50. Seb
SEB
He’d told her.
Saying it aloud was…
He felt lighter.
He felt like he contained the density of a supermassive black hole.
Lily drove back to campus, windshield wipers flicking against the fog and the spitting night. She stared straight ahead. She was crying.
He was crying, he was pretty sure. The seat of the car was trying to swallow him whole. He wanted to let it. He wanted to fall asleep under an ancient yew for a hundred years, a thousand, and wake up in a new world.
Lily wouldn’t be in that world, though. That was the only thing keeping him sane, her presence next to him. She held his hand the whole time, even while she shifted.
“Do they know?” she’d asked. “Asher and Tori?”
He shook his head.
“I think they would want to know. I think they would want to support you.”
Rip off the bandage. Then there would be nothing left. The ruins of whatever he was would be out there, for all of them to see.
She parked in his spot. He stayed in the passenger seat, unable to move. Eventually Lily got out and came around, opening his door for him. She crouched next to him, holding his dangling hand.
“You don’t have to tell them,” she said, all the normal edges of her voice smoothed away. “But if you do, it will get better sooner.”
He pressed his head back into the seat, gazing upward. For having cried so much, his eyes felt dry and puffy. “I thought I was.”
“You were. You are. These are all steps.”
Silently, he nodded, letting her pull him out of the car. He staggered into her arms and she wrapped them around his back. They stood there for a long time, until the cold was too much to bear.
In the elevator, he finally got a good look at her.
The inside corner of her nose was raw and abraded, the rest of it swollen.
Purple spread into the pocket below her eye.
A long, angry scrape cut diagonally across her other cheek.
There was dried blood in her hair, crusted below her nostrils. She was filthy.
You left her alone.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed hoarsely.
“Don’t be sorry.” She hugged him again, and for a second he couldn’t breathe. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
Asher and Tori crowded the door immediately as Lily opened it with Seb’s keys. They’d locked it despite their open-door policy. Asher pulled them inside, Tori throwing up a quick ward, pressing the door shut with her back.
“Lily, your face—Jesus Christ.” Asher gaped as they fell into the kitchen. Lily collapsed against the island, aiming for a stool and missing. Tori pulled Lily out of her coat, revealing her ruined clothes.
Asher was already at the freezer, breaking open one of his giant spherical ice cubes and wrapping it in a clean towel.
She pressed it to her eye, wincing. Only in the warmth and light could Seb see how close she’d been to breaking this whole time.
She’d been running on fumes, carrying both of them.
She placed her head in her hands, and he watched her fight internally to keep going, even when it was safe to collapse. Her entire body was a coiled spring.
“Lily,” Asher said, and she shook her head.
She took several deep breaths, her eyes open and unfocused on the countertop beneath her, and then she sat up, pulling her shoulders back, straightening her spine. In that moment, Seb was very certain that she was the single strongest person he’d ever met.
“I’m fine.” She looked between them, ice covering half her face. “I’m fine,” she said, willing it into reality.
“What happened?” Asher looked at Seb, taking in his relative lack of disarray, his puffy face.
“No,” Tori said with surprising force. “They need to get cleaned up first, then we’ll talk. Lily, come with me.” She took her by the wrist, and Lily, predictably, resisted.
“I’m—”
“Lily, I swear to Vexiliar, if you say ‘I’m fine’ one more time when you look like you’ve been in a back-alley bar fight, I’m going to throw you out the window.”
Lily shut her mouth and let Tori drag her to the bathroom. Seb sat with Asher in studious silence while they listened to Tori casting spells through the half-closed door.
“I’d rather just feel it all now than feel okay now and worse later.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take this one for the team.”
Lily protested; Tori swore. Someone started the shower. Tori emerged, disappeared to her room, returned to the bathroom with a fresh towel and a pile of clothes, before joining them at the island.
“Well, that’s going to hurt like a motherfucker tomorrow, I can already tell you,” Tori said with a sigh. “What do you need fixed, Sebastian?”
