16. Ivy
Iwas barely holding myself together, and the heat had started to make me loopy.
“Come on, Ivy,” Stephens groaned, clapping his hands to get my attention. “You’re killing me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t remember my lines. I couldn’t think straight. I needed a break. I needed a nap. I needed a week off in the Bahamas.
“Don’t apologize,” Stephens blared. “Do better. Tybalt is the epitome of nobility, the prince of his house. Surely you can understand what that feels like.”
I swallowed down the insult I had brewing for him. I could absolutely understand what that felt like. I could even understand what it felt like to be in Juliet’s shoes, forced to marry someone she didn’t love, destined to choose between her heart and her family. But Stephens had a reason for his frustration. We were five days away from our first performance, and this was no time to start fucking up.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” Stephens said. “Take it from the top of the scene, please.”
“Hey, you okay?” Carter ran a hand down my arm. We were at the part where Tybalt killed Mercutio and Romeo chased him through Verona. It involved fight choreography, making it a million degrees warmer in this stuffy auditorium.
“Yeah,” I lied. “It’s just hot.” I was in a full renaissance costume with a pound of makeup on my face. Basically boiling alive, but that was only half true. I hadn’t been telling the whole truth for almost two weeks. I wasn’t okay. I would probably never be okay again.
Lex kept staring at me. Not in a creepy way, but the same way he looked at me that night—like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to wring my neck or fuck me. Probably both.
“I know.” Carter leaned in close, pressing his mouth to my ear. “I was thinking, how about tonight after the midsummer party, you and I sneak off to the creek? I found a secluded spot on my hike this morning. We could cool off and then get real warm again. What do you think?” He bit his bottom lip, making me want a piece, and I sighed as my cunt clenched, anticipating this plan.
“That sounds amazing.” I could use the alone time with him. Things had been weird the whole time we’d been here. We usually had no boundaries between us, and every day, my secrets erected new ones. Part of it was my fault, but I kept thinking about what Lex told me by the river. Carter still hadn’t mentioned London, and if he was keeping that from me, it was entirely possible he was keeping other things from me, too. Did he know about the engagement? And if he did, why go along with it this whole time?
I didn’t want to believe it, but once Lex put the idea there, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was in the way Carter looked at me sometimes, possessive and angry, before he locked it down and became the same old lovable guy again.
A night at the creek alone with him? I needed that reconnection, a chance to clear the air.
“Great.” He turned to find our friend, Davis, who played Benvolio, and I shook my head against the guilt that snaked through my body.
I’d find a way to fight for him. I had to.
* * *
It didn’t get dark in Ireland on the summer solstice, not like it did in Virginia. The sun stayed up from four thirty in the morning to ten at night. After it set, the sky turned a radiant blush and violet until midnight, when it finally dipped into “astronomical twilight.” That was science-speak for the weird in-between time when the sky wasn’t quite the pitch one would expect for the wee hours of night, but not quite sunset either. It reminded me more of the indigo in Carter’s eyes.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Lex asked for the millionth time.
“No, actually, I’m not.” I held the flyer up to him and pointed to a spot on the tiny map in the corner. “But here’s what I’m following. Would you care to do better?”
He snatched it out of my hands and looked down at it.
“Now, now,” Carter said. “Play nice in the sandbox.”
Miri tilted her head back to look at the sky as we walked. “And none of the other students were invited to this?”
“Siobhan gave me a flyer,” I explained. “I didn’t think about inviting anyone else.”
“Wait.” Carter paused to grab my shoulder. “Do you hear that?”
Drumming echoed off in the distance to our left.
“We’re close,” I said.
“C’mon.” Carter put his hand in mine and pulled me through the undergrowth toward the music, helping me jump over a mossy log before yanking me up a moderately steep hill. Once we crested the top, he curled his lips into an excited smile, which made me grin to see. Four bonfires burned brightly in the valley below, one at each corner of the clearing. A sea of bodies writhed in the center, drums beating out a rhythm while fiddles and pipes accompanied.
Is that a lyre?
“Holy hell,” Lex said.
“This looks amazing.” Miri grabbed my hand, intertwining her fingers with mine and yanking me with her into the valley, Carter following on the other side.
There was so much going on that I couldn’t rationalize one thing fast enough before my focus landed on something else. A man walked by wearing a kilt, half his face painted like a butterfly. Another person had on booty shorts, glittery flowers etched over his bare chest. A group dressed like elves stood in a circle, their fur clothing held together by leather straps and leaves, twigs accenting choice pieces. Others only had on scraps of fabric, strategically placed to maintain propriety in public.
As beautiful as this place was, the atmosphere itself held a magical quality I struggled to explain. I tasted it on my tongue, salty sin with hints of pure citrusy hedonism. Laughter echoed around me, mixing with moans and squeals of delight. All mixed together, I inhaled it like wood smoke and sex and sugar and flowers. It poured down my throat and into my veins.
I was under its spell in seconds.
“Welcome,” a beautiful brunette said, shoving a handful of daisies into my hands. She reached into her wicker basket and retrieved a flower crown, placing it on top of my head with a kind smile.
“Thank you.” I giggled as she did the same to Miri.
“Here!” Another woman gave me a wooden chalice. I traced over the curling design etched around the cup, ghosting over the text in a language I didn’t understand. But it looked like everyone else had them, too, so I nodded and thanked her as well. She tipped a bottle of wine over it, filling it almost to the brim before doing the same thing to Lex and Carter.
