Chapter 15 #2
Call it off, Aster repeated. If your parents come, you’ll show them around. They’ll shower you with doting compliments and pull you away with them. As long as they’re here, you’ll be their daughter. Not the writer who called me here. You’ll be no one. And I’ll be—
He covered his face and shook his head.
I crossed my arms. The crickets outside grew louder.
Aster sighed. He crossed his arms, briefly matching my own pose and fidgeted with the sleeves.
This was turning into another rejection—I could sense it in advance, and I braced myself.
I fear I wouldn’t properly exist in their presence.
It wouldn’t be the same without just you and me.
I wouldn’t be the same. I’d disappear...
“Disappear into what?” I said.
I don’t know. Wherever it is we go when the universe washes her hands of us. The shadows.
I closed my eyes as I tried to turn his fear into something I could comprehend.
Aster had worked himself too hard and didn’t know how to cope with a change in schedule.
“They won’t be here until Wednesday of next week,” I said.
“There’s a lot of time between now and then.
I’ll be sure to include you, besides. You won’t disappear as long as I need you. And I will. I do.”
That’s not enough.
I stepped into a patch of cold air. I hugged my arms across my chest, gradually tucking my hands behind my elbows. “We’re talking one day. Less than one day. An evening.”
An evening? No, it’s too much. I can’t risk it.
“What about tonight?” I asked. “What about right now? What do you want to do?”
I want to see you call those parents of yours and cancel the visit, he said. Tell them it’s not going to happen. Reassure me of your word that this summer will be just between the two of us with no one else interfering.
“I’ll call them,” I said. “But later. Next week. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
Whatever you’d like, I suppose. It’s your summer.
Aster turned away from me in passive-aggressive frustration and looked out the window. With the light on inside, the outdoors looked black, but on cue, I walked to the other side of the room and flicked off the switch I had turned on moments earlier. I joined him at his side.
The fireflies were out tonight. I’d seen traces of them before, individual pinpricks of light bringing the evening to life and adding a necessary pinch of fairy dust to an already enchanted setting.
For a moment while watching them, I forgot to breathe. I imagined, naively, that Aster felt the same way as I did about the scene. Then we could step out together and leave the drama behind us.
Instead Aster’s expression hardened. There’s nothing for us out there, he said. Out in that world.
“Of course there is,” I said. “It’s beautiful. You know, you used to tell me I needed to get out more. That world has a lot to offer.”
Aster looked at me in disgust. You think too much. That’s the problem with you. Do you want a break? A really magical evening for a change? Then sit down. Type for me. I like the way you look behind the screen.
He wasn’t making a suggestion or offer.
While I took a breath and tried to think of a way to calm his mood, Aster grabbed my arm.
He threw me into the chair with a force that stunned me.
I touched my arm over his hand’s imprint and rubbed it.
I looked up at Aster and almost asked why he’d done such a thing, but Aster wasn’t even looking at me.
A confused chill rippled up my spine. This wasn’t like Aster. He hadn’t touched me out of love or lust or passion. It was as if he didn’t even realize I was there.
Then it hit me: I had ceased to be human from Aster’s vantage point. I was a thing, a tool. And tools were meant to be used.
I stared at Aster for one heartbreaking second and mentally begged him to turn around and recognize his own folly.
Let’s get back to it, then, he said, and then he started to dictate.
I typed everything he said without hearing a word.
My ears understood only the terrible obsession in his voice, an audible push for me to do more and faster.
I told myself the storm would end, that we’d go to bed soon and lie in each other’s arms until daybreak, but I knew we’d passed beyond that hope tonight.
As I typed, I felt increasingly that I had become nothing more than a spare limb for Aster and his machinations. What did it even matter if his book won every award in existence? It might have come from my hands, but I had no share in it.
After a few minutes or hours, I slowed and massaged the feeling back into my hands. “Isn’t this enough?” I said. “I’m tired. I need to sleep.”
Stay strong, he encouraged. I don’t want either of us to stop for sleep.
I met his eyes and exaggerated a yawn.
“I can’t keep this up forever.” I probed his face hopefully for a trace of humanity.
Aster knelt beside me and tilted his head when he met my eyes. The eyes glittered at me in fond recognition. Then he nodded with a concession. You’re right—you are tired, he said. I forget that you’re not like me. It’s too bad, really. Get up. Go to bed.
Mistakenly I supposed that he meant to help with the typing or to wrap a blanket over my shoulders to help me feel more comfortable. Instead, he placed his fingers over my eyes. His touch burned against my eyelids.
I flinched. “Ow! What are you doing?” I asked as I pulled back.
Easy, he said. I opened my eyes and saw Aster smiling impishly in response to my fear.
As I rubbed at my eyelids and tried to rid them of the sting, Aster told me what he had done. I might have changed, but I’ve still held on to some of my old powers. I gave you some of my strength just then, you see? As long as we’re together, you’ll never need to eat or sleep again.
Then the burn faded, and the tiredness along with it.