17. Chapter Seventeen
Linorra thought about what the witch told her. If what she said was right, then she needed to find her lost love. He was her future husband and would someday give her a son, and then a daughter.
I woke up, which was a relief. Aaron lay next to me, which was also a relief. I had no idea if I had slept an hour or all night, but no light came in through the oculus. I missed my phone.
Aaron had migrated to the other side of the bed, taking the blanket with him. We were both still naked, and the air had cooled to an uncomfortable briskness. I shivered, wondering if I could find something dry to wear in Jorin’s closet. I had no intention of putting that weird dress on ever again.
I wondered how Ward was doing and how much apologizing I would have to do about all the noise we’d made the night before.
I sat up, glancing around, but I was nearly blind in the dark room. My regular clothes, I knew, were laid out to dry over the counter, but I couldn’t see them.
Aaron stirred next to me and his breathing changed from regular, shallow breaths to ones that were slow and deep, but I couldn’t tell if he was awake. Thank the multiverse he doesn’t snore, I thought, smiling to myself. I was so happy to wake up next to him. I just hoped he would feel the same way.
“He will,” Spirit said, startling me. Again, she appeared on the bed in a spotlight, looking as if Heshia and Ishkar shone down from above just for her. She was luminous and beautiful and staring at my naked body with obvious interest.
“Any news?” I asked, finding a bit of blanket. I pulled on it, but Aaron had it tucked underneath him like he was in a cocoon.
“Seleca went back to her mother’s palace and went to sleep,” she said. “She’s still sleeping, and, by the way, she has your phone.”
“What?” I asked. I don’t know why I was surprised.
“She stole your phone. I’d recognize that ugly orange thing anywhere,” she said.
“I’m a Giants fan, so sue me,” I said. “Why did she steal my phone? What could she possibly want with it? It doesn’t even work here.” And how the hell did she get my password?
“She looked through your pictures while she waited at your house,” she said, “and she figured out how to play Candy Crush. Now it’s dead, and she has no way of charging it until she goes back to Earth. She got really mad when it died and cracked the screen.”
I sighed. My poor phone. I shook my fist in the air and whispered, a little too loudly, “I will avenge you, Luigi!”
Aaron repositioned himself in bed.
“That girl needs black tourmaline in the worst way,” Spirit said.
“She needs a psychiatrist. And what is that?” I whispered.
“It’s a crystal,” she said, “a mood stabilizer, and it repels negative energy.”
I chuckled. “Spirit, I love you, but that stuff with the crystals is insane.”
“Lina, if you would open your mind a little bit, I think they would help both you and Aaron. Especially Aaron,” she said. “Besides, a few days ago, you would have said fragments were insane, and now look at you. You’re literally talking to a ghost.”
She had a point, and Spirit was always smarter than people gave her credit for. In fact, she was brilliant. She had a degree in bioengineering from UC Berkeley and had been accepted into their PhD program. Smart and hot and very dead.
“Okay, what should I do?” I asked.
“Dump your bag out,” she said.
“What?” I asked, confused.
“You heard me. Dump your bag out,” she repeated.
“Okay, but let me get dressed first, at least.” I reached down to my pack, which still sat on the floor on my side of the bed, and fumbled for the flashlight. It wasn’t in the little holder where it should be. “Great, now I’ll never find it,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” Aaron asked.
“Sorry, did I wake you?”
He took a breath in and out. “I’m a light sleeper,” he said.
That wasn’t a no.
“I can’t find my flashlight and I don’t have your super night vision. I want to get dressed,” I said.
“Don’t,” he said. “Just come back over here with me.” He leaned over and took my hand, gently tugging me toward him. I connected to him and immediately knew that he was up and ready to try some of those things we’d hastily skipped past the night before.
I seriously considered it. I mean, I was cold, and wouldn’t it be great if I could just lie back and spend the whole day fragging Aaron?
Yeah, I said it. It’s a word now.
Somehow, I resisted his magnetic pull and said, “Aaron, Spirit is here.”
“Oh,” he said, letting go of my hand. I heard the rustle of a blanket and guessed he was covering up a growing problem. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I could feel movement in the bed, and then that stupid scratchy dress hit me in the face.
“Um, no,” I said. “The only good thing about this dress is how it felt when you ripped it off me. I’m never wearing this thing again.” I threw it back at him and missed.
“Wow, you really can’t see anything, can you?” he said, chuckling.
Instead of responding, I just sighed melodramatically.
“You could go naked,” he continued. “I would be completely fine with that.”
“Ha-ha. Ho-ho,” I said flatly. “I want my clothes. Are you going to help me or not?”
