The Starbucks closest to Adam’s house was closed. But the one down the road was open. He’d brought her hot coffee with cream and sugar.
“Hello!” he shouted.
Had she been swept away? Or drowned? Had she left to find a different bridge?
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. For a second he thought it might be her.
It wasn’t. It was an older woman, wearing a fashionable raincoat. “What are you doing?” she asked him, her eyes wide and fearful. “It’s slippery—you’ll fall!”
Adam smiled at her. “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”
He turned back to the river and stopped smiling. He leaned farther over the rail. “Are you there?”
He didn’t bring coffee today.
The river was lapping at the edge of the bridge. Adam was alone there. Everyone else had taken shelter or was looking for higher ground; his mother said she’d found some. He held on to the railing.
“I’m here!” he shouted.
And then he held his phone out over the side. (This wasn’t a very big sacrifice; it had been days since he’d had service.) (He would have dropped it anyway.)
She wasn’t there.
His phone was gone.
Once upon a time, in a land that was losing, a man sat at the edge of a river.
It’s Adam. Adam is the man. He sat by the river, and he couldn’t see the bridge. The bridge was gone. The road was gone.
The rain was still feeding the river, and the river was eating everything, and Adam was watching it go—that’s when he finally saw her. She was still far away, but he saw her.
“Hello!” he shouted, falling onto his stomach in the mud and reaching into the water.
“Adam!” he heard her shout.
She was coming closer to him. Swimming toward him.
They caught each other’s arms and held fast.
“You’re alive!” she cried. “I’ve been looking for you, hoping.”
“I was looking for you!” he said. “You left the bridge.”
“I didn’t leave. I just came unstuck. And then I was caught up, like everything else, in the river.”
“We’ve found each other now,” he said, grasping at her arms, trying to haul her up onto the bank.
“No,” she said, pulling back. “Adam, what are you doing!”
Her arms slipped away from him. They caught each other by the wrists.
“I can save you!” he said.
She laughed at him. Her lips were red. Her teeth were pointed. Her skin was the color of a green tea Frappuccino.
“It’s still a no,” she said, squeezing his hands tight.
She was stronger than he was. Bigger than he was. She was trying to hold on to him without pulling him in.
“Are you here to save me?” he asked.
“Oh . . . ,” she said sadly. “No.” She pulled herself carefully toward him. “But I’m glad you’re alive. You’ve always been lucky.”
“The road is gone—is this what you wanted?”
“No.”
She was a dark shadow in the water. But he wasn’t a fool—he knew she had a tail.
“It will be easier for you now,” he said. He was crying again. “I’m glad.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t easy. This is just another kind of hard. That’s all that’s left now, for any of us.”
Adam still didn’t understand. She shook her head, like she didn’t expect him to.
Then she pulled herself close, so carefully, and raised herself out of the water.
“My prince,” she said, and kissed him.
And then she let go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 Augusten Burroughs
Rainbow Rowell is the award-winning number one New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, and the Simon Snow series. Her first graphic novel, Pumpkinheads, with artist Faith Erin Hicks, was released in 2019. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska.