EverHeart

Chapter 3: Marco, Apparently

Someone was moving in my kitchen.

Memory arrived a second later.

Blond.

Blue eyes.

Half-dead.

Fire.

Right.

I found Marco barefoot at the counter, wearing the clothes Cami had brought yesterday. His hair had dried overnight into complete disobedience.

Three cupboards stood open.

So did two drawers.

He held my coffee pot in one hand.

I leaned against the arch.

“Are you robbing me?”

Marco turned.

“Good morning.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I couldn’t find the coffee.”

“So you searched everything I own.”

“I found it.”

“Eventually.”

He poured a cup and slid it toward me.

The smell reached me first.

I stopped.

Marco watched my face.

“What?”

I took a sip.

Then another.

“Where did you learn to do this?”

His smile disappeared.

He looked at the pot.

“I don’t know.”

There it was again.

A skill without a memory attached.

Marco rubbed the back of his neck. “I woke up and knew how.”

I took another sip.

“Whatever terrible person you were before, they made acceptable coffee.”

He stared at me.

“Terrible?”

“You may have been.”

“Based on?”

“Your personality.”

His mouth twitched.

Good.

He opened the refrigerator, surveyed its nearly empty shelves, then looked at me.

“You ate everything yesterday.”

“I was recovering.”

“From death?”

“Possibly.”

“Fair.”

His stomach growled.

I closed my eyes.

“You cannot be serious.”

“I haven’t eaten since dinner.”

“That was eight hours ago.”

“Exactly.”

He said it with the solemnity of a man presenting evidence before a court.

This was becoming financially irresponsible.

---

By seven, Marco had eaten enough breakfast to alarm a small family.

Then he washed the dishes.

I discovered him at the sink after changing, sleeves pushed above his forearms.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I ate most of it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

I opened my mouth.

He waited.

I didn’t have one.

Marco turned back to the sink.

“Thought so.”

I narrowed my eyes at his back.

He smiled at the window.

“You can’t see me.”

“I can feel it.”

“Concerning.”

He dried the last plate and reached automatically toward the correct cabinet.

His hand stopped.

He stared at it.

“How did I know that?”

“You watched me yesterday.”

“Did I?”

“Probably.”

Neither of us sounded convinced.

He set the plate down with unnecessary care.

I had begun noticing that about him.

Whenever something frightened him, he became precise.

The mango yesterday. His wrists on the beach.

Now the plate.

As though careful hands could keep the rest of him from coming apart.

A knock sounded.

Then Cami entered without waiting for an answer.

“Morning!”

Marco looked at me.

“You really don’t lock it.”

“I’ve stopped pretending.”

Cami appeared in a yellow sundress, dark curls piled on her head and two paper bags balanced against one hip.

She saw Marco.

Then me.

Then Marco again.

“Oh.”

I knew that tone.

“No.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was going to say he looks less dead.”

Marco dried his hands.

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome.”

She deposited the bags on the counter.

“I’m Camille. Cami.”

Cami collected people the way Mrs. Reyes collected ceramic roosters: enthusiastically, indiscriminately, and with very little concern for available space.

“Marco.”

“Lucy gave me the dramatic version.”

“I did not.”

“She said she found you bleeding on the beach with no memory.”

Marco looked at me.

“That’s fairly dramatic.”

“It was factual.”

Cami ignored me.

“So. Just Marco?”

Something shifted in his face.

Only a fraction.

Cami caught it.

Her teasing vanished.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Clean.

True.

And Cami, to her credit, didn't ask again.

Instead she asked whether he preferred coffee or tea, whether Moira’s heat bothered him, whether he’d discovered Mrs. Reyes’s pastries.

Questions with answers.

Within minutes, Marco was talking to her as though they had met under considerably less strange circumstances.

Cami opened the second bag.

“I brought clothes. My brother is six-one, so unless you’re secretly enormous—”

“He is,” I said.

Marco looked offended.

“Unnecessarily.”

Cami held a shirt against him.

“Hm.”

“Is that bad?”

“You’re annoying to dress.”

“I’ve been told,” I said.

Marco smiled at me.

Traitor.

---

Cami stayed despite having already eaten.

This was mostly because Marco discovered the cheese bread.

He made a quiet, reverent sound.

Cami stared at him.

I covered my face.

“Don’t encourage him.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You brought food.”

“He looks hungry.”

“He always looks hungry.”

Marco pulled the bag closer.

“I feel attacked.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Apparently.”

The word changed the room.

His smile faded first.

Cami looked into her coffee.

I reached for the bag.

“Give me that.”

