Chapter 7 #2
“Hello!” As soon as she answers the door to her apartment, I hold up a basket filled with honey butter rolls, all still ooey and gooey and warm from the oven.
“Hey!” Sage is dressed in a soft-looking pink pajama set, with what probably is a milk stain on her chest. She leans in for a half hug around the basket. “What’s all that?”
“Carbs.”
“Mmm. My favorite.”
“There’s more where this came from. Give me a second.”
I rush toward the car and grab two more pans, one filled with eggplant parmigiana, the mozzarella a fancy buffalo sort I’d picked up from a cheese shop just outside of town, and the other, cinnamon bread pudding, another one of Nadia’s famous recipes.
Her secret to that one is using both vanilla and almond extract in equal parts, as well as adding nutmeg to the cinnamon topping.
The result is fairly intoxicating, perfect for a nursing mama needing calories.
Sage lets me in much more quickly this time, and I place all the dishes on the countertop next to the rolls.
She’s got one in each hand, moaning as she eats. “Good?” I ask.
“So good. Oh my God.”
I glance around, noting the stacks of dirty cups in the sink, the little piles of unwashed laundry all over, wondering if she would be mad if I offered to clean up later. “Is Oak asleep?”
“Yeah, thank God.” Sage’s mouth is so full, I can barely understand her. “He nursed for literally one hour straight. My nipples are so numb, I wouldn’t even notice if they fell off.”
I snort. “Noo! That sounds awful, Sage.”
“Meh. It’s better than when he tries to bite them off.” She shudders as she grabs another roll from the basket.
“Can I go see him?” I ask.
Sage nods and says, “Sure—” But then she grabs my arm. “Jesus Christ, Sky, is that a snake on your arm?”
“What? Oh.” I lift up my left forearm, where a black garden snake named Geri has wrapped herself around me.
Made things pretty difficult while I was trying to cook all morning, but she’s stubborn and wouldn’t let go even when I offered her an egg for a yummy snack.
“This is just—she wanted to come for the ride.”
Sage sighs and puts her hand on her head. “I don’t want snakes around my baby, Sky.”
I shake my head. “I mean, Geri…she won’t—”
Sage moves her fingers to my arm—the one without any snakes curled around it.
She makes her voice gentle and sweet-sounding, but I can feel the frustration beneath her tone.
“Sky. I know that what you want, more than anything, is for people to treat you normally. To take you seriously. But that means you need to stop—” She lifts her hand once more and points to Geri.
“You have to stop doing things like wandering around with animals wrapped around your body.” She furrows her brow and frowns. “Especially to see a baby?”
I shake my head. “I mean, I don’t get groceries with snakes wrapped around my arms.” Though, come to think of it, if I did, I bet people would actually treat me better than they currently do, considering how ubiquitous snake phobias are.
“And I know she wouldn’t hurt Oak. You know how it is with our gifts.
We know these things. We can feel them.”
“It’s not just that. I heard about the birds you sicced on Grayson Baker.
” Sage folds the cloth napkin over the rolls, covering them once more.
“This isn’t how you’re going to win over the town.
Besides the fact that no one is supposed to know about our gifts like that.
” She hisses this last part and it’s so weird how she morphs into a person I don’t recognize at all.
Sage has always been the soft one, so soft that she struggles with nonconfrontation and people-pleasing.
I kinda wish she were struggling with nonconfrontation and people-pleasing right now, to be honest. It’s hard to pinpoint my emotions, but it kinda feels like she just drop-kicked me in the stomach.
My mouth opens and closes. I have no idea what to say, but somehow, with effort, I form words. “You heard that Grayson Baker took a bet from his friends to fuck me to see if I had antlers coming from my vagina and you think…I shouldn’t have called the crows to scare him shitless?”
Sage’s eyes widen. “Wait, what? No! I didn’t hear that version. Jesus. He did that to you?”
I am somehow feeling even more small than usual.
I begin to pick up the pieces that I was left with from my last text messages with Sage and Teal.
How consistently Sage has blown me off, even though I have far more free time than Teal does for helping her.
“You haven’t wanted me to see the baby, have you?
That’s why you never accept my offers for me to watch him. ”
Sage sighs, but she doesn’t deny it. “Look, you spend all your days in the woods with animals that are covered in ticks, and I get that this is our gift, I understand more than anyone, Sky, but I’m also a mother now.
I don’t want the baby to get sick. And I didn’t want to tell you all that because I knew you’d give me that kicked-puppy-dog face you’re giving me right now, and I can’t.
I can’t take care of you and my child at the same time. ”
All her words turn into arrows and slice right through my chest into my heart. “Oh.”
In the distance, Oak begins to cry.
Sage sighs. “Hold on. Just a second.”
But I don’t wait for a second, or even half a second. I turn and walk out the door, making sure it’s locked behind me. And then I run to my car and slide in. I squeal my tires leaving her apartment complex’s parking lot, Geri’s smooth, cool scales against my arm the whole while.