I do watch because the fumes work in seconds, not minutes. The butterfly flutters manically and then drops to the bottom. He studies it for a few seconds. I wish I was a thing in his jar. I pick it up, hold it to the light of the lamp. ‘Does it hurt them?’
He shakes his head. ‘Their neurological systems are simple; they don’t have the same sensation of pain we do.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ he says. If we were speaking right now, he would tell me about the butterfly’s brain, heart, pain receptors, what difference it makes that their nerve centres are in their thorax, not their heads, and then I have a cruel, heartless thought: what a poor stand-in Alex is for Daniel. I have been managing with him, surviving, but he is a bird feeding me pecks of seed when Daniel throws me meat. With Daniel, I don’t have to pretend to be less weird, less excited, less hungry. It is suddenly urgent that I fix what is broken between us, if only to get back to this. I hold the jar out to him. ‘Why can’t they feel pain?’
But he won’t be drawn. He takes the jar from me, sets it gently on the table. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘It’s late.’
It is. The alarm clock that used to be on one of the bedside tables says it’s just after two a.m. I stare at the row of empty jars, the butterflies fluttering in their mesh cage, his open laptop. ‘Let me help.’
‘You should go to bed.’
‘I can drop butterflies into jars as well as the next person.’
‘It isn’t that. You know it isn’t that.’ He puts his hand to his forehead, squeezes his temples. The act, one of utter exhaustion, shames me. I have done this to him. If he’s been working here late into the night and getting up early to avoid me, he must be sleeping only three, four hours.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘Don’t.’
‘You’re exhausted because of me—’
‘—It’s fine.’
‘It’s not.’ I glance at the spreadsheet on his screen, the hundreds of entries he is trying to make sense of. ‘I won’t bother you anymore. You can come back to the cottage to work. I’ll stay in my room until you go.’ I think of the state I leave his room every afternoon, the clothes on the floor, the bed, how long it must take to put everything back together. ‘And I won’t mess up your room.’
He lets out a long sigh that saps all the energy in the room and I know I haven’t gone far enough. It isn’t about messing up his room, it’s the incurable knot inside me that makes me want to cross the space between us. ‘And that other thing . . .’ my voice stumbles over itself, ‘I won’t do it again.’
‘You didn’t do anything.’
‘I won’t want to then.’
‘Can we help what we want?’
Panic flares in me. These promises, after acting up for so long, aren’t going to work: he is going to send me away. He will drive me to Wyatt or put me on a train and that will be it, no butterflies or woodland, eelgrass meadows or ancient oaks. The edge of the table grazes my hip, I press hard against it. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’ll stop myself.’
‘Can you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what about me?’
‘What about you?’
‘What if I can’t?’
There is a second of confusion when I’m not sure I’ve heard him, when I’m not sure what he means. But then he removes his hand from his face and there is no mistaking his meaning. Theworld shifts, turns liquid, I think I might faint. I grasp the edge of the desk. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I am not exhausted from working late or from avoiding you.’ In the lamplight, his eyes on me are not navy at all but obsidian. ‘I am exhausted because you are all I think of.’
My heart is hammering so loudly, I can barely hear myself speak. ‘I thought it was just me.’