He hovers in her office threshold for a few moments before he finally speaks.
"Maka, get dressed up for 7 tonight. I'm going to pick you up and take you on out." She watches as he clears his throat and looks away, face flaming. "For, like, a date."
She smiles from her place in her checkbook. "You act like a real cool guy, but you're actually easily embarrassed and super sappy, aren't you?"
"I... just feel bad for doing things out of order." The ruddiness in his cheeks extends to the tips of his ears, and he grimaces.
She stops penning out numbers. "What?"
"Um, well... sleeping with you before at least buying you dinner. It just seems wrong."
"It's 2014," she says, laughing, "don't worry about it. But okay. I'm looking forward to it. 7 PM. I'll be ready. You better have a limo waiting."
"It's 2014," he grumbles in response before he returns to the now-familiar sizzle and crackle of the ancient, grease-lined grill.
He greets her at her apartment door at exactly seven, dressed to the nines in a black pinstripe suit and crimson tie. She revels at how it offsets the red in his eyes, in the tinge of his cheeks; it also matches very well with the serrated edges of his teeth. She still feels their points on her skin and grins.
"Hey," she murmurs. "You look really dashing."
"Dashing? Really?" He snorts, but cannot seem to meet her gaze right away.
She's in a simple summer dress. White, sleeveless, with a brown belt that splits the plain top from the green-lace bottom that stops just above her knees. Her hair is down, curled at the tips where it touches her collarbone. He tries not think about the way she tasted the night before, and holds out his crooked arm for her to take. She loops her arm through his and grins.
They stride down the stairs in silence, and his anxiety is palpable. She stops him in the doorway and kisses him, quick, on the lips.
"There's nothing you can do wrong, Soul. I promise."
He fiddles with one of the curls in her golden hair. "I hope you're right."
"Have you ever tried to count every grain of sand?"
Soul takes her to a place with white tablecloths and candlelight. They sit across from each other at a tiny table, and are handed leather-backed menus with what seem like meals made of diamonds based on the prices. Other guests of the restaurant are dressed in furs, strings of pearls.
The waiter is gruff, dressed like a butler in a manor. Soul and Maka sit in an uncomfortable silence, until she breaks.
"Soul, I really thank you for taking me out like this, but... honestly, I hate this place, it's really expensive."
"Black Star told me you would love it here..." He places his menu down, and groans.
She laughs at the pout in his face. "One thing you haven't seemed to learn about him yet is that he has no idea what he's talking about... ever." She takes one of his hands, and the tablecloth is cold on their palms. "You like take-out and comedies?"
He appears to breathe a sigh of relief, and smiles. "I really, really like you." He squeezes her hand.
They order pizza loaded with all kinds of meat, some they've never even heard of. They turn on Step Brothers and fall asleep on the couch.
She can barely hear the ocean, but sleeps better than she ever has.
Her father is right in some ways; he'd marry her on the spot if he could. He wants hundreds more of these moments. They're so simple, so easy, as if they've always been there and as if they always will be.
"What happens if I have to lose one of the best things I've ever come across?"
There is a quiet confusion sometimes between them, especially as early August lands in them like a silent bullet from the dark. It lodges in a space just at the bottom of her heart, his. A pillow-talk unmentionable, a lingering question. He was only needed for the summer, and then he's meant to return to his full-time job at a jazz dive bar in New York City, hundreds of miles out of reach of her, of the sea.
They never ask, as they never want to know. It hovers in the shadows in their eyes as they exchange mournful gazes in the restless nights. They're never seen apart.
She's never found it so easy to be with one person this way. She never wants to have to find it again.
She thinks of her graduate degree coated in dust in her closet. She thinks of the dingy diner, lined with piano-key paper.
She runs a finger across his scar, and thinks of her own shattered family.
She buries her head in his chest and cries while he sleeps. Her heart belongs to too many places to beat right.
The weeks go too fast.
Even the amounts of customers begin to dwindle in the later days. With closing time approaching in an hour, and her waitresses and chef chattering in the kitchen she slumps in a booth in the center of the restaurant, and gazes out the window, watching a few tourist families travel by to her competitor. She starts to feel less dread about it. Somewhere inside, she almost wants it. She wants the answer to where she should be handed to her. A blue jay flits by, and then she sees her father, hunched the way she is.
He opens the door, and the bell above it tinkles, but in this moment it sounds like an alarm. The bird caws somewhere in the distance, a beautiful cerulean bird that somehow sounds like a monster.
Her stare is an emerald winter as he slides into the booth across from her. She says nothing, freezes in her place to match the cold that enters her eyes.
Her employees all struggle to see from the kitchen window.
"Maka," Spirit greets. "I need to talk to you, since my original plan doesn't seem to be working."
