Chapter 23
“I — wait, don’t what?”
The confession died in Aster’s throat. She felt like all the wind had been knocked from her chest. Like an ice bucket had been poured over her head.
She had been so ready to say everything, it was all bursting out of her like a waterfall, but now…
She glanced at Sylvia’s face. At the utter fear set into her brows.
All Aster felt now was worry. Worry because Sylvia was looking at her in utter desperation.
Her fingers were trembling, her eyes blinking like a woman standing in front of a car accident, watching the engine burst into flames.
Aster hadn’t even got the full word out, and Sylvia was already shutting down.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She doesn’t want me.
She’s terrified of me.
I miscalculated.
I –
No.
Stop running away from your own emotions. You can’t put the cat back inside the bag. It’ll claw its way back out eventually.
“Sylvia, please,” she said quietly, “You didn’t let me finish.” She frowned when Sylvia just grew more panicked. “Sylvia, I promise it’s not — it’s not bad. It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it now. We can talk about it later, once the funeral is over. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
That sounded good to Aster’s ears, she thought. Placating. Calming. Even if Sylvia didn’t want her, even if she’d read every signal wrong, it didn’t have to be some explosive affair like this. They didn’t have to ruin all their well-laid plans with the nuke that was Aster’s bad timing.
“That’s not it, Aster,” Sylvia responded. “We can’t talk about it at all.”
Aster blinked at her.
And because there really was no better way to encapsulate it — “What?”
“I — the thing you want to say. What you want to discuss. I know what it is. We can’t.
We can’t discuss it.” Sylvia was repeating the idea like a mantra, biting down on her lip and tapping her foot on the damp grass.
“We can’t — I shouldn’t have taken it this far.
I got too greedy. I should have known better.
Fuck. I always do this to myself. Over and over again. ”
Sylvia had started talking to herself as if Aster wasn’t there; as if Aster had faded to the background, and Sylvia had entered a different dimension entirely.
Aster knew Sylvia was evasive, she knew that she was defensive, that she had walls, but this was a step beyond.
Refusing to acknowledge something entirely?
It wasn’t just aggravating, it was maddening.
And Aster was starting to get, well, mad.
Sylvia was shaking her head at herself, refusing to look Aster in the eye as she stared back at the street. Black cars were still rumbling toward the gates. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she muttered. “And at a billionaire’s funeral of all places. Great. Phenomenal.”
Now Aster was more than mad. She was having that wasp sting of a feeling when someone’s character suddenly started separating from the ideal you had of them in your head, peeling away like chipped paint. “I’m sorry my feelings are such an inconvenience to you,” she muttered.
Sylvia startled like a deer at that, looking at her with wide eyes. As if she’d just remembered Aster was, in fact, still there. Still a living, breathing person.
“You’re never an inconvenience to me,” Sylvia replied in a small voice. “Nothing about you ever could be.”
And it sounded so sweet, so genuine, it gave Aster whiplash.
What the fuck was going on?
Sylvia continued, shaking her head, “But we can’t do this.
We can’t talk about it. I know that must be difficult to hear.
To grasp. It’s difficult as fuck for me, too.
But we — we can’t discuss it. We can either continue as we were before,” Sylvia said, and she looked like every word was adding another pound of stress to her shoulders.
“Or we have to stop. Right now. Before…”
“Sylvia,” Aster cut in, and her voice was loud, louder than she meant it; she only lowered it when they began to get looks again — women in black dresses, men in sharp, judgmental tuxedos.
“What in the world are you talking about? If you’re worried about this changing us irrevocably, then…
that’s okay. That’s understandable. But it won’t.
I know it won’t. Because I’ve had plenty of time to freak out about that possibility.
And I – I know in my heart that there’s no topic we could possibly discuss that would change things for us. Even my, especially my… feelings.”
She inhaled sharply, feeling her eyes start to redden. She felt like a teenager, like a humiliated adolescent, begging in front of her crush.
She continued, “Even if you don’t feel the same way. That’s fine. I’ll get over it. But you can’t just expect me to keep it all inside, trapped in my skull, spinning and spinning—”
“Aster,” she snapped. “Stop it.”
Sylvia’s eyes, wet with tears, blazed red. Redder than Aster had ever seen them.
And Aster’s hands suddenly went clammy.
“Shit,” Sylvia cursed. She looked like she’d put her car in reverse instead of drive, and petered right into someone’s brand new Cadillac. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I can’t control…”
Then she shook her head, cutting herself off.
