Chapter 38 Him
HIM
ALICE
Arcadia.
I haven’t fallen into the other realm in months, and it’s disorienting.
I also haven’t landed anywhere but the Meadow.
But tonight is different. My shorts soak through from where I’ve landed, dropped in a luscious clearing glistening with early morning dew.
It’s smaller than the others I’ve been to in the Wandering Woods, only a few feet of grass surrounding a circular pond.
“Alice?”
I freeze.
I know that voice.
“Is that you?”
It’s foggy in my memory, but my heart recognizes the timbre.
A shaky breath rattles my lungs.
“Ryan?” His name could barely be described as a whisper on my tongue.
I slowly pan across the clearing, but everything is perfectly picturesque, not a person in sight. Nor an animal or insect. In fact, the world is eerily quiet.
“I’m over here, babe. Come to the water.”
I hold my breath in disbelief as I crawl to the edge of the pond. One hand stamps the dewy grass after the other, and my bare knees are imprinted with the blades.
The thing people don’t tell you about being apart from your person for longer than a few weeks is that you start to question everything you remember about them.
Was his voice always that deep? Was it smooth, or did it sometimes get rumbly? You’re thankful you have recordings saved on your phone to remind yourself of the exact intonation, because the sleepy goodnight from him you conjure in your head isn’t quite right.
Was his touch gentle, calloused? Was it ever bruising, but only in the moments you wanted it to be? Warm when you were cold and cold when you were warm, always managing to anticipate your needs before you could voice them?
Yes, you reassure yourself. Yes, he would tuck his cold hand between your thighs when you complained.
Yes, he let you rub your cold feet against his overheated ones.
Yes, you would run your hand through his chest hair when you snuggled, and you’d follow it down to the belly rolls he got when he curled up to sleep.
His skin was always so soft, despite never moisturizing.
But was it?
I don’t know if everyone is like this. Maybe my brain processes things differently. Some days, remembering is all I can do, and yet I can’t grasp it.
It’s smoke. Vapor. It’s running and not moving in a dream, a slow-motion clip set to loop. An eye twitch that only happens when you’re alone and stops when you go to the doctor.
I stop at the edge of the moonlit pool. The surface is smooth, glistening like glass, with not one ripple in sight to mar its beauty. My fingers dig into the dirt as I lean my trembling body forward and—
A scream flings from my throat. It rings out into the nothingness of night as I scramble backwards.
“Babe, it’s just me,” Ryan says with a laugh. “Is my bedhead that scary looking?”
A violent roar rings through the air. It sounds far away, but it echoes between the tree trunks surrounding me all the same. I glance at the sky; there’s no dragon flying overhead. Only stars, twinkling happily.
Surely, I must be hallucinating this time.
“Alice?” Ryan’s voice calls out again, full of concern.
“Ryan?” I croak. “Is that really you?”
“Of course it’s me,” he says.
“Tell me something only you would know,” I manage to whisper. My body trembles, both from the cold air and the shock. “Something from the last time you were home.”
“Well, we were crying. And you were butchering onions like they’d personally offended you. Really, what did they ever do to you?” Ryan asks, laughing.
Tears that have been welling in my eyes pour over, trailing down my cheeks. I stop shaking enough to move, and I pull myself back to the ledge of the pool, gazing into the crystal waters.
I haven’t seen his smile in years. Only snapshots of it in pictures, when I could stomach looking. Only imprints of it in my mind, when I dared to recall.
He looks as he did the day I dropped him off at the pier—peacock blue T-shirt. Rumpled brown hair, long enough to test regulations but short enough to get away with. Red-rimmed umber-brown eyes, sparkling with adoration.
“They had the audacity to be the only vegetable in the kitchen when I needed something to channel all my worry into.” I shake my head, blinking hard, but when my gaze refocuses on the water, he’s still there.
My hand reaches out but pauses halfway to the stagnant water.
I pull it to my pounding heart, whispering, “How is this possible?”
“Magic.”
That seems a good enough explanation as any. How can I argue when I’ve spent all summer discovering the curiosities of it?
Ryan tilts his head, a frown forming on his lips.
“I’m sorry I broke my promise, Alice. Can you forgive me?”