She crosses her arms.
He flinches at the defensive body language, the quiet. "The restaurant," he says. "You need to close it down and leave. I know from an inside source that it isn't doing well, and that's okay. I think it's time you move on from here. You're worth more than this."
"Get out!" she screams, and rises from the table so harshly that it shakes. "Get out of here." She looks down, hides her breaking gaze beneath her sweeping bangs. "This isn't your place anymore. You don't have a right to be here!"
"I am still the owner."
"You have no right to be! When she died, I took it over because you fell into more pieces than me! You were a pathetic mess, so I had to be the strong one! I've worked at this place for years, tried to keep it going. To keep her memory and dream alive, I took it over. I've worked at this place for years, all while you were sobbing somewhere in the distance. I did this for her."
He gets up from the seat as well. "And what have you done for yourself?"
"I haven't deserved anything! She died doing something for me, so I have to live doing something for her!"
"You know she would never want that for you!"
"How would you know?" Tears stream down her face, beyond her control. Her fists clench, and she finally rips into his stressed gaze with her own.
"Because she was my soulmate, Maka. I knew every dream and wish of hers, and none of them ever included you having to take over this shitty place."
"Just get out," she says, voice shaking. "Just get the hell out!" Before he can respond, she rams through the swinging kitchen door and out into the alley.
She slides down onto the ground with her back to the stone wall. She wipes at her eyes and thinks about her conversation with Ox here, how he looked in the wake of breaking up with Kim. She thinks of losing Soul, she thinks of her mother, of how trapped she feels in this shadow-chilled alley.
Another blue jay crows from the roof above her.
She lets Soul guide her to her apartment.
He listens to music while she pulls open a wildlife book beside him.
"The migration pattern of the blue jay is still a mystery to ornithologists. Some blue jays head south for the winter consistently every year, and some stay put year round. They still are not sure what causes some to leave and others to stay."
After a while, Soul pulls the headphones from his iPod. He wraps them a few times around the mp3 player before he turns to face her. He closes her book on her, and takes her hand. He looks to the calender on her wall behind her for a brief moment, and reads the date: August 19, 2014. His days here are almost done. He swallows the lump in his throat, feels his heart thud like it weighs as much as all his aching bones combined.
"Maka, when I leave to go home," he starts, "I want you to come with me."
She slides the Audubon book from her lap, and sniffles. "What?"
"Come live with me in New York," he says.
She observes his expression, and it's bare. He's exposed to her completely. "Soul, you know I can't."
"You can," he urges. "Maybe your dad today was right. I'm sure your mother wouldn't want this life for you. Take that degree with you to New York. You're rottin' away here and you know it. There's more for you beyond here."
"You sound like my father," she hisses. "Stop."
"But you are worth more than this."
"This is all I have!" She pulls her hand from his.
"It doesn't have to be."
"Were you all a part of this?" she asks, sidling away from him to the opposite end of the couch. "This plan he was talking about?"
"Maka-"
"Tell me!"
His heart is gone, swept away with the raging sea in her tear-lined stare. He's sinking too far at this point to even reach for the turbulent surface. He swears he can feel her soul shrinking away from his like fog into sunlight. Their hearts are dust in the growing space between them. "Yes," he admits.
"So all this stuff isn't even real?" she screeches. "Were you just leading me on because my father told you to? Did he pay you? I knew I shouldn't have trusted you! I let you in and you were just some pawn of my father's. I should've known. I should've known I couldn't ever be this lucky in love. Get out!"
"Maka, me falling for you was never a part of-"
"Get out! I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear or see you anymore! This is betrayal to me."
"I'm in love with you," he says, and she feels like she's suffocating.
"You're a liar," she responds, and her voice is in shambles. "I can't believe anything you say anymore. Get out!" She's tired, she realizes, of having to say this. She is tired of letting people in only for them to go. "Just leave. I never want to see you again." She curls up, and restrains her cries. She won't let him hear her.
He leaves in silence, the same way he entered her life. Slowly, quietly. Waves lapping at her feet in the sand.
"Blue jays are not actually blue in the way we see their color. It is a result of light distortion, much like the color of the ocean as we know it. For example, when a blue jay feather is crushed, it loses that beautiful deep blue."
The population of the beaches dwindles fast in the days following Soul's disappearance, as if his presence drew them here. It's been a cold summer, she realizes as she throws on a spring jacket to be comfortable outside mid-day in August by the sea. She sits in an empty section of sand and lays there for a while. She's so much a piece of this place that she tries to will herself into the sand.
She startles when someone next to her, but settles when Black Star plops down next to her.
"Aren't you supposed to be working?" she asks with a sigh.
