Not widely. Not happily. But a real smile, one Mark remembered. The one from their kitchen, from their mornings, from their life before all the pain.
“Hi,” she said softly.
He did not understand.
“What?”
“I just thought… if we have so little time left, I want to start over.”
Mark sobbed and laughed at the same time.
“Hi, Elina.”
“I get angry when you leave cups on the windowsill.”
“I know.”
“And when you stay silent.”
“I’ll try to do it less.”
“A little late.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “A little.”
They both laughed through their tears.
Then the laughter stopped.
The wind hit first.
Hot, heavy, smelling of burning and metal. It tore a strand of hair across Elina’s face and threw ash into their eyes. People around them screamed louder. The metal railing groaned. Somewhere, glass shattered with a sharp crack.
Mark wrapped his arms tightly around Elina.
She clung to him with both hands.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Me too.”
“Say something.”
He pressed his lips to her hair.
“Do you remember the first time we came here?”
“You bought terrible coffee.”
“You said it tasted like wet cardboard.”
“It did taste like wet cardboard.”
“And then you still drank half of mine.”
“Because I was cold.”
“And that was when I realized I wanted to spend my whole life giving you my bad coffee.”
She closed her eyes and smiled against his chest.
“A stupid confession.”
“But an honest one.”
The shockwave was coming closer. They could already see trees falling one after another along the water. People disappearing into gray dust. Benches overturning. The world being erased by a line racing toward them.
Elina lifted her head.
“Mark.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t look there.”
He looked at her.
“Okay.”
“Look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
She took his face in her hands.
“We lost so much because of words we said. And because of the ones we didn’t say.”
“I know.”
“If someone could hear us now… I would tell them: don’t wait for the end of the world to stop fighting.”
He nodded.
“Say it immediately.”
“Hug immediately.”
“Forgive immediately.”
“Love immediately,” she whispered.
Mark leaned down and kissed her.
Not like in movies, where the end of the world makes a kiss beautiful.
No.
It was a desperate kiss, salty with tears, between two people who finally understood the price of a second. A kiss for all the missed calls. For all the closed doors. For the nights spent on opposite sides of the bed. For the messages typed and deleted. For the pride that had seemed like strength but turned out to be an empty room.
They kissed until the air around them began to roar.
Then Elina pressed her forehead to his.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I’m sorry we understood it so late.”
“No,” Mark said, holding her tighter. “We understood.”
She began to cry.
“What if this is it? Right now?”
He looked into her eyes.
“Then let the last thing not be a fight.”
She nodded.
The shockwave was almost there.
In the final seconds, Elina heard the recorder. It had fallen from her hand, but it was still playing somewhere near their feet. Her father’s voice barely pushed through the thunder:
“…every moment you spend beside the people you love seems ordinary only because you don’t know how many of them are left…”
Mark covered her with his body, even though they both knew it would change nothing.
But love rarely changes the physics of the world.
It only changes the meaning of the final moments.
And sometimes that is enough.
Elina held him so tightly, as if she could hold not his body, but their entire life. Their first meeting. Their first fight. Their first laughter. Their small kitchen. Rain at the window. His cups. Her books. The awkward proposal by the water. Seven missed calls. Eight months of pain. And these final minutes, in which they finally stopped trying to prove who was right.
Because before the end, it turned out not to matter who was right.
All that mattered was who was loved.
The wave swallowed the waterfront.
The light disappeared.
The sound disappeared.
The city disappeared.
But in the very last instant, when the world was already falling apart around them, Elina did not think about the meteor. She did not think about fear. She did not think about lost time.
She thought only that fighting always seems important until life reveals its true price.
And that every moment, even the simplest one, even the most ordinary one, even the one where someone left a cup on the windowsill, is priceless.
Because one day there may be only one moment left.
And it is good if, in that moment, you manage to say:
“I love you.”