Chapter Two #2
He recalled how easy those years were in retrospect, how at the time everything felt as if it were the end of the world, and now those same scenarios involved people who weren’t even around, including Devion.
Schuyler’s chest tightened. He hadn’t thought about how reminiscing would open the floodgates to recollections of his high school boyfriend: Devion Kincade, the dreamiest boy in their eleventh-grade English class.
Black hair and piercing blue eyes, a jawline for days, a strong nose, taught body, and the darkest eyebrows and fullest lips Schuyler had ever seen.
Traits he would repeatedly look for in other men over the years.
They hadn’t gotten along at first; they were paired up to do a project on Orwell’s 1984, presenting diary entries as if they were characters in the story.
Schuyler wanted to make their characters lovers for a more dramatic effect.
Devion wanted them to be plotting a rebellion only.
Neither wanted to budge, and there was no compromise.
Schuyler traversed the curvy trail, approaching the gnarled and crooked tree that grew in the center of it. The same spot where they had their final argument about the project. The spot where Devion kissed him.
Talk about being stunned. I’d called him a controlling asshole and for a split second thought he was going to hit me. But instead, he just stood in front of me, glaring. Then his hand was around my waist, and his lips on mine. My first kiss.
The first of so, so many.
Ciati la boca! It was the first kiss with my first love.
After the kiss, everything changed; they became inseparable. Schuyler and Devion moved slowly, a rarity in the sexually charged ’90s. Kisses on walks, stolen glances, holding hands, everything they did, they did together.
Then the night arrived, one weekend when Beau and Marshall were out of town with the coven.
There he was, in my bedroom, sitting on my bed, shirtless and casual.
Me nervous. Candyman playing on the tiny TV I had in my bedroom.
He read a spell book he’d found while I watched the movie, but remained focused on him.
We were awkward and silent. Both of us knew the moment was coming.
He was smooth. Inching closer, acting as if the movie was scary.
His hand on my leg, giving me a squeeze every so often.
This was the first time he called me “babe.” He undressed me, sliding off my shirt.
Our pants came off. There in the hot July evening, in my room, in our underwear.
Every kiss felt different, a preamble for the excitement to come.
We lay on the bed. Hands exploring, flushed with desire.
Lips never separating. I felt safe and sexy, and we spent all night within each other.
When the opening chords of Jewel’s You Were Meant for Me started, a song Sky associated with Devion, he snapped out of the daze as he smiled, until he realized he’d wandered the trail and had reached the wrought iron gates of the Witches’ Garden Cemetery.
A large swath of rolling land dedicated to the final resting place of aged, but mainly fallen, witches.
He hadn’t visited for a while, and the guilt of that began to pull at him.
Still, he knew the way to Devion’s gravesite by heart: the third hilltop under the willow tree.
School had ended, and they were free, with their lives ahead of them.
A future proposed. Plans made. Until one night, Beau burst into his room without knocking wearing an expression Sky hadn’t seen since that night in the hospital with his mother.
The news of Devion dying in a car accident devastated him.
All their magic. All the power at their fingertips to adjust and manipulate the elements, and still, an idiot in a car took his first love away.
Time builds a bridge over the hole grief leaves within us, and Schuyler shakily moved on. Devion’s kiss was the first time life changed who he thought he was; his death marked the second.
“Hey, babe.” Sky sat at the foot of Dev’s grave and apologized for being away so long, before catching him up on the state of all things.
He lamented the future he’d once imagined—a life with Dev.
Maybe it wouldn’t have lasted as long as Beau and Marshall’s.
Maybe it would have lasted longer. He was angry that the chance to find out had been taken from him.
It took a long time to recover from such an abrupt loss, and over the years, he’d found himself in the arms of many lovers, always in search of the love he’d so badly wanted to feel again.
Time drifted on without him realizing, and when Schuyler finally stood to say his goodbyes, the sun was already setting.
With tears in his eyes, he kissed his fingers and placed them on the etched letters of Devion’s name on the smooth granite gravestone, declaring his love.
A love that had never faded and made walking away hard.
Leaving, he heard the familiar cracks and sparks of a duel occurring somewhere in the cemetery, a popular place for witches to duke it out.
Rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness, he started back on the path, pulling out his phone, he started to message his old circle of sexual buddies.
Fucking would be the best way to combat the sadness he was feeling.
Schuyler sat on Estelle’s porch in one of the rocking chairs, listening to the insects on the otherwise silent night.
Silent, except for the slurping coming from the man between his legs, whose hair Sky ran his fingers through.
While the not-unappealing gentleman from the faceless profile did good work, Schuyler’s thoughts were elsewhere.
Everyone had moved on. His entire sexual social circle had paired off.
Though they were all happy he was home, wanted to hang out, and even introduce their partners—probably leading to a threesome—none of them were available for what he truly needed that night.
And though he was happy for them, he’d hoped at least one of them would have responded with how much they missed him and could they come ride him, right away.
Was that too much to ask?
Except no one did, and he took that personally.
Another blow to his ego that Jon—or Sebastian, or whatever his name was, attempted to fix orally.
With the vivid memory of Devion still fresh in his mind, he focused on his love’s face.
Nameless moaned in excitement as fresh life surged into Schuyler’s erection, giving the suitor something to gag over; it was recounting he and Dev’s sexual exploits that pushed him to the finish line.
Thrusting his hips into Nameless’ mouth as if it were Dev’s round, hairy ass.
The suitor wiped his mouth and thanked him before casting a relocation spell and vanishing into the dark; Schuyler remained seated. He’d given a soft goodbye and then sat back and rocked, annoyed at everyone for partnering up and now forcing him to do something he didn’t really want to do—date.