“Clean your mess up, Sylvia,” Sylvia said to herself, a quiet admonishment as her eyes blazed red again. She began to massage her own arms. “Clean your mess up. Focus. Focus.”
Sylvia’s words sounded tinny and far-away to Aster’s ears. Her vision had begun to go dizzy. And where there was once one Sylvia, there were now two. Two frayed copies of a woman in distress, grabbing her softly by the shoulders. Aster’s world felt like it had gone off-axis.
And in that haze, she began to feel a strange sensation in the back of her skull — a warmth, like water bubbling in from a hot whirlpool. It felt like a drug had been injected into her veins, smooth and soft. Like something was dulling a pain that she could no longer feel.
She felt good. She smiled dopily. She couldn’t remember why she’d been so scared a moment before. Why would she be scared? Sylvia was here.
Nothing had ever been scary since Aster had met Sylvia.
And then, to make matters even better, Sylvia was cupping her cheek, and smiling at her with the saddest, sweetest smile in the world.
Aster felt so happy seeing it. She felt so adored, to be looked at like that.
“Aster?” she said softly. “Can you hear me?”
Aster blinked. “Yes?” She could hear nothing else but her, loud and clear.
“Good,” Sylvia said, swallowing thickly. “That’s good. Listen closely, okay?”
Aster nodded.
“You are not in love with me.”
Aster felt a sensation in her mind like a tiny paper cut. As if a small knife was scraping against the great fuzzy feeling that was lifting her up like a cloud. She opened her mouth to say something, to protest, although she was not sure about what, but Sylvia cut her off with a nod.
“I know it might feel like that, but you’re not. You’re confused,” Sylvia’s words were tight; they almost sounded pained — she sighed. “What you’re feeling is just friendship. We’re just friends. We’ve always been friends. For six hundred years. Long time, hm?”
Aster’s eyebrows furrowed, and Sylvia began to talk like she was reading a script she’d read a hundred times before. “Nothing has ever been romantic between us. Sometimes we’re attracted to each other, physically, but that’s it. Nothing else. We’re just friends. Do you understand?”
Aster felt a tide wash over her, then away.
She nodded slowly. “Okay.” She frowned. “I’m sorry. I must have been confused.”
Sylvia blinked back tears, and shook her head.
“Don’t apologize. Never apologize.” She stared at Aster for a long moment, taking a shuddering breath.
Something in her expression seemed to move, as if she was setting another version of herself aside.
Aster thought it looked strange, like watching an actor disrobe offstage.
Sylvia cleared her throat. “Do you remember why we’re here?”
Aster narrowed her eyes. Of course she did. Was Sylvia messing with her?
“Um, to secure ourselves a new billionaire blood bag?”
Whatever was haunting Sylvia seemed to blink away with her answer. She laughed, and clapped Aster on the back, turning toward the procession, where the funeral director had begun to tap a microphone and summon the crowds to the main courtyard.
“Indeed,” she said breathily. Aster saw her wipe something from under her eye. “Indeed.”
***
Throughout the rest of the funeral, Aster felt very strange. Not that she felt particularly normal most of the time, but something was decidedly off. The scare she’d had with Yasmine’s magic was probably to blame, but Sylvia was also acting cagey, so that didn’t really help.
It was hard to explain. She just kept getting these odd blips of deep… Sadness? Uncertainty?
It was like — the deacon would be speaking, babbling on about what a great man Tommy was, how he volunteered at the soup kitchen on Saturdays (a lie, she had watched Wallace scoff every time he saw that pop up in his calendar), how he cared about each and every one of his employees (he didn’t know Aster’s name well enough to scream the right words while she was killing him), and then out of nowhere she’d feel this pain in the back of her skull:
Not quite physical, not quite mental.
It feels like I left the stove on but every time I go to check, it’s off.
Aster nudged Sylvia with her elbow. “I think I’m getting a migraine.”
Sylvia didn’t look back at her when she said, strangely somber, “I’m sorry. It’ll pass.”
Aster narrowed her eyes at her.
“Thanks for your condolences, weirdo. Do you have any ibuprofen?”
Sylvia laughed coldly. “No. But I’m pretty sure every other person here has coke.”
“Cocaine at a funeral?”
“It’s like a cigarette during a lunch break for rich people.”
Aster hummed. Sylvia seemed to be in a dour mood, and Aster wanted so badly to take her out of it. So she tried, “I guess we’ll have to get used to it. Seeing as we’ll be rich people soon.”