He almost laughed. Wanted to ask, “Can you do the past or does that cost extra?”
“I’m okay, I think.”
“How—never mind,” she said, reading whatever there was to read on his face. “At least take off your coat.”
Asher puttered, assembling a concoction that involved tea, brandy, and a lot of spellwork.
Seb focused all his attention on him, on the easy way he moved through creation, following some instinct that Seb knew could be tended but not taught.
They moved to the living area, settling in their favorite spots, waiting for Lily in relative silence.
A swell of fragrant steam followed her from the bathroom as she emerged, hair damp, bangs plastered to her forehead, in a set of Tori’s loungewear.
Seb wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her in black.
It hung off her in angles that made her look older, even more serious than she already was.
She accepted the mug that Asher offered her and sat down next to Seb, keeping a distance that hadn’t previously existed between them.
“So,” Asher looked from Lily to Seb, and back. “What happened?”
Lily sighed into her mug, then told them everything up to Conrad and Gemma attacking them, leaving out Seb’s panic attack. Gemma? Gemma had been there, and he hadn’t even known.
“Gemma punched you in the face? Wow. What a cunt.” Tori leaned back, shaking her head. She turned to Seb. “I feel like that one’s on me. I told you to get involved with her.”
“So, how’d you finish it?” Asher was looking at him, trying to solve an equation he didn’t have all the variables for.
Seb stared at his feet. His socks were wet. The question hung in the air. “I didn’t.” He looked desperately to Lily. She nodded, incrementally. “I was having a panic attack.”
Neither of his roommates said anything. They just waited.
Lily’s hand found his and squeezed.
“I—” he faltered. It should have been easier, the second time.
It wasn’t. “I wasn’t doing an exchange or research this summer.
In Lapland.” When he chanced looking up, their faces were curious, confused.
They didn’t get it yet—that he was broken, masquerading as himself all these months.
“I was there because I heard the way they practice magic could help me get my Words back.”
Next to him, Lily shut her eyes.
“Get your Words back?” Asher frowned. Tori was already bracing for impact.
“I lost my Words the night before graduation,” he said, his voice stiff, digging his nails into the seam of the couch cushion. Rip off the bandage. It’ll hurt less if you do it all at once. “I lost my Words when Conrad raped me.”
Time both elongated and compressed around him simultaneously.
His mind fuzzed out. He knew Asher broke the TV.
He knew Tori remained calm. Neither of them asked him to elaborate further.
He didn’t think he could have. After Asher had calmed down, the three of them—Lily, Asher, Tori—talked. Seb was only vaguely present.
Lily led him into his room, sat him at his desk while she made his bed, rummaged through the contents of his dresser, now on the floor, until she found pajama pants.
She undressed him like a child, leaning him against the bed, looking away while she unzipped his fly, picking up his feet one at a time and sliding them into the flannel.
He looked at the space where his favorite poster had been while she unbuttoned his shirt enough to pull it over his head, while she guided his arms into a clean undershirt.
She turned down his duvet and pushed him into bed, crawling in after him, curling around his back like a parenthesis. She kept the lamp on. Her nose nestled into his shoulder; her knees fit perfectly inside his.
In the last weeks, he’d thought a lot about what it would feel like to share a bed with Lily.
In his imagination, they were naked and warm, floating in post-coital bliss.
In his imagination, the lights were off.
In his imagination, she had not been attacked by his ex-boyfriend, nor punched in the face by his fling.
In his imagination, he hadn’t told her about his rape.
In his imagination, he was the one saving the day.
In his imagination, they were both whole.
“Sebastian?” she said quietly, her breath warm on his T-shirt. He turned his head slightly so she could tell he was listening. “I’m really proud of you.” She swallowed. He could feel her tears, shockingly hot, soaking into his shirt. “I think that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Her arm squeezed deeper around him, and he pulled their fisted hands to his face. A tear rolled sideways, over the bridge of his nose.
In his imagination, neither of them was crying.