Chapter Two
Midday in the sunroom found Schuyler stretched out on the circular sofa like a cat.
Sunlight beamed through the glass, feeding the plants and creating a comfortable, alluring warmth under which he languished.
The rays felt delicious against Schuyler’s shirtless torso, still exhausted from an intense round of cardio and yoga.
His free hand absentmindedly rubbed his chest, fingers curling the thick fur as he scrolled mindlessly through dating apps.
Seeing profiles but not truly paying attention to them.
Riding a high since the ritual, and despite not feeling a hundred percent back to his old self, he juggled the idea of getting back out there.
Unsure if he was ready, if he felt confident in himself enough just yet.
Zach’s easy dismissal of their relationship fucked with him more than even he acknowledged.
He carried himself as if the breakup meant nothing, that he was over it.
Internally, the whole ordeal upturned his equilibrium and erased his confidence, which he had not realized would be so hard to reclaim.
The ritual had cleansed and reinvigorated him, but the blow of having to accept that his husband hadn’t wanted him couldn’t be ignored.
“You know I could whip up somethin’ up for all that extra weight you’re stressing about; you can pee it all out overnight. Might ruin them sheets, though.”
These lulls in our conversation are get shorter and shorter.
Schuyler sighed and scooted his hand away from his belly.
“Go back to your mixing.” He heard the huff from Beau behind him, where he was working on mixing salves and ointments for their shop on the room’s work tables.
“I’m good, thanks. I’ll deal with it sans magic.
” He rolled onto his side, away from Beau’s eyes.
Beau scoffed softly, “You don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Flaunt every damn inch. You’re a handsome young man.”
“You’re contractually obligated to say that to me. And I’m hardly young.”
“Hogwash, I’d tell you if you were ugly. I told Aunt Eileen she looked like a haggard sow at Nan’s funeral. I told your mama the day she brought you home, you were ugly. Thank the Goddesses you grew up handsome. You’d think the other night confirmed all of this for you.”
“I still don’t know what all that was.”
“I’ve seen it before. You were an amber color, right? That’s ‘cause you needed healing. And they were called to heal, purely to satisfy. You didn’t even lift a finger, did you, lazy-ass homosexual?”
Sky conceded, he hadn’t.
“And you weren’t supposed to. Let that remind you when you start spiraling out in that head of yours as you doomscroll.”
“I’m not doomscrolling, I’m lookin’ at the apps. Seeing who’s around,” Schuyler revealed, and instantly regretted the admission.
“Men! My fav-o-rite subject.” Beau exclaimed, exaggerating his southern drawl. Without looking up from the potion he worked on, Beau extended his right hand, flicked his middle finger, and spoke the command, “Misete.”
Before Schuyler could counter, the image on his phone projected in the space above his head, refracted through the moisture in the air, hanging above them. “Dammit, Beau. Boundaries.”
“Are for weaker families than ours. You can always use your power and stop me, but you won’t…oh, he’s cute; the dark-eyed one in the corner. Hispanic?”
Schuyler, still resolved not to engage in magic, scrolled down, his every move mirrored on the spectral screen. “Um… no, possessed,” he confirmed, “Love passionate oral, mutual jerk-off sessions, and consuming the unworthy of their gift. No smokers.’ Shame, cute ones are always possessed.”
“Sex would be good, though,” Beau pointed out.
“Really?” Schuyler perked up, “So… worth a tap?”
“He’s going to make you duel afterwards though,” he added, “classic sex for power-dark witchcraft-switch-a-roo. You’re all spent, sloppy bottom ass up on the floor, and he’s juiced up with your seed–and wham-o! Challenges you to a duel off guard, and you spend the next year recharging.”
“Ugh, how do you know if sex is even duel-worthy? Next,” he announced, moving along, stopping every so often to let Beau voice his opinion on this one’s features or that one’s ethnicity. Beau instilled in him the joy of sexual diversity.
“How about that one?” He selected a ginger-haired cutie.
“He’s 22, that’s too young.” Schuyler swiped past.
“For what? Sex? No, sir. That’s ripe.”
“To have something in common with. I already had to learn what fucking Pokémon were for Zach. What’s next?
Frankly, I’m too tired to keep re-introducing all my favorite shit to new people.