“Lee, you should really stop wearing those. The pants are too tight. It’s indecent.”
“You just said I should go naked,” I countered. “And did you just call me Lee?”
Aaron grunted, as if that were an informative response. I stood up from the bed and crouched next to where I knew my bag sat. I found the zipper and opened it, deciding to blindly feel around for the flashlight. I heard Aaron get up from the bed and saunter over creaky floorboards to where I knew the counter was located.
“They’re still wet,” he said.
I sagged a little. “The naked thing sounds fine, I guess. I’m sure Ward will get used to it.” I continued searching for the flashlight. My hand found something hard and cylindrical. “Oh, is this it?” I felt for the button and clicked the flashlight on.
“Ha!” I said, standing up, then turning to see that Aaron was unexpectedly right behind me, causing me to jump in surprise. “Ak! Aaron, will you stop doing that? I’m going to kill you.”
He laughed quietly, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me into his warm body. It was like stepping into a sauna after a cold swim. I groaned a little and melted into him.
“Ask Spirit to give us some time,” he said. “I want to lie in bed with you a little longer. Please, Lee.” He emphasized what was apparently my new nickname, then he bent down, kissed my neck, and slid his warm hand from the base of my spine up to the back of my neck like he had the first time we’d kissed. The man remembered everything.
I relented. Something about how hot his mouth was made me want to give him whatever he wanted. “Okay. Spirit, did you hear that?”
“Yes,” she whispered into Aaron’s ear, surprising the crap out of him through our Connectionlink. He whipped his head around, accidentally pushing me backward. I tripped over my bag and fell onto the bed, laughing.
“Serves you right, you big bully,” I said. “Never mess with the ghost whisperer.”
His link with me broke when I fell, so he couldn’t hear Spirit laughing her head off behind him. She had the cutest little giggly laugh.
“Spirit, will you please give us some time?” I asked. “At least until sunrise. Check the farm for intruders, go check on Ward, then go check on our enemies and report back in a couple hours. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding mildly offended. “Although it won’t take me more than a second. When you’re done fragging this one, dump your bag out and look through it.” Then she was gone. Had she picked that word out of my head? That was unsettling. Maybe she came up with it on her own. And why the swift change in mood? I decided to set that aside to focus on the naked man stalking toward me.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he said as he crawled on top of me and pinned me down, beginning an encore of our previous performance, only more elaborate and diverse. It was a rather all-consuming activity, and I forgot about Spirit’s directive to go pack spelunking.
We emerged from our shared cocoon a few hours later when sunlight finally lit the room from above. I was nervous to leave the attic and talk to Ward after the obvious kind of night we’d had, but it had to be done.
“What are you worried about?” Aaron asked, sitting up. He watched as I slipped out of bed to pad over to my still-damp clothing.
Somehow, the tables had turned, and I was now the one embarrassed by my overt sexual activity. It was possible that, despite my posturing about not letting society tell me when or with whom to have sex, I was slightly self-conscious about how quickly I had jumped into bed with him.
With no condom. Jesus.
I face-palmed before I could stop myself. I worried the whole thing would blow up in my face and I’d be on my own, trying to get home. Or worse, alone in fighting a crazy, house-burning cult.
“I don’t want Ward to feel like he’s alone while we’re up here having the time of our lives,” I said, picking up my underwear. It was mostly dry. I decided that I could live with it. I felt strangely bashful as Aaron watched me get dressed.
My response to his question had been a bit misleading. It was true that I worried about Ward’s mental health, but I also worried about getting attached to Aaron and then being abandoned. What we’d experienced together the night before had been something extraordinary, but the memory of my déjà vu moment was already fading like a dream. I didn’t even know if Aaron had felt the same thing I had.
Don’t get me wrong; in theory, I’m fine with being alone. I made my peace with that probability a long time ago, or at least I vowed to make my peace with it, but even someone as independent as me is still vulnerable to the sting of rejection. I knew I could trust Aaron to be upfront and honest. I just didn’t know if I could trust myself not to care if he pulled a Drew and decided that I was a stepping stone to better things.
He got out of bed and walked toward me as I slipped my jog bra over my head and pulled it down. His hands brushed down my shoulders and he hugged me from behind, pulling me into a superficial Connectionlink. Apparently, he could do that now. He was still naked, and his heated skin felt good against my back. I groaned a little, letting my head fall forward. He kissed the back of my head.
“What are you actually worried about?” he asked. I narrowed my eyes and looked over my shoulder at him. He towered over me. I’m not short for an Earth woman. I’m five-eight but, next to him, I could represent the Lollipop Guild.
