Chapter Twenty-Five #3
I shake my head. I don’t know for sure, to be honest. “Five minutes? Ten? Not much more.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, as well he might. What do you say if you only have a few minutes with the love of your life?
I’m about to give them some privacy when Britannia turns from Leo’s arms and crosses the dance floor to me.
We look at each other for a quiet moment and I see her for who she truly is: my friend Britannia Lovell. A great gulp of tears comes from nowhere because she’s crying too and hugging me fiercely.
“Thank you for everything, Melody,” she whispers. “You’re the best friend I never had.”
I want her to leave with joy in her heart, so I step back and smile and laughter lights up her lovely face. She’s full of dizzy joy, and for a moment she grips my hands tightly in hers and we just look at each other across the years and decades.
“Go.” I let go of her hands. “Go to him. Go for those French kisses you’ve missed out on and for the warmth of his arms and for a love so big it’s literally made life worth living again.”
She sighs, glancing around the ballroom. “I can smell the flowers,” she whispers. “I’d forgotten how lovely they are.”
She gives my hands one last tight squeeze before she turns and half runs, half skips back to Leo in the middle of the dance floor.
He holds his arms out to her and they embrace like wartime lovers on a train station platform.
I walk away and step outside the door, because these precious minutes are so deeply intimate and private, beautiful and heartbreaking.
“I have to leave you now, my darling,” I hear her say after a while, and I can tell by her voice that she is peaceful with it.
“But know I loved you with all of my heart, and you have been the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. I’ve always known I was waiting for someone.
I’m so very glad it was you.” They fall quiet and I try not to think about them kissing.
“It’s so much more than I ever imagined it would be.” I step back into the room as she holds his face in her hands. “You’re the love of my afterlife, Leo Dark.”
“I’ll always hold you in my heart,” he tells her, and I can see that she’s already less solid than before. Ethereal, like a fairy tale princess.
If I’d been asked to guess how Britannia would leave the earth, I’d have said in a gleam of solid gold. I wouldn’t have been far off the mark: She’s a streak of utter brilliance, a firework burst of glittering rose-gold stars, a laugh and a blown kiss as she takes her leave.
A tiny pure white star over her abdomen is last of all to wink out and my breath catches with relief to know that wherever Britannia travels on to next, her child travels alongside her.
I turn to Leo and he’s ashen in the candlelight, a man who has loved and lost again, all in the space of ten minutes. The huge shadowed room echoes with our heavy silence. It’s over.
“Why don’t you go on outside and wait for me,” I say quietly.
“You look as if you could use a breath of fresh air.” I watch him leave, and then I take a seat for a few minutes on one of the spindle-backed chairs around the edge of the dance floor.
Tomorrow will see this room transformed into a place of jollity, of dancing and carousing.
I feel sure that wherever Britannia is now, she’d heartily approve.
She was someone who loved to laugh, a woman who knew how to live life with passion and a mischievous glint in her eye.
I came full circle as far as she was concerned, from intimidation to admiration. I’m really going to miss her.
I haul myself to my feet, weary and relieved.
I’ve done it. I’ve bloody well done it. Come daylight, I think I’ll probably be able to take some pride in that fact, but right now, I’m feeling reflective and melancholy.
As I move around the room to snuff out the candles, something catches my eye in the middle of the dance floor.
I pause and bend to take a closer look. It’s a rhinestone, a flint of diamond shine that must have fallen from Britannia’s costume.
I pick it up and lay it in the palm of my hand, watching it catch the light as I rock it with the tip of my index finger.
My fanciful heart wants to believe she left it behind as a tiny reminder she was ever here.
I hold it tight as I look up, blow a kiss toward the chandeliers overhead, and let myself out of Maplemead Castle for the final time.
“Hey you,” I say, dropping down next to Leo on the stone steps after I’ve locked the heavy castle doors.
It’s a balmy summer night, and the silver-white moon hangs full and vibrant over the trees in the distance.
I can smell the fragrant honeysuckle that winds around the balustrades and I’m reminded of Britannia’s earlier words in the ballroom.
“She told me she could smell the flowers,” I say, my voice clear in the quiet night. “I’m so glad we were able to give her that.”
