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“Yes. I brought you in here to check you for injuries. The teerz are the most obvious and must be dealt with first.”
“No, Silar. This isn’t an injury.”
His nostrils flared with strained breath. The man looked out of his mind. It was actually fucking adorable, in a break-your-heart-into-a-million-powdery-pieces kind of way.
“You have your white glowy eye thing,” I told him. “I guess this is the human version. We shed tears when we feel strong emotions. Or when we’re hurt.”
He let out a feral growl and crossed the room back to me.
“Then where are you hurt?”
“I’m not. Not really. My backside is going to be bruised. And my pride, I guess, for falling down at the worst possible moment out there. I… I’m so sorry, Silar.” I was about to start blubbering again. I pressed my lips together and ground my molars, willing myself not to cry.
But all that achieved was making sure that I cried silently. I stared at Silar while big, breathless tears rolled down my cheeks.
“Don’t say sorry,” Silar said, the words sounding like they were ripped from somewhere deep in his throat. “Not to me, Cherry. Never to me.”
His hands rose, like he wanted to cradle my face, to dab away my tears. But he let them fall with a miserable snap of his tail.
“You are not physically hurt. Then I have done something. Grabbed you too hard. Or… Or I should not have held you the way I did.”
“No. Not at all!” I said, sniffing hard and scrubbing my hands over my cheeks. “If anything, it’s the opposite. I really didn’t know how much I needed that hug.”
Silar’s aqua brows pinched together.
“What is a hug? That word does not translate, either.”
“You guys don’t have a word for hugging?”
“No. At least, I don’t believe so. I don’t know what it means.”
Huh. So they didn’t kiss, they didn’t hug…
“What do Zabrians do,” I asked, “to show affection?”
“I do not know.”
Something about the immediate and unguarded way he said it made me feel like I was going to start crying all over again. He didn’t think there was anything weird or wrong with what he’d just said.
Whether it was because his family didn’t give much affection to him, or because Zabrians just didn’t express themselves the same way humans did, I couldn’t be sure. But either way, his response took my heart in its hand and squeezed. Life on Terratribe I was never really easy, but mine had been blessed with more love than I knew what to do with. At least while Mama had been alive.
But Silar…
Silar had never experienced anything like that.
“A hug is… It’s like what we just did. When you held me. I mean… Do Zabrians not do that?” It had seemed instinctive enough for him.
“I do not know,” he said again. “I never saw my father do it.”
“And… Your mother? She never did it to you?” I waited, already flinching at Silar’s expected silence. I thought he’d shut down the way he had when I’d last asked about his parents.
But this time he didn’t.
“If she did, I don’t remember,” he said. “I do not know if it is a Zabrian custom or not. All I knew is that I wanted to hold you but I…” His throat worked, and his hands rose then fell, empty, once more. “I did not know if it was right.”
He didn’t know if hugging me, his wife, was right? Were these the kinds of questions my husband had been torturing himself with while I’d been pouting over feeling rejected by him?
Maybe it wasn’t that Silar didn’t have any feelings for me.