“Why are you so smart?” I asked. “Why can’t you be completely lacking in empathic talent like every other person I’ve ever . . .” I was about to say “slept with” but caught myself. The last thing I needed right now was to accidentally facilitate the old How many people have you slept with? discussion. My number was not small.
“Slept with?” he finished for me anyway.
Dammit.
“And how many of those would there be?” he asked.
Dammit!“I really have to go use the facilities,” I said. “Can we talk about this later?”
“Fine. Go water a tree,” he said, chuckling. “You’re off the hook.” He let go, turning to find his own clothes.
I shivered from the loss of his warmth but breathed a sigh of relief and pulled my shirt over my head. I just hung my pants over my shoulder. No time for that nonsense.
I managed to get the trapdoor unlocked, but before I opened it, I paused to regard Aaron.
“Aaron,” I said.
“Mm?” He turned back to face me. He’d found a black tunic and donned it. He looked uneasy. I wondered if he thought I was the one abandoning him.
“What we did last night . . . that was a first for me. I’ve never felt anything like that before. I want to do that with you a million more times.”
Aaron stilled, his eyes shining. “A million would take a very long time,” he said.
I nodded, a smile spreading over my face. “Yes, it would.”
Aaron’s eyes crinkled at the corners and his mouth twitched. He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
Yes, I thought, quashing the tremendous joy that threatened to burst out of me like a confetti popper. It does. Shit. This truly is something real. I turned back to the trapdoor, carefully lowered the ladder, and gasped as it slid right out of my hand to bang down on the floor with a crack. Oops.
“Good morning, Ward,” I called. No response. “Ward?” There wasn’t enough light for me to see down into the closet.
I tested the stability of the ladder with my bare foot and crept down. I got down to the bottom of the ladder, stepped into the dark closet, and squinted around. I didn’t see or hear anything. Aaron came down the ladder after me. He could see just fine. Jerk.
“He’s not down here,” he said.
That was concerning. What if nighttime visitors had sneaked in and found him? “Maybe we drove him away with our racket.”
“Likely,” he said, a smug smile on his face. He still didn’t know that Ward was gay, and he probably felt a sense of triumph. How would he feel when he found out that the competition was all in his mind? Possibly like he had overvalued my stock.
He cracked the closet door open, stopping to listen as always while I squirmed impatiently behind him. Finally, he opened the door all the way, poking his head out. He had clearly done this many times as he knew exactly how to silently and quickly open and close the hidden closet door within the wardrobe.
We stepped through the outer closet door and into Jorin’s bedroom. It was a small space with an extra-long single bed, a desk, and the closet we’d sneaked out of. A large window with white curtains let in dim light. The room was empty of both people and character. I had a feeling that making the bedroom as boring as possible was deliberate.
Aaron stopped to listen for another minute at the bedroom door, then he led me to the tiny bathroom. A chorus of chirping crickets echoed up through the drain I was supposed to squat over, and I imagined one of them jumping up and hitting me right in the crotch. I cringed, but I did what I had to do. Aaron stood guard outside of the door, then told me to wait there while he searched the rest of the house. The feminist in me balked at that directive, but the pragmatist was perfectly happy to wait.
I called for Spirit to search the house too. “Ward’s on the downstairs couch,” she said.
“Oh, I guess we really did drive him away with our racket,” I said. Spirit didn’t respond. Jealous?
I’m not jealous, she thought to me.
I puffed out a breath. Spirit, can you hear all my thoughts? Even the ones I don’t direct at you?
Yes, she thought to me.
I gawked. I hadn’t expected her to just admit it like that. Oh, that’s just great. I don’t get to have private thoughts ever again, I guess. Then I thought about that for a second. Wait, can you hear everyone’s thoughts or just mine?
She gave me a sly smile.
Everyone?I guessed, my eyes widening.
She nodded. FYI, Aaron has a very dirty mind. So does Ward. He got so turned on by the sound of Aaron moaning that he sneakeddown to the bathroom and masturbated for the first time in ten years, right into that drain.
I looked down at my bare feet and cringed again. Eeew!Why did you tell me that? I hadn’t thought to put my shoes on before I came down the ladder. This world had an extremely irritating learning curve.
Spirit let out one of her delightful little giggles.
Oh, shut up, I thought to her, but couldn’t help the smile that spread over my face at the sound of her laugh. It was infectious.
The good news is that he rinsed the drain area afterward, she thought to me. The bad news is that he feels guilty about wanting to sex up your boyfriend, and the depression is hitting him pretty hard. He’s spending a lot of time thinking about how great it was to be dead.