"I am," he says, grinning.
"I can't believe you've kept this harbormaster thing going for years."
"You know, I can't, either." He turns to her, and she's shocked by the seriousness of his stare. "Maka, I heard about the stuff with your dad and Soul, and I'm sorry."
She scrunches up her nose. "Please don't pity me. It's like a three-legged dog pitying a shark." She grimaces at the image of a shark, of sharp teeth. His hands on her skin still burn in vivid memory.
"I just feel bad because my relationship is absolutely flawless."
"Well, you are dating a yoga instructor. I'm sure that has a lot of bonus."
"That, and it's Tsubaki."
"Yes, yes, I know. Your girlfriend is hot and perfect."
"I'm the big night sky, and she's the stars." He leans back, as if looking for the real stars in the ashen sky. "We just match up. Because we're both perfect."
She shoves him.
She used to think that of Soul, too. He was shark teeth and she was sea glass; they just made sense.
After Black Star leaves, she dozes off on the beach. Her dreams are filled with copper lanterns, but it still all feels dark to her.
Maka wanders around in a stone-clad silence. She spends most of her shifts in her office, trying to reorganize piles of useless paperwork. She rejects Marie's invitations, some of Patty's and Kim's, especially since she reunited with Ox. Day by day, she simply hollows out the office, nothing more and nothing less. It keeps the white noise and the memories from her mind.
"Maka," Liz says one day, an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth, "we need to have a very important chat."
"Give me twenty more minutes. I'm almost done here."
"No, now. I'm so tired of seeing you in here. It's depressing. Let's go." She cannot argue when Liz grabs her by the hand and drags her out the door, down the side-street overflowing with now-empty rental houses.
They sit on a bench overlooking a smaller section of the ocean, on a grassy hill. Liz angles herself to prevent her boss's escape, which sets Maka on edge. This cannot be a good talk.
"I'm not good with words like you are," Liz says. "But, anyway, your father's plan, I was sort of a part of it."
"What?"
"Don't you dare go anywhere, Albarn. You let me finish what I gotta say. I've been your best friend for years now, don't kick me out like your little boy toy. You'd be stupid to push me out of your life."
Maka stays seated, though her eyes are faded in color, resigned.
"I was in love once, you know. Maybe you remember. I never told you his name." She pulls the unlit cigarette from her mouth. "His name was Wes. Wes Evans."
"Liz." Her eyes widen, some the hue leaks back into them.
"Those weekends I used to spend in New York in the winter months, they meant a lot to me. He was my soulmate. I would stay at his apartment. That's how I met Soul. They used to live together, before the accident. After I met him and got to know him, I knew he'd be a match for you. So, I started telling him about you, and maybe showed him a picture or two." There are no qualms in her voice, but Maka blushes.
"Seriously? Why would you-"
"He liked you immediately, without even having to meet you. And you should know, all this was before your father's meeting with him. He wanted to meet you long before that. Soul's got a big heart hidden beneath a whole lot of darkness. He got roped into this thing of your father's without ever wanting to hurt you. He just got suckered into the idea that it would be best for you. But mostly, once he met you, he just didn't want to be apart from you. When he asked to take you to New York with him, that wasn't your father's plot. That was him just wanting to be with you. You should know that, though maybe it's too late now." She leans back on the bench, and sighs. "I knew you two would fuck it up. You both act without thinking most of the time. Idiots."
Maka sinks into her seat, and feels some splinters from the bench prick her back. She's speechless.
"I loved Wes so much, you know. I was destroyed. But when I saw Soul at the funeral, that was true destruction in him. I took him here with me after that. You kept him floating, and watching you two fall for each other kept me floating. I felt like I was doing a last favor for Wes and for your mom, cause I loved them both. Wes always wanted a good life for his brother, and your mom always wanted a good life for you. Everything he felt for you was real. I've lost someone I loved deeply." She says nothing more, gives Maka a moment of reflection. "It was awful, but you get past it, and then you gotta live your own life. That's just the way it works. We swim through the shit and come out clean."
"So what you're telling me," she says after a while, "is that it's probably not too late."
"I mean, I'm telling you a lot here about your life beyond your little love dilemma," Liz says, "but I think you get one of the main points. Get the hell out of this town. Oh, and use that degree you complained about nonstop, huh?"
Maka fiddles with the restaurant key in her pocket, then gets up and heads in the direction of her father's house.
Liz lights the cigarette, and smiles.
Patty meets her later, flops down beside her. "Ready to leave, sis?" she asks.
"You bet. Our work in this town is finally done. Our bird has left the nest at last."
"Good. I was kinda getting tired of waitressing. I hate doing dishes."
Her older sister laughs through her smoke. "Me, too."