Should I have accepted a drink from a stranger? Probably not. That was “being a girl in college” 101. But could I refuse? Also no. When in Rome, am I right?
I took a sip of the most exquisite thing I’d ever tasted—ambrosia—sweeter and more decadent than anything my parents had in their wine cellar. It burst to life in my mouth, overwhelming my senses until there was nothing else in the world, just this party and my friends and this moment. I’d never known what delicious meant before.
We took a few more steps, and someone shoved condoms at me attached to little rectangular packets containing lube and edible oils. Jesus Christ…where the hell were we?
“This is amazing,” Carter shouted, stuffing a handful into his pocket. It wasn’t until I was doing the same that I realized there weren’t any children in attendance. In fact, there weren’t any children here at all. All adults. Of course, it was late. Almost ten o’clock. When I took another drink of my wine, I didn’t care anymore. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
“Come dance with me,” Miri said, pulling me into the drum circle as we laughed and swayed to the music. I lost myself in the mob, the pressures of being Ivy Washington melting away with each passing second. Law school? Meh. Carter leaving? Not a problem. Being engaged to the Anti-Christ? Could be worse. Everything felt so right, and so free, and so…perfect.
The social anxiety that normally consumed me by being around crowds of people seemed inconsequential. There were no strangers here. The electricity between us made us one. A girl in a long maxi skirt twirled around me and grabbed at my waist, dragging me with her. I grabbed Miri’s hand and off we went. Skipping and prancing and…oh, holy shit…
Everyone at the front of the line was jumping over the bonfire. I hadn’t had enough wine for that, so I tried to break away, but Miri wouldn’t let me.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she said, digging her fingernails into my hand.
We did it together, screaming the whole time. Flames licked at my cheeks, the heat nipping at my hair and the flowers on my head, but on the other side, I became someone who had jumped through literal fire with the woman of my dreams.
“We did it!” Miri threw her arms around my neck and jumped. “We did it! We jumped the fire.” When she pulled away, there was this moment between us where I held her gaze long enough to see hunger dance behind it.
I want you, too, I almost said.
Then the girl in the maxi skirt came back and said, “You have the prettiest hair. Can I braid it?” Short of any good reason to say no, I grinned and nodded.
After my tresses had been tamed into a long plait decorated with flowers and heather, I ran out of wine, so I told Miri I’d be right back and went to hunt down something to quench my thirst. I weaved through the crowd, looking for the person with the bottle or maybe a bar. Just when I thought I saw a person refilling a chalice a few feet away, I caught a figure watching me in the distance, that same look of indifference on her features.
Siobhan.
Remembering the ring in my back pocket, I took a few steps closer to her and reached inside to pull it out.
“Hey,” she said, giving me a wide grin. “You made it.”
“Thanks for inviting me.” I returned her smile. “We’re having a great time.”
“You’re welcome.” She inhaled on her cigarette, letting the smoke out in the other direction. Something about her seemed different, perhaps more entrancing than before. Was it the way she moved? Somehow more graceful and elegant, like she’d had centuries to practice? Or was it her skin that glowed as if lit from within?
Jesus, how much of that wine did I drink?
“I think you dropped this the other night at the pub.” I held the ring out in the palm of my hand. “It was folded up in between the pages of the flyer you gave me.”
“Oh, yeah.” Her features lit up, and she took it in between her fingers. “I was looking for this. But you know what?” She put it back in my palm, its heavy weight now nearly burning. “You keep it.”
“What? No.” I pushed it back to her. “I couldn’t.”
“I insist,” she said. “In fact, I’m going to take pity on you, Ivy Washington.” She paused long enough for me to wonder what she could possibly mean, and then she smiled. “I’m going to give you a gift.”
My hackles raised. A gift? What gift?
Siobhan leaned in closer, and the light from the fires flickered over her features, making her seem powerful and ethereal. She closed my fingers around the ring and grabbed my hand between hers, one palm on top of my mine and one below.
My heart pounded. I’d only met Siobhan a few days ago, and this seemed strange for the less than twenty minutes we’d spent talking to each other. But then again, it felt right. I was drawn to her in the same way I had been the other two times we’d interacted. Nothing about the way she held me in her gaze and rapture was abnormal at all. Her lips touched mine, and she whispered something against them that I couldn’t understand, her voice too low to hear. Then she kissed me—softly, gently, platonically, the way one might kiss a sister or a close friend.
She grinned when she pulled away, murmuring in a different language before letting go of my hand. I stumbled back, either unprepared to let go or wanting it so bad that it startled me once I had it. I looked down to catch myself, and when I glanced up again, Siobhan was gone.
“What the—” I scooted away and launched to my feet, blinking against the impossibility of what had happened.
Where’d she go?
“Hey,” Lex said, suddenly next to me. “I saw you fall over. You okay?” He shoved his cup in my hand. “Here, drink something.”
“Yeah.” I took a giant gulp of the delicious wine before handing the chalice back to him. “Did you—did you see the person I was talking to?”
“The brunette with the tattoos?” Lex nodded, bringing the drink to his lips and finishing off the last of it. “Yeah, of course.”
“That’s the person who knows about us, Lex,” I said. “That’s Siobhan.”
He searched the crowd for her, and when he came up short, he nodded toward the tree line like he needed to talk to me. Grabbing my hand, he led me into the woods for privacy.