Marco moved it away.

“No.”

“It’s my kitchen.”

“Cami brought it.”

“For everyone.”

“I almost died.”

“Yesterday.”

“Very recently.”

Cami laughed.

Marco followed.

The moment passed.

Good.

Later, one of the empty cups slipped from my hand.

Marco caught it inches above the floor.

Silence.

Cami blinked.

I looked at the cup.

Then at him.

“Good reflexes.”

“Apparently.”

He turned it over in his hand, more unsettled by knowing how than by what he’d done.

“Maybe you played sports,” Cami said.

“Maybe.”

“Boxing?”

“Why boxing?”

“You have the shoulders.”

Marco looked at me.

“Don’t involve me.”

“You dragged me out of the ocean. You’re already involved.”

Unfortunately, he had a point.

---

By noon, I had decided Marco needed rest.

Marco had decided he needed to be useful.

Only one of us was correct.

“You’re not fixing the shutter.”

“It doesn’t close.”

“I know.”

“That usually indicates a problem.”

“It indicates character.”

“It indicates a broken hinge.”

He crouched beside the veranda window.

“You nearly died yesterday.”

“So you’ve mentioned.”

“You fainted into my flowers.”

“They recovered.”

“The bougainvillea has been through enough.”

Marco looked solemnly at the plant.

“I’m sorry.”

I stared at him.

“Did you just apologize to it?”

“It was your argument.”

Cami laughed into her drink.

I regretted introducing them.

Marco touched the hinge.

His expression changed.

“What?”

“I think I can fix this.”

“You think?”

“I know what it needs.”

“How?”

He looked at me.

Frustration tightened his face.

“I don’t know.”

For a moment, nobody spoke.

The island filled the silence instead—cicadas, a boat engine below, palm fronds shifting in the wind.

Marco looked down at his hands.

Yesterday they had known how to catch a mango.

This morning, coffee.

Now this.

Little pieces of a life returning without the life itself.

I crouched beside him.

“What do you need?”

His gaze lifted.

“For the shutter.”

He looked back at the hinge.

“Screwdriver. Oil. Maybe a washer.”

“I have two of those.”

“Which two?”

“Oil and optimism.”

Cami snorted.

Marco smiled.

“I’ll work with it.”

Twenty minutes later, the shutter closed properly for the first time since I’d arrived.

Marco tested it twice.

Satisfaction settled quietly over his face.

Not because he’d repaired a shutter.

Because he’d known how.

“See?” Cami said. “Useful.”

The word struck somewhere old and unpleasant inside me.

I looked toward the sea.

Marco didn’t notice.

He was tightening the last screw.

“Apparently.”

Apparently he made coffee.

Apparently he fixed hinges.

Apparently he caught falling cups without thinking.

Apparently he was warm enough to dry towels in his sleep and make blue-gold fire curl over his fingers.

A person assembled from evidence.

Marco stood and brushed dust from his hands.

“What’s next?”

“Rest.”

He groaned.

Cami pointed toward town.

“Food.”

Marco brightened immediately.

“No.”

Two faces turned toward me.

“Absolutely not.”

Marco looked at Cami.

Cami looked at Marco.

I disliked whatever passed between them instantly.

“We outnumber her,” Cami said.

“I can hear you.”

“Two to one,” Marco agreed.

“Still hearing.”

His smile widened.

“Democracy.”

“This is my house.”

“Dictatorship, then.”

I stared at him.

He stared back, blue eyes warm with mischief.

Yesterday, he’d woken on a beach unable to tell me his surname.

Today, he was barefoot on my veranda conspiring against me over lunch.

The change should have felt too fast.

Instead, strangely, it felt like something settling into place.

I picked up my sandals.

“Fine.”

Marco grinned.

“But I’m not paying for everything you eat.”

His grin vanished.

Cami laughed.

We started down the path toward Puerto Espera.

Marco fell into step beside me.

Not behind.

Not ahead.

Beside.

At the bend above Cala Verde, he slowed.

His gaze found the stretch of sand where I’d found him.

The tide had erased everything.

No blood. No footprints.

No proof that yesterday had happened at all.

His hand curled once at his side.

Then he looked away.

“Coffee was good,” I said, because apparently emotional avoidance could be achieved through beverage criticism.

Marco glanced at me.

“That sounded painful.”

“It was.”

“Want me to make it tomorrow?”

Tomorrow.

Such a small word.

Cami was already several meters ahead, calling something about lunch.

Marco waited.

“Yes.”

His smile came easily.

“All right.”

And just like that, apparently, he had plans for tomorrow.