Page 23 of To Catch a Firefly

I push his face away, and this time, it’s Danil laughing. But then he pouts. “Fine. But I’ll have you know you’re breaking my heart, Lucky.”

“Somehow, I think you’ll survive.”

He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, well. What are you going to do instead? Call your Ellis?”

My Ellis.

The thump in my heart that accompanies those words is as familiar to me as the man himself. Ellis, who’s tall, dark, and handsome in his own right, but whose strength lies in his steady calm and unwavering dependability. Ellis, whose rumble of a voice is like distant thunder, so rarely there but impossible to ignore. Ellis, my…friend. Above all else, he’s my best friend. Still. Always.

“Yeah,” I say on a breath. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

Danil watches me closely before he shrugs, looking off over the bow of the boat. “Well, I hope the phone sex is worth it.”

“We’re not having phone sex,” I say, smacking his arm.

One of his eyebrows arches. “What the hell else are you doing on those hours-long calls?” When I don’t answer, his second eyebrow joins the first. “You just talk?”

“We just talk,” I confirm.

Well, more like I talk, and Ellis listens.

Danil and I bump along as the boat rolls over waves, but then we’re slowing down, approaching the dock we set off from half a day earlier.

“Well,” my coworker says, “if you change your mind, you know where to find me. And Tomasz.”

“Yeah,” I tell him, but when it comes down to catching up with Ellis or having sex with Danil, there’s no competition.

When we reach the shore, Danil has a quick word with our guide, and then the two of us head off to grab some food. We stop at the first place we reach: a small shack of a restaurant set right on the beach with its sides opened up to the warm evening air. I get a fish-of-the-day sandwich, and it’s so good, I could weep.

The sky is turning pink by the time Danil and I get back to our lodging. He gives me a salute as he heads into his bungalow, and I carry my tired and aching body into my own. I should shower off the ocean, as well as the exertion of the day, upload the photographs I took, and even go through tomorrow’s itinerary. But I don’t do any of it. I power on my phone, flop onto the hammock on my porch overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and call Ellis.

He answers on the third ring.

“El?”

There’s a soft hum, and every muscle in my body relaxes as if I’m still floating in deep, dark blue.

“Hey,” I say softly. “How’s it going?”

A small grunt.

“Good. And your mom?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Good.”

I smile into the phone. Ellis can’t rely on physical cues when we’re talking so far away, so he’s had to get used to speaking more. It takes a while, sometimes, but I don’t mind. Never have.

“You’ll never guess where I am,” I say.

A curious hum.

“Belize. It’s beautiful here. I think you’d really like it.”

He hums again, but it’s a question.

“There’s so much color everywhere,” I explain. “The water, the sky, the plants. Even the shops. Everything is washed in vibrant pinks and blues and oranges. AndGod, the crab. Have you ever had crab?”

I don’t think he has, and a small grunt confirms it.

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