He stares out into the distance. “How did you know what to do?”
I think back to my late-night phone date with Fletch and his promise to catch me if I fall.
“Just something someone said.”
Leo has his elbows resting on his knees and he pushes his hands through his hair.
He’s disheveled and real and I can’t help but notice how much better he looks for being a little less groomed and a lot more vulnerable.
He’s guilty of many things; he can be ridiculously vain and completely thoughtless sometimes.
But I’ve known Leo Dark for a very long time as both a lover and a friend, and right now my heart hurts for him, not because of him.
“I know it seems ludicrous because it was only a few days, but it was real, Melody. I loved her.”
“I know,” I say, because I don’t have a shred of doubt. If there is such a thing as love at first sight, theirs was it. Those brief, dazzling days together are imprinted on his heart forever.
“You’ll be okay,” I say, scooting closer.
He slings an arm across my shoulders and I lean into him.
It’s after one in the morning and somewhere in the trees around the castle an owl hoots.
“It’ll get a bit better every day, until one night you’ll get into bed and realize you haven’t thought about her once today. ”
He laughs sadly and looks at me sideways. “When did you get so wise?”
I scuff my Converse against the edge of the stone step. “Heartbreak does that to a girl.”
He lets my words sink in before he speaks. “Have I ever said sorry to you?”
I bite my lip and concentrate on the moon rather than looking at him.
“You don’t need to say it now.”
“I don’t think I’ll say it to you any other time, so take it while you can.”
He’s probably right. He’s raw right now and has had a taste of how it feels to be the one left behind. Given that he taught me most of my life lessons in heartbreak, I have every right to feel a smidgeon of satisfaction tonight, but, hand on heart, I don’t.
I unfurl my fingers and we both gaze at the rhinestone glittering in my palm. A shaft of moonlight illuminates it brightly, and I twist my hand so that it catches the light. It’s bright and beautiful, as if the essence of Britannia is distilled in its many facets.
“I found this on the ballroom floor just now.”
I place it in his hand and fold his fingers around it, and that’s how we sit for a while, quiet and contemplative.
His arm is a warm, comforting weight around my shoulders, and I let myself rest against him and sigh deeply.
My relationship with Leo Dark is one of the most complex in my life.
We’ll forever be connected by our tangled romantic history, and now also because we were both lucky enough to have had our lives touched by the spectacular, magical, spellbinding Britannia Lovell.
Waking up in my own bed, or rather being woken up in my own bed by Lestat shoving his face into mine, feels like finally waking up from a long, rambling, bizarre dream about castles and princesses and phone sex and how love truly does conquer all.
It’s all over bar the shouting, otherwise known as the grand ball at the castle tonight.
It was truly satisfying calling Lois and Barty last night to confirm the job was complete.
I think they were almost as surprised as I was by my success, but they’ve been generous with both their praise and their payment, for which I’m truly grateful.
Seeing the business account swell makes my pride swell in direct response.
I still don’t have a superhero date, but that’s kind of okay, because I do have a killer dress courtesy of Britannia’s wardrobe, a kickass business, and a whole bunch of people who love me. In my book, that makes me a pretty lucky girl.
Lestat is giving me that menacing look he reserves for six in the morning, the one that suggests I have five minutes tops before he piddles in my shoes, so I drag myself from my warm bed and throw a huge baggy sweater over my pj’s and take him out to the cobbled alleyway at the side of the building. “Is it your birthday?”
I take my eyes off Lestat and see Dwayne, my postman, ambling up the cobbles toward me.
“No.” I frown.
“You’re sure? Because I have a kiss here waiting for you if it is.
” He puckers up and closes his eyes, and I cross my arms across my chest and sigh pointedly.
I’ve known Dwayne since high school and he’s never been one to knowingly miss a chance for a cheeky snog.
His life goal was always to be a postman; it’s the only legal way he can call on women unsolicited every morning.
“Just hand it over.” I’m brisk with him, because it is by far the most effective way of getting him to give up the goods. He opens his eyes and unpuckers with a shrug. Neither of us are particularly offended by the exchange; it’s our accepted method of communication.