“No,” I croak out with a sniffle. “Yes.” I swipe at my cheeks, palms coming away wet. “I miss you so much it’s hard to say either with any certainty.”
He sighs. “Come here, babe.”
A sense of peace wraps around me, like a fresh blanket out of the dryer. I’m sobbing, but it’s muted in my ears.
“Let me make it up to you,” Ryan says, drawing me closer.
I reach out to the water, to his reflection. But just as my finger touches the glimmering surface, the smallest ripple distorting Ryan’s reflection, I’m yanked away.
Thick arms wrap around my waist, pulling me against a hard body.
All the calm is ripped away too, and the devastation of my loss hits me all over again. The stitches tear open, and the wound bleeds.
“No!” I scream in agony. I reach out, try to grab onto him, but the water ripples, and Ryan’s visage disappears. Sinks into the pool’s depths like a stone.
“What are you doing here?” Ori’s gruff voice hits my ear, along with his hot breath.
I push against his arms, but they’re locked around my torso.
My emotions are a violent pendulum between rage and melancholy. A curse is poised on the tip of my tongue, ready to lash Ori for his interruption, but then I swing the other way, wailing, “Where did he go?”
“Who?” Ori asks.
“My husband!” I growl, or cry, or scream. It’s a raspy mess in my throat.
“No, Alice, that’s not—” Ori grunts as I elbow his ribs with all my strength.
“Let me go to him. He was right there.” I fight against Ori’s hold, but the more I struggle, the tighter he grips me, drawing us both away from the pool.
“And now he’s gone. Again.” My nails scrape over his forearms; they’re not sharp enough to draw blood, but red lines rise in their wake. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
“Alice, listen to me, he’s not real.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snarl.
“Yes, I do. I almost drowned here too, when I was younger,” Ori grits out as I kick my legs into his shins. “Stop fighting me. The pond tricks people with what they want most. It’s a living beast.” I bite into his thick bicep as he walks us out of the clearing. “Ouch, fuck. Stop fighting me.”
“You sound fucking crazy. A pond can’t be alive,” I say. “A pond doesn’t play tricks. Humans do.”
Ori manages to maneuver me over his shoulder, despite my protests. One arm bands across the back of my calves while a calloused hand grips my thigh. The moonlit field with the pond disappears, and the woods shift, closing off the path.
“Let me go,” I scream.
“No.”
I hit his back with all my might, but it’s like tenderizing a tough cut of meat with a spoon. “Let. Me. Go. Or. So. Help. Me. I. Will—”
His large hand smacks my ass, and I yelp. “Stop fighting.”
“You did not just smack my ass, you insufferable douche-canoe!” I yell, slamming my fist into his ass. “We might have graduated to friends but that is not okay!”
“I did and I will do it again,” Ori growls as his fingers dig into my thigh. The vibrations of his reprimand raise gooseflesh on my skin. “You could have died, Alice! So shut the fuck up, stop fighting me, and calm yourself down.”
I scream. I growl. I let it all out—and he takes it.
My pain, my sorrow, my rage. I smack and curse the unfairness of it all into his back. I hiccup and hyperventilate and watch as the woods shift behind us, until my emotions finally simmer into something tolerable.
“How did you know where to find me, Ori?” I finally ask, voice low and raw, as I press a hand into the back of his T-shirt for balance. My head is swimming from being inverted for so long. “It’s three in the morning. You should be asleep back in Meadowbrook.”
“Why do you think?” His question is barbed, pointed, like his dragon’s tail.
“You’re always so fucking vague,” I grit out.
“Because I don’t sleep when you stay over, Alice,” Ori says, flinging me off his shoulder.
“Because I lied to you. The three of you fucking does bother me. But it has nothing to do with Harley or Jessa, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you being romantically involved with them.
” I stumble as the blood rushes from my head, gray splotches blooming in the corners of my vision.
Ori steadies me with two hands on my shoulders as he growls in my face.
“It’s because I can smell your arousal everywhere, and my beast wants a taste. ”
My face contorts. “What?”
“I’m jealous, Alice!” Ori snaps, hands leaving my shoulders and flying out at his side. “Is that what you want to hear? That I fell in love with you as a child, and when you left and never came back, it broke my heart? That ever since then, the ‘what if’ of you has plagued me?”
