Chapter 14
Wizard
I can’t play it cool. Esme knows that I’m not. She’s not either.
My heart is pounding so hard that I’m sure she feels it from ten feet away, where she spreads the quilt she took from the couch. It’s an old patchwork one, soft little yarn ends tied across all the many corners, an army of little red V’s.
She sprawls out, shoulders stiff and tight, my ancient plaid coat wrapped around her.
She dips her face and her nostrils flare as she inhales.
Does she smell me? Does that bring her some measure of comfort?
That sends a wave of heat spiraling through for the first time since that dream knocked me on my ass.
I walk to the edge of the blanket and dig the toe of my boot in the grass. “Is this okay?”
Her eyes flick to me and I almost get a twitch of her lips. “You mean standing there like a creep? No. That’s not okay. Take your boots off and stay a while.” She pats the blanket beside her.
I wrench my boots off, nearly stumbling and falling on my face, but I catch myself and sprawl out with no grace at all.
Yeah. I’m fucking nervous.
My heart is redlining, my palms are soaked, and my stomach is a bundle of knots and bush pie sandwiches. I keep my eyes resolutely open. When I close them, the images from the dream are still splashed all over the backs of my lids.
Esme doesn’t edge close. She stays on her side of the blanket and I stay on mine. Sequestered. There isn’t more than a few inches of distance between us, but it might as well be miles.
I cast my face up to those great big balls of fire and gas. It almost seems wrong, that something so beautiful has a scientific explanation.
My chest swells as we lapse into silence.
The fire is still burning strong. Esme set the blanket out just far enough that we wouldn’t be plagued by smoke.
Occasionally, a dark flying insect dive bombs above us.
The trees rustle quietly behind us. When we renovated the cabin as a club, we took down a bunch of stringy trees and brush to make something of a yard.
In the clearing, the stars are entirely unimpeded.
There’s what I want, and then there’s the reality of the space between us. The space of the blanket. The span of years. The emotional charge that both attracts and repels our hearts. Everything unsaid and all the words we’ve already spoken.
“Show me Venus,” I say, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.
Esme’s hand rises up and a cloud of her scent follows. Floral shampoo and citrus breezes, all tangled up with oil and gas and me from my jacket. “Right there.” She keeps going, tracing the Big Dipper, then phantom touches Gemini.
There are no shooting stars. No once in a lifetime rush of stardust and rock sizzling across the sky. Nothing blinks. No planes bisect the sky, cutting between dark and sparkling light. There’s nothing to wish on, but I do it anyway.
I wish that I could take one of those stars and hold it in my palms. Get down on my knees and present it to Esme, a mirror of my soul.
I wish for a thousand other things that I shouldn’t.
I could be wrong. It’s unfair, putting this on her.
Before… it felt like it would never happen.
Maybe it could have, if only I’d said something.
Now? It feels like maybe they could, if I had the courage to open my mouth.
I don’t know how. Neither of us do. This was entirely sprung on Esme.
A surprise for her at the worst time. I know she doesn’t trust herself.
She doesn’t even know herself. I should give her space to figure it out, but what if that’s not what she really needs?
Should I keep pressing forward, hoping for a fresh start that we can shape ourselves around? Can we rebuild?
I want to give her back herself when she doesn’t know how to find it. “You don’t have to be perfect, Esme. I’ll always love you exactly as you are.”
She slaps a hand over her mouth, holding in a sob, but it doesn’t disguise her sniffle.
She sucks in a messy breath against her palm.
I reach for her immediately. She could tell me to fuck off if she wanted to, and I know that she’d shove me away if she didn’t want my comfort, but she folds herself against me.
One arm lands on my chest and she rolls, collapsing as soon as her cheek finds my shoulder.
She cries quietly, not big, body wracking sobs. She contains herself, even as she hides against me. I want to be her refuge. I’m cracking her open and it hurts, but I can’t think of any other way to do this. I can’t make it hurt less, but I can be here.
I stroke my hand over her silky hair like she did to me on the loveseat by the fire. I wanted to leap out of my skin when she did it, I was so full of joy and confusion and hope that I didn’t want to dig into me, afraid that it would leave scars on top of scars.
I drop my face to the crown of her hair and pepper little kisses there. It’s too much. I should pull back. This moment wasn’t made for me to take any sort of advantage of her. She’s giving me her unguarded heart, and I need to do everything I can to protect it.
A mosquito buzzes over our heads. I fling my hand out to brush it away. “You have the best heart,” I murmur into her hair.
“We have acres of scorched earth between us.” She sniffles, but digs down deep to find her resolute determination. “We have ruins and wreckage. The smell of smoke taints everything, even the good memories.”
“Smoke doesn’t always have to ruin. Yes, it comes with fire, but it can purify too. It can cleanse and renew.”
The heat of her body flows sharply into mine. I clench my eyes shut and urge myself to slow down. We don’t have to run full tilt into anything. What I want is a life that we create. I want to find what’s right, not smash headlong into something that we try to reanimate.
I need to stop, but I can’t help myself. “I used to think to myself that even if we never were together and I never got to love you like I wanted to and dreamed of doing, at least I did get to love you. You were in my life, and that was so important. It’s never stopped being important.”
I twist onto my side to face her. I know how hard it must be for her to do the same, but she does. Her eyes fix on my face and never leave. Even tilted away from the sky, they’re still full of starlight.
Just when I think that we’re getting somewhere, a place where we can stand outside ourselves and inside ourselves too, a place without walls and without caution or bitterness, or sadness and anger, Esme’s eyes slide away from my face and drop down to the blanket. She picks at one of the yarn ties.
