“Every word,” he whispers.
I clasp his wrist. His hand is dry, newly calloused, and large, and I can feel his pulse pounding under my fingers. It’s racing, and it gives me a thrill that I make this ancient man who has seen the world, watched empires rise and fall,nervous.
“What did you say, then?” I ask.
Julian tips my face up. An errant tear has crawled down my cheek and settles on the inner corner of my mouth, and he wipes it away with a caress of his thumb. In the dim room, his eyes should be dark, but they glint like obsidian shards. He looks, in this moment, like the magic he is.
“I’ve lived at least half a millennia,” he begins. “And what I know is this: people are fundamentally the same across time, regardless ofwhere and when they exist. They want the same things: to dominate, to amass wealth, to have indiscriminate sexual access. And to those ends, they fight, they kill one another, they adopt nonsensical ideologies and then disavow them a generation later, and they learn nothing from their forefathers’ mistakes. I found them tiresome most of the time.”
It’s not the answer I sought, but I hang on to every word, fascinated. I am speaking, I realize, to a living, breathing fragment of history. Whose continued existence defies all reason.
“The interesting things,” he continues, “those take time. Technological advancements, the birth and fostering of genius—that is multigenerational work. And for so long, I wished I could rush through time. Just get to the good parts, the things that last. Good music. Compelling art. Radio. Land lines, then cellular phones.Internet.Trains, then airplanes. All of it, a different sort of magic, and incredible to behold.
“And yet, I was so rarely intrigued. Even less often inspired. I used to wonder, well, what is the point of still living, of amassing wealth that always regenerates, having the same conversations day in and day out. But the interesting bits, the discovery, kept me going. I could invest in the right people and spur it along, use those few brilliant minds to help create a world worth living in. And death? Well I, like many, find it terrifying. And, like many, was willing to deny the humanity of others to my own ends.” He inhales, closes his eyes. “And then Alphonse met Mary, and I met Claire.”
The other woman’s name makes my heart stammer.
“She was special too,” I say.
“She was,” Julian confirms. “I…didn’t really understand love before her. I of course had lovers, but in the grand scheme of things, they were so short-lived, and their devotion to me was sounquestioning that we could never be on anything close to equal footing. And besides, my intentions weren’t altogether pure.” He gives a small, bashful grimace, as if pursuing his past lovers to feed off their lifespan was an embarrassing past lapse in judgment. “But Claire was like you, I think. So stable in her personhood that I couldn’t shake it. So unrelentingly compassionate. She believed, with real conviction, that people were fundamentally good, just in need, just hurting from undressed wounds. I’d lived much too long to agree, but traversing the world with her perspective made it kinder, gentler, softer.
“I would have lived a life with her,” he confesses. “It seemed like fate, that Alphonse, one of the few people on this Earth who could understand me, could find the same thing at the same time. It felt like this…revelation. That the thing we’d missed for so long, that so many of those we’d looked down on could attain so easily, was this overpowering love we could have for another being. We discovered more about ourselves in those few short years than we had in the hundreds that preceded them. That our hearts could be mortal, even if we weren’t quite. And so we both decided that this was it. He’d grow old with Mary. I’d grow old with Claire. We would die, and it would be our most beautiful life yet.” He takes a breath, like what he wants to say next might cost him.
“And then I lost her.”
His voice cracks, his grief a wound split open.
I roll my lips into my mouth, fighting back tears as I see them form in Julian’s eyes.
“What happened?” I ask.
Julian swallows, trails a hand down my arm, and twines our fingers together.
“I was attacked,” he says. “It was by a group of men who lived close to her place. Her neighbors. Claire gave some of their kids freemusic lessons, but I looked like I had money, and they thought I’d be an easy target. I got shot. Drained one of them on reflex to survive, took care of two others, but one of them got away and got backup. But they’d seen what I was capable of, saw what Iwas. So they went after my girl instead.”
I suck in a horrified breath.
“I should’ve gone straight to her afterward,” Julian continues. “But I panicked. I’d taken so much that I looked like a teenager. And then there were the bodies; I had to figure out what to do with them. And all while I was trying to figure out how to save myself, they were…” He shakes his head, turning away from me. “I was lost for a long time after that. You couldn’t convince me that any other human on Earth was worth a singular damn. Claire was so good. Kindhearted. She’d helped some of those guys, fed their kids during her lessons. And still. The things they did to her…”
The tears spill out, drip down my cheeks.
“Jules, I’m so sorry,” I start, but Julian shakes his head. He is looking down at me like I am made of gold, like he has journeyed a thousand miles to find me, and when he drops his forehead to mine, our tears comingle.
“I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel that way again,” he says. “No. Iknewit wasn’t possible. But then I found you. Impossible Sean Sullivan. Utterly resistant to my charms. Stubborn, self-righteous—”
I snort. “Oh yes, you sound like you really like me—”
“Ferocious, vulnerable, nurturing, brilliant, and unlike anyone I’ve ever met in this long and fruitless life,” he finishes. “You once said that I made the world a better place just by being in it. It couldn’t be true. Not with the way I am. Not with the things I’ve done. But I want it to be, so badly, just to prove you right.”
To this, I have no smart retort. Just an ache that is spreading across my chest.
“I’ve lied to you, and I’m not proud of that,” he says. “But that night? When I told you I loved you? I meant it. Every word. Life at your side would feel meaningful enough to end.”
Even expecting them, the words hit like an arrow to my heart. I don’t know how to react, and so I close my eyes and nod in acceptance, run my hands over the planes of his face, down his neck and his shoulders, too delirious to do anything more than feel. Julian loves me. Our reality right now might seem unfathomable, but there is something grounding and stabilizing andnormalabout this knowledge. It’s a tale as old as time, a feat both improbable and mundane: the man I love loves me back.
“Is it safe to kiss you?” I ask.
Julian lets out a breathless laugh, and then he’s lifting me onto his lap like I’m a rag doll.