He steps back, hands raking through his hair as he paces.
“That I convinced myself I hated you, tried to give up on the idea of you, just so I could fucking survive after Maven and Enzo took everything else from me? That I watched my two best friends fall for each other, and that was fine, because I want them to be happy. But when they wanted me too, I had to say no, because I can’t love them right with half of my heart missing?
And now, I’ve watched you all fall for each other, and it’s making me insane, because I know you don’t want me? Does that make you feel better?”
“No, actually, it doesn’t,” I say, exasperated. “Why wouldn’t you tell me any of this sooner?”
“Because you rejected our bond. You rejected me. You married someone else,” he says, arms flinging out to his side again, leaving his black hair messy and wild. “And I don’t know how to deal with that.”
“I didn’t even know who you were, Ori. I didn’t fucking remember!” I shout. “You can’t blame me for falling in love.”
Ori’s hands scrape over his face, his expression morphing from tortured rage to tired melancholy. “I only wished it were me, Alice,” he says, quietly, then with more confidence, “I still wish it were me. You were supposed to be mine.”
“Well, I’m not.” I huff a laugh, though it’s devoid of humor.
“You can’t say that shit and expect a good response, Ori.
I’m not a mind reader. It doesn’t matter if we have some magical bond—which I will admit, I find myself drawn to you.
But you haven’t made your interest clear, nor have you tried to get to know me like the others have. ”
Ori flinches, as if I’ve slapped him across the face. Devastation wracks his strong features. “You’re drawn to me?”
“You’re objectively attractive and I have eyeballs, dude!
What the fuck!” I screech. “I also have ears. And so do Harley and Jessa. And it sounds like you haven’t told anyone any of this ever.
” I take a breath, hold it for four seconds, and let it out, slow.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. I don’t know if I can be anyone’s, anymore. At least not fully.”
The idea is too big; too much; too scary to commit to, even if I am actively falling in love again.
“So, we’re in the same fucking boat,” I say, my voice cracking. “I was supposed to be his.”
A damn breaks inside of me, and I’m unable to stop the flood. All of me spills from my mouth.
“And I’m sorry that these words are hurting you.
I can see it in your face—I’m sorry they’re not what you want to hear.
But we don’t always get what we want, especially if we don’t ask for it,” I continue, in a tortured rasp.
“I had everything. I did it all right. I found my person at seventeen. I chose to build a life with him. I moved across the fucking country. Multiple times. I managed, when he had to leave for six weeks here and eight weeks there, and I managed when he had to leave for five months. I fought off the bitterness. I battled the gloom. I tried to ‘find the joy’ in the experience of being married to someone whose job took them away from me.”
The words are sour on my tongue, and I spit them out.
“Because I loved him more than the inconvenience. But after that last time…” My throat catches on itself, but I don’t hide the struggle from Ori.
No, I stare right into his damned navy eyes.
I glare right into their haunted cast. “After that, he was supposed to be home for a few years. And we were supposed to have kids. We were going to have two. And he’d be there.
And we’d be happy. And we’d grow old together. We were supposed to grow old together.”
“Alice—”
“I’m not done talking,” I snap. “He died.” I swallow the word, along with my dread. “Forever became an awfully hard pill to swallow when it finally hit me that he wasn’t coming home. And now, I see his ghost everywhere. I see what I was supposed to have. What I did have. And it hurts.”
I close my eyes.
“I see him in the rain and in the flowers. I see him in the untouched cup of water I leave on the nightstand before bed. I see him in the blanket from college draped over the couch that I can’t get rid of.
I see him in the paints he bought me for when he was gone.
I see him in the checkout aisle when I pass by a pack of spearmint gum.
I see him in Jessa’s flirtation. In the way she pulls confidence out of me I didn’t know I had.
I see him in Harley’s kindness. In the way he makes me feel safe.
I even see him in you. And that’s the worst part.
” I suck in a stuttering breath and hold it like I hold Ori’s devastated gaze.
“I see him everywhere. In everyone. In everything. And it hurts. It’s pervasive. It’s unyielding. And it’s forever.”