“We could try, Esme.” I don’t want to be pathetic enough to beg, but fuck me and my pride and everything else, I’m going to.
“I know you’re not perfect, but so what?
I’m far, far from perfect myself. I know it would be hard, but I’m not gonna give up at the slightest little bump.
I don’t need a trophy. I want you. Your mind, your soul, all your wounds and your darkness, all your light and the goodness and the love you still have to give.
I want to take it and return it ten times.
A thousand times. I want to give you the world.
We don’t need all the answers. I think… we just need to try. ”
Her hand flies out and lands on my shoulder.
She pulls us together fiercely and rests her forehead against mine.
“You deserve more than trying and failing,” she says vehemently.
Her fingers claw into my shoulder. “You deserve more than giving it your all and getting hurt. You deserve every single one of those stars up there, but they’re all out of reach to me. ”
“They’re out of reach to me too! That’s the point!” I back off an inch so I can look at her again. “Esme! Jesus, sometimes I want to—to—I don’t even know. I’m so frustrated. You’re not hearing me. You don’t want to hear me.”
She blinks and I immediately regret my words. They were too heated, too much. I don’t want to hurt her. None of this is her fault. I don’t ever want her to feel like it is, or like she’s obligated, or that she owes me something.
If anyone is fucking this up, it’s me.
“Maybe that’s the only answer I can give.” Her face grows guarded, any openness quickly fading away.
“I’m not trying to force you,” I groan. “I know you’ve been in survival mode, but you can pause. You can slow it down. You can… I don’t know.”
“That’s the thing.” She sounds sad now, sighing as all the fight bleeds out of her.
“You don’t know. You don’t know that I can do any of that.
Believing it isn’t enough. How do you have more capacity to take on hurt?
That’s a problem. I can’t keep doing that.
I’m either fully in or fully out, and you know I can’t be fully in.
It’s only been a few days since I first came here, running back to you to fix everything.
It doesn’t matter what I felt on the inside or what was going on before that. This is our reality.”
“I know. I’m not trying to ask you to decide in a moment. I don’t need you to have all the answers.”
“Don’t you deserve that though?”
My temples are beginning to pound again. “Esme…”
“Whatever that dream was, I’m here. I’m right here. We’re here under the stars and it’s beautiful. Can’t that be enough?” She’s already pulling away, even as she asks.
I feel sick. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Nothing came out right. She’s tired. Exhausted. I see that and I care. I don’t want to break her and hurt her. I can’t push her. She’s not ready.
I slither back a few inches, angling myself to the very edge of the blanket. We’re back to having a literal fucking lifetime in the chasm between us. “They’re beautiful,” I agree. I flip onto my back and try to stifle the sound of my heart cracking right down the middle.
She hears it anyway. Even if she doesn’t want to believe it, she knows me better than anyone. Her next breath trembles on the release and rasps on the inhale. My whole body feels like one massive bruise.
Her eyes flick over to me. I can feel them on my face even though I’m not looking at her.
I debate standing, tugging her up, and urging her to go inside.
She should get some sleep. Just because I’ll be awake, staring at the ceiling, afraid to close my eyes in case the dream comes back, doesn’t mean that I need to keep her awake.
I’ll be rehashing every single word and nuance and action from tonight.
Fighting it out, churning it over, battling with myself.
She shouldn’t have to do that. I don’t want her to.
She sighs and I can practically hear the storms in it, but instead of pulling away and retreating, she glides across the blanket, slings her arm over my chest, and cuddles up to me with her head nestled right in the crook of my neck and shoulder. It was made for her. Swear to god.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers. “So, so sorry.”
My hand catches hold of hers and presses it into my chest, as if I could translate everything in my heart to her with a single silent touch.
She tenses and I do too, both of us silent and taut.
All my hopes and agony seep to the surface.
The fire is dying and the stars are still so bright, and all of it is a hole punched into me.
It’s not that she doesn’t want you. It’s that she can’t.
I know there’s a vast difference and it’s only that knowing that keeps all my feelings from spilling out of me in a messy rush of anger and sorrow, grief and pain, confusion and pleading.
There are degrees of devastation, and I feel every single one of them as the purple black night presses me down into the earth.
“You’re so quiet.” Esme pulls her hand from beneath mine, but only so she can trace circles across my chest.
There’s nothing more I should say. I’ve overwhelmed us both.
My breath is so hitched inside my lungs that it rushes out in fits and starts. My chest rises and jerks beneath her fingertip. Is she spelling something? Painting pictures? Drawing a map so we can find out way to each other?
If her answer is no, I need to accept that, no matter how hard it is.
I knew that before we came up here. I need to let this be her choice.
The difference between now and every bit of the past is that I’ve said it all.
I’ve put it all out there. Her not choosing it, or not choosing this time, isn’t her rejecting me.
I hope that she knows that. I hope I haven’t fucked it all up by not being clear, or being too clear.
My head is a wrecked mess. I need to stop talking. Thinking. If I keep going, it might explode.
I tighten my arm around her, drawing her tighter against me.
Don’t leave. Stay. Stay with me, even just for a few more hours.
I know I’ll always want more when those hours are up. Isn’t that built into our nature as humans?
“Tell me some of the myths,” she whispers. She was always better at knowing them, but she loved to hear me talk.
I do. I tell her everything I can remember until my voice wears thin and the heat of Esme pressed against me causes my eyes to grow heavy.
Until darkness greater than the night wraps around me.
It feels like she’s the one keeping watch, protecting me, standing sentinel to wait for a morning that’s not far off.