3. Elara
Elara
I have been walking for hours and I am done.
My body hasn’t figured it out yet.
Neither have they.
I want to be very clear about the hours part, because at first I thought it had been hours and it had been forty minutes, which was devastating, but now it has actually, legitimately been hours.
Plural.
Through a forest.
At night.
In flip-flops.
I dressed for my living room. That’s the part nobody is acknowledging.
When I got up this morning, the plan was coffee, deadline, possibly a nap, and the fantasy men scattered around my apartment.
At no point did the itinerary include a portal, and it definitely did not include crossing an enchanted forest with those five fantasy men.
Especially not in foam sandals from the drugstore.
Especially not while I contemplate how I ended up here.
In the fantasy.
There is nothing fantastic about it.
Every step I take makes that sound. Thwack. Thwack. The forest is silent and ancient and full of stars, and I am the thwack.
Romantic.
My feet hurt. My knees hurt because my feet hurt and I’m compensating. My hair is doing many things I can feel but refuse to confirm with my hands. I haven’t eaten since the toast I didn’t finish this morning, back when my biggest problem was a cat.
I would like my couch. That’s all. I’m not asking for answers anymore. My standards have collapsed. I would just like my couch, and Gerald, and for the sky to go back where it belongs.
“Where are we?” I ask Leif, for what is not the first time.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? No isn’t even an option for that question.”
“I mean I can’t answer that yet.”
“So you can answer it?”
“…Yes.”
I stare at him. He keeps walking. Big, unbothered, wearing Brock’s jacket like it’s a fashion choice and not a hostage situation.
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
“How much farther?”
“A while.”
“Excellent.” Thwack. Thwack. “Love that for me.”
We walk, and my mind goes where it keeps going. Back to the one thing I’m refusing to admit. Because it’s absolutely insane, and even thinking it makes me feel like I need to check myself in somewhere.
Where? I don’t know.
Why? Because I have no fucking idea where I am!
But the thing keeps coming back, and there is no possible way I’m asking the question because if I say it out loud, they’ll all think I’m crazy.
I swat at a bug I have literally never seen before.
Because that isn’t crazy.
It is the middle of the night. There are big, huge stars in the sky, not to mention the four moons I refuse to deal with.
And the one thing I’m refusing to deal with even more is the fact that I can see.
Not look through the darkness and squint, hoping for the best. Not make my way because four glowing moons are casting light across the forest.
It is dark.
Dark, dark.
And I can see everything.
The trees, the roots waiting to kill me, the exact set of Gunnar’s jaw twenty feet ahead. I haven’t tripped once. In flip-flops. I trip on my own rug at home in full daylight.
“My feet hurt,” I tell Leif.
“Mhm.”
“I don’t think you appreciated the seriousness with which I meant that.”
“I do.”
“I don’t think you did, because we’re still walking.”
“We are.”
“I haven’t eaten.”
“We’ll fix that.”
“When?”
“When we stop.”
“When is that?”
“Soon.”
“You keep saying words that don’t actually mean anything. You know that, right?”
He doesn’t answer that one. He doesn’t answer most of them.
But here’s the thing I’m noticing, in between hating everything — he hasn’t lied to me once.
Every question gets a no, or a not yet, or a soon, and I want to strangle him with his borrowed jacket, but not one single answer has been a lie.
I’ve dated men who lied about their commute. This man won’t even lie about dinner.
My stomach growls.
He said “soon.”
I look sideways at him. It’s a long way up. He’s enormous, it’s a little ridiculous, and he’s got that face that gives away nothing. Somewhere inside that giant, unreadable man is the animal that sat on my chest this morning and judged my life choices.
“Muffin,” I say.
He closes his eyes. For exactly one second, this giant commander of whatever-they-are closes his eyes like a man asking the stars for strength.
I’m going to be having words with Erik about that. Three years of them.
“Leif.”
“No.”
“…Commander?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Muffin.”
Silence.
“I hate that this is happening,” he says, but I don’t think he’s talking to me.
“I know,” I say, because it’s satisfying to be the one who says it.
He looks down at me. “You are never calling me that in front of anyone.”
“Oh, obviously not,” I say. “That would be embarrassing for you.”
He nods, satisfied.
“I’m calling you Muffin forever.”
I grin because it’s the first thing in this whole stupid fantasy that’s mine.
The sound he makes is not a word. It’s not the growl from the clearing either — I would know, my whole body still remembers the growl. In detail. Too much detail. This is something in between, the sound of a man losing an argument with himself, and I decide I like it.
I want to hear it again.
Behind me, Erik has been quiet the entire time. He has no idea I’m plotting his slow painful death for all the things he kept from me.
Did I have a right to know? Who knows, but we are neighbors. And neighbors tell each other things. It’s just neighborly.
I can feel him back there. I’ve been able to feel him back there for hours, half a step behind my shoulder like the whole forest reports to him. I know exactly when he’s about to say something. I feel when he takes a breath.
