Chapter Eleven
Lilith
I pull the door open and immediately stop in my tracks.
“Jesus Christ, Lilith! I thought something bad had happened to you. Why didn’t you pick up your phone?”
She pushes past me without waiting for an answer and heads straight for the kitchen. She puts the bottle of wine she’s carrying on the counter and starts rummaging through my drawers.
“Well?” she asks, grabbing my corkscrew.
“I’m sorry, May. I didn’t want to worry you. I was with Theron.”
She frowns. “Theron? Oh, wait, is he the guy you’re seeing? And you ditched me for him? That’s so high school,” she says with a laugh. “The sex must be really good. I haven’t heard from you in days!”
She pours us both a glass of wine and heads to the couch. I follow her because what else am I going to do?
“It’s not just about sex, May,” I start, sitting down next to her. “Theron, he… he’s…”
Christ. How am I supposed to find words for him? For what’s happening between us? In what universe does this sentence end in a way that doesn’t get me locked up in an asylum?
“He’s what?”
A kraken. “Um, it’s complicated.”
She frowns. “Complicated how? Is he hurting you? Keeping you from seeing your friends? If he’s isolating you from your life, then he’s trying to—”
“Stop, it’s nothing like that at all, May. He’s been nothing but good to me,” I interrupt.
“Did he force you to say that?”
“No.” I take a sip of wine, more to do something with my hands than because I want it. “He didn’t force me to say that. If anything, he’s been frustratingly careful about making sure I have a choice every step of the way.”
She studies me. I can see her cataloguing the things that are different about me, like my restlessness and the way I keep glancing at the door.
“Lilith. You’ve got me worried. Something’s wrong. I can tell, you know. There’s no use denying it. So, fess up.”
I look at my best friend. At the person who brought wine and showed up unannounced because she was worried about me.
I think about how long I’ve known her, all the things I’ve told her and all the things I haven’t, all the years of it’s fine, I’m just tired, I just haven’t met the right person instead of the truth.
I wring my hands in my lap. “I don’t know if I can. You’ll think I’m certified.”
“Try me,” she says.
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I start at the beginning with the nightly walk and the street I’d never seen.
I tell her about finding a bar with a wrought-iron sign that looked completely out of place.
I mention the blue woman at the bar, the horned man laughing, and the shadow creature.
Then I tell her about Theron stepping out of the dark like something I’d been drawing my whole life without knowing it.
To May’s credit, she doesn’t interrupt, though I can see the effort it costs her. She sits there, her wine glass held very still and her eyes growing wider by the second.
“It’s a magical bar full of fantasy creatures,” I finish. “Monsters. And Theron is one of them. He’s a kraken.”
Crickets.
“A kraken,” she repeats.
“Yeah.”
Her gaze flicks to my wine glass. “I’d say you’re drunk, but you’ve hardly touched yours.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Does it? Because it sounds like you wandered into a bar populated by mythological sea monsters and then slept with the biggest one.” She sets her glass down. “Lilith. I love you. I need you to hear me when I say that I am worried.”
“I’m not delusional, May.”
“I didn’t say you were delusional.” She reaches out and takes my hand, and I can tell the moment she sees the faint blue along my veins because her eyes grow wider and her grip tightens. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s part of what I’m trying to explain.
Theron marked me. When we bonded, something changed in my blood.
I have seventy-two hours before the veil, that’s the barrier between his world and mine, closes permanently.
If I go back and accept the bond properly, I can bridge both worlds. If I don’t, then…” I trail off.
“If you don’t, then what?”
I swallow. “I don’t know exactly. But I know I can’t stay here and be okay. I already feel things are shifting, as if the whole world is slightly out of focus.”
May stares at me for a long moment. Then she says, “Should I take you to the hospital?”
“The hospital?”
“Yes, something’s clearly wrong and infecting your common sense.”
I bite my bottom lip. What did I expect? That she’d believe me straight away?
“I don’t need medical attention.” I squeeze her hand before she can reach for her phone. “What I need is to get back to Theron before I lose him forever.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off instantly.
“May, I know how crazy this sounds. If you told me this story, I would be doing exactly what you’re doing right now.
I’d be Googling urgent care clinics. I get it.
But I’m not confused, I’m not sick, and I’m not being manipulated.
I’m finally in the right place for the first time in my life, and I’m running out of time to get back to it. ”
“You actually believe this,” she says.
“No, I actually know it’s true.”
She lets out a slow breath. “I can’t believe you. I can’t. It’s not possible for me to look at you and the thing happening to your hands and go, ‘yeah, sure, it’s because of her kraken boyfriend, totally fine.’ I’m not buying it. I still think something is medically wrong.”
“I know.”
“But I can also see that you really believe this is real. And you’re one of the least delusional people I know.
You never romanticize things and always see them for what they are.
” She sighs. “So either something has gone very wrong with your brain, or something very strange and impossible is actually happening to you.”
“It’s option two,” I say.
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Are you happy?”
The question catches me off guard. I think about waking up wrapped in tentacles with the light filtering blue-green through the window like we were underwater.
I think about feeling, for the first time in my adult life, like having found the part of my life that was missing.
And it’s all because of Theron. Because of my kraken.
“Yeah, I really am.”
May nods. I can see she’s not convinced, but at least she’s done doubting my sanity.
“Okay, then go.” She stands and takes both our wine glasses to the sink. “Go, before I change my mind and actually call that ambulance. But you are going to text me. Regularly. And if I find out you’ve been eaten by a sea monster—”
“He would never.”
“—I will be so fucking angry at you.”
I cross the room and hug her. She hugs me back, and I hold on for a second longer than necessary because I don’t know when I’ll be able to do this again. I don’t know exactly what the other side of this looks like yet. But I know I’m choosing it anyway.
“Take care of yourself,” she murmurs.
“You too.”
I walk her to the door and watch her head down the hall, and then I stand in the doorway of my apartment for a moment and look back at it. It feels like memories of a life already lost. It was a good life. It got me here, but I need to turn the page on the old story and head to a new chapter.
I turn off the light, pull the door shut behind me, and run.