Or having to explain where my references come from.
And vice versa, I don’t need someone throwing out slang and rephrasing words like gang signs and then having to stop and explain them to me like I’m a drugged-up geriatric waiting out my final days.
And I can’t be assed to spend another minute feigning interest in their inevitable twenty-something nonsense, their drama, their friends’ drama. I don’t know how that makes me sound-”
“Like a grumpy old cunt.”
“But I also don’t care. For sex, sure, I’ll rock his world. Leave him thinking and feeling me for days. But what are we going to talk about in all the space between the sex?”
“Tilda Swinton?”
Sky grumbled. “Why do I ask you? Fuck, why am I even looking?” Sex he wanted, a relationship maybe, but the headache in procuring either, not so much.
“You’ve only been gone a few years; didn’t you have a small circle of buddies before you left?”
Schuyler did indeed, though he’d avoided reaching out until he felt more ready to talk about everything in his life.
He laid-back and threw the phone onto the far end of the couch, staring up at the swinging plants above him, all being misted by sprinklers, the droplets of water lightly falling onto his skin.
He didn’t know what to tell anyone when they asked what was up.
Was he dating? Was he looking for a husband again?
Was he looking for fun? He didn’t mourn the former relationship, just the time and self he’d lost to it, so why refrain from going out?
In turn, however, what was there to go out to?
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” Schuyler confessed, saying the thought that plagued him endlessly. “I feel like I do, then I look around and I go…oh…guess not. I’m lost. In myself, in this world. I don’t even know.”
“Monkey,” Beau said lovingly, using Schuyler’s childhood nickname.
“You’re home now. You’re in the right place to figure ev-ery-thing out.
That’s what home is for.” Beau moved the concoction to the bubbling cauldron and stirred furiously.
“That’s why we always come back—to recenter. To find ourselves again.
“You aren’t you right now; you’re not the silly, goofball we’re used to. I’ve seen you in every era of your life, but right now, you’re a stone-cold curmudgeon, you’re bitter, and you’re angry, and baby, anger is sadness with nowhere to go. Ask yourself, what do you need to get back to you?”
“I don’t know.” Feeling defeated, Schuyler stood up and grabbed his phone.
“But I hear what you’re saying. I’m glad I have you, Marshall, and Estelle to come back to.
I’m gonna go.” He left before Beau could respond, knowing his uncle would want to dive in deeper, and Sky wasn’t up for the cross-examination.
He returned to his room at the top of the turret which overlooked the street, Schuyler stood fresh from the shower, looking out the windows, lost in the same cycle of thoughts which followed him all afternoon and were not washed away.
Bairwick stretched out before him, and beyond the tallest buildings on Main Street was the south side.
He was home, as Beau pointed out, and maybe Bairwick could help him find his equilibrium again.
In fairness, in the past few weeks, he’d not ventured anywhere but the house and the shop.
He’d not visited any of his old haunts. He exhaled as he scratched his ass and resigned himself to getting out of the house.
Using one of the seven pathways connecting the town, Schuyler passed under Main Street and onto the south side of Bairwick.
While the north side mainly consisted of residences and a few eateries, the south side was the town proper: resident businesses, town officials, bars, clubs, the library, and schools.
Beyond that lay the farmlands, where everything they ate came from.
He took the first right after exiting the pathway and, within a block, strode past his old high school, Bairwick High. A wash of mixed emotions fell over him as he did, and instead of heading to the library, he took an old hiking trail that ran behind the school and looped around the south side.
Schuyler took in the serene beauty of the forest nestled directly against the trail.
During the town’s inception, the residents relocated the trees they’d removed to build their infrastructure, transplanting them to other spots in the forest. And the forest repaid the action in kind, growing thicker and impassable to create a barrier around the ever-growing town.
Memories awoke as he walked, cinematically aided by the somber set of songs his playlist had queued up on its own.
Teen years are messy. He passed familiar spots: the track field of the school where Danny Limon tried to beat his ass, but Schuyler bested his in their duel; the log at the entrance to the trail where Trisha Dolez admitted her feelings for him—and her subsequent sobbing at his confirmed homosexuality.
She had made him feel awful, as if he’d somehow deceived her, despite never showing any interest.