I was afraid of that. I would need to brainstorm solutions to the Ward problem. At the very least, I needed to counsel him on why gay guilt was unnecessary and pointless. Maybe I could get him back to Earth and set him up with someone. What he really needed, though, was a professional therapist. I probably wouldn’t cut it. Actually, we probably both needed a therapist.
Wait, I thought to her again, you can send thoughts to me from your mind. Could you send other people’s thoughts to me so I could hear what they’re thinking, directly from them?
Spirit thought about it. I’m not sure. Aaron’s downstairs berating Ward as we speak. Let’s go practice, shall we? She flashed me those bright white teeth.
I nodded. Can you check the grounds for intruders again first?
She blinked out and then back in again. “Nobody’s around,” she said aloud.
“Okay, let’s go.”
I came down the stairs to find Aaron speaking quietly with Ward, who lay on the green couch I’d seen on my way in the night before. Ward must have thought the couch seemed as comfortable as I had imagined it to be. A blanket covered him, and he definitely appeared to have slept there.
“You look cozy,” I said.
You look like you’ve been having sex all night, I heard Ward’s voice say in my head. I jumped in surprise. The words had been unexpectedly harsh and brimming with jealousy. It was so intense that I reflexively took a step back, unsure how to proceed. He wasn’t angry, exactly, but he was definitely upset, and this was more than jealousy over a sexual encounter. This felt more like unrequited love.
Oh no.
I guess it works, Spirit thought to me, smiling.
I didn’t share her amusement. Ward had spent quite a bit of time with Aaron as Rogue. He had learned from living with me that being gay wasn’t wrong, and then he went to live with Aaron. Beautiful, traditionally masculine Aaron, with his caramel skin and his bright blue eyes and those strong hands that could light the world on fire. I lifted my hand to my mouth to cover my shock. Aaron still spoke to Ward, but Ward wasn’t listening. He stared at me with those amber eyes, always so impossibly aware.
Does he know I can hear him? I asked, my heart twisting in my chest.
She narrowed her eyes at Ward as if she wasn’t sure, then shook her head. I don’t think so, but he suspects something is amiss.
I felt my eyebrows climbing up to my hairline. This might come in handy at some point, but I’m not sure I should be doing it right now.
Ward’s gaze shifted to Aaron as he thought, I wish I’d been having sex with him all night instead of . . . then I saw his memory of what he had done instead, and my hands came up to my face in protest.
Stop, Spirit! I don’t want to know any more. Jesus. This is intrusive. I need to not do this to my friend.
The vision disappeared and Spirit burst out into another round of giggles. I gave her a flat stare. As it turned out, there had been a competition going on after all, but it had been over Aaron, not me. I had known Ward was gay, but the revelation that he was in love with Aaron was startling. I wasn’t sure that covering my face with my hand was enough to cover my shock, so I turned away from them.
“I need to, um, go organize my hiking pack,” I said. “I’ll let you men hash this out.”
I headed back for the stairs, glancing around the great room as I did. The walls were all lined with large, curtainless windows. The morning light streamed in to reveal the same level of craftsmanship I had seen in the attic. There was a long, rather Brobdingnagian table where we’d eaten the night before. It had been like sitting up at a high bar rather than a dinner table.
Though the room was much more understated than the attic had been, it seemed like someone had lovingly applied planks to the floor and walls to create a seamless expanse of rich hardwood. A woodburning stove rose up to the ceiling in the corner with large, cushioned chairs arranged around it. The room was simple yet rich with warmth and practicality. It was as if the love of many generations was infused directly into the fabric of the house. I loved it, but it made me think of my own home, now reduced to ashes.
Mom. Dad. Where are you? Please be safe.
I looked over my shoulder as I trotted up the stairs and said, “Ward, will you spend some time with me today? I need your help with something.”
Both men turned to me. Ward said, “Of course.” Aaron narrowed his eyes at me and looked back at Ward, pensive.
Wow, I can’t even talk to Ward without him getting jealous. Ward is jealous of me. Aaron is jealous of Ward. This is getting out of hand. Spirit, do you have any ideas?
Yeah, dump out your bag, she thought to me.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
Of course, you did, she thought back. Multiple orgasms will do that.
It was only two, I thought to her, and then I remembered that two had been the same number she had given me. The memory flashed through my mind before I could stop it, and I thought, I can’t believe I’ll never get to do that again. I knew she heard my thoughts, but she didn’t comment. I pushed the thought away. Okay, I’ll go get my bag.