“Are your feet all right?”
“I’m talking to Muffin.”
Silence. Long silence. Beside me, Leif’s mouth tilts up. I’m ignoring it.
I’m not proud of it. Okay — I’m a little proud of it.
Erik knows exactly what he did, and I’m not ready to have the conversation where I stop being mad, because right after that comes another conversation about that jaw.
It’s sharper here somehow. Some crossing-upgrade nonsense, probably.
Because science. Hot becomes hotter, fantasy becomes reality, and I do not have the shoes for any of it.
Thwack. Thwack.
Up ahead, Gunnar reaches up and shoves a branch out of his way like it weighs nothing.
How much does that man work out?
That’s the other thing.
Gunnar isn’t being Gunnar.
He hasn’t made a single joke in three hours.
I didn’t know that was physically possible.
The man flirted with me over the white stuff last night until I was the color of a tomato, lodged grievances about how I made the pull-out, and now he’s walking like the ground personally insulted him — hands flexing, jaw tight, staring straight ahead like looking anywhere else would kill him.
He hasn’t looked at me once.
Not once.
I am not okay with caring about that.
Brock drifts up beside him. He doesn’t do anything. That’s what’s strange about it — he just walks there, close, matching his stride, and says something too quiet for me to hear.
Gunnar exhales. All the air goes out of him at once, and the line of his shoulders comes down maybe an inch, and they keep walking like nothing happened.
I open my mouth to ask.
I close it.
Not my business. My feet hurt more than my curiosity, which is a sentence I’ve never been able to say before in my entire life.
But — huh. Those two are a thing in some way, I just don’t know what it is yet.
Brock knew exactly where to stand, and whatever he said to Gunnar did what it was meant to do.
I have more questions, I remember.
“Why are you smiling?” I ask Leif, because he is. It’s small and it’s real and it’s been there for a while, and it’s very strange on the face of a man being called Muffin against his will.
He blinks. “I wasn’t aware I was.”
“Liar.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You absolutely were. You’re doing it right now.”
He goes quiet, and I watch him actually check — I watch a man audit his own face and come back surprised by the findings.
“You’ve been talking for fifteen minutes,” he says.
I stop. My legs stop moving.
Leif slows and turns to face me. The smile is gone before I finish stopping.
“What’s…”
“Please tell me I did not say all of that out loud!” I whisper yell.
His face doesn’t move for a second and the anticipation might actually kill me.
“You mean about hearing that sound from me again? Or maybe you mean Erik not being neighborly? Oh, or maybe that Gunnar isn’t being Gunnar?”
My mouth falls all the way open and I want to die, right here.
“You can’t… I didn’t… There’s NO WAY!”
The grin on his face is wide and all teeth and I want to slap it off him.
Because there is no way I said any of that out loud to a man I barely know. Just because he’s… Muffin.
Oh son of a bitch.
“I’m breaking that little habit right now.”
The chuckle reaches me before his face settles back into an easy smile.
“Don’t.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why?”
“You feel safe enough to complain.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. That’s — I don’t —
“I don’t know what that means,” I say finally.
“I know,” he says, and keeps walking, and doesn’t explain, because of course he doesn’t, he’s a cat, withholding is his whole personality in both bodies.
We walk. The thwack keeps time. And somewhere in there, quieter than I mean it to be, the real question gets out before I can stop it.
“Am I ever going home?”
He doesn’t answer right away. That’s how I know the answer matters — the easy ones come fast.
“We’re going to get you somewhere safe.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He sighs like he does not want to say the next part.
“I know. It’s all I can give you right now.”
I don’t think I like that answer, but it’s the one I’m getting, apparently.
Then the trees open, and there’s light.
A cabin. A real one — big, low, tucked into the hillside like it grew there, windows glowing gold, smoke standing up out of the chimney soft and slow. Warmth is coming off it in a way I can feel from here, or maybe that’s just what wanting looks like from the outside.
We make our way up to the front door and I stop walking. My feet vote unanimously in favor.
Leif stops beside me. When I look up, he’s already looking down at me, and there’s nothing cat about his face right now at all.
“I told you you’d be safe,” he says. “I meant it.”
And I believe him, which is its own problem, and my eyes are doing something hot and stupid that I blame entirely on exhaustion, and I’m about to say something stupid —
The door opens.
Erik is standing in it. Sleeves pushed up, warm light behind him, and past his shoulder there’s a fire going and something on the stove that reaches me from here and makes my whole body ache.
Erik…
Who has been behind me.
Who was behind me fifteen minutes ago, and half a step behind my shoulder for hours before that, and I would swear to that in court. I have been ignoring him specifically the entire way, you can’t ignore someone that hard without knowing exactly where they are —
“Dinner’s ready,” he says.
I turn my head, just to check. He is most definitely not behind me.
“Okay,” I say. “What the fuck.”