Chapter 20
Bryn almost couldn’t believe this was her life. She got up every morning in a beautiful place. If she took a five-minute walk, she could see the ocean spool out into forever (unless there was fog). She could take deep lungfuls of fresh, clean air. It smelled like home.
Each morning she would take the short walk to the castle and return to the classroom in which she had spent so many good hours as a teenager.
That also smelled like home. Now that she knew her students better and was beginning to build the slightest teaching skills, she didn’t dread every new class period, but relished the challenge of it.
She actually enjoyed her work. Sure, it was still frustrating at times; she needed to keep her anti-cheating spells active, and the kids were improving steadily but not nearly fast enough to take the MSEs in three weeks. But things felt good.
In the afternoons, she would sometimes grade papers on her own, sometimes with just Amelia, or just Piper, and sometimes they would gather along with Andi and enjoy themselves. They had even taken to meeting up in the refectory, working until it was time for dinner.
When other professors saw this, they sometimes arrived to do the same.
Bryn hadn’t realized she would even enjoy such a thing—surely she had always preferred to be alone?
—but it was genuinely communal and lovely.
Parallel play for adults. Even Mr Wicks would sometimes join them, though she suspected he did so purely out of curiosity.
Bryn felt full in the best of ways. The work was intellectually challenging and also sometimes emotionally challenging.
But then there was Amelia, and their relationship filled her cup to the brim, overflowing.
If she needed to vent, she could. If Amelia needed to vent, she could too, and sometimes they did.
But it was strange how having that space somehow made her need it less.
Not never, but less, as if the comfort wasn’t in venting, but in knowing it was safe to do so.
And they just had so much fun. She felt like she had never laughed more in her life.
She placed a super-secret order to her favorite sex-toy company, one which offered “charm-ready products” in discrete packaging … though even so, she’d had it delivered to her mom’s house instead of the school. Why take the chance?
When her sister Luna had sent her a picture of the package and offered to bring it to the store, if she didn’t want to go by the house, Bryn said yes.
It gave them a chance to catch up, and it gave Luna a chance to ask incredibly personal questions about the nature of Bryn’s relationship with Amelia, which actually Bryn couldn’t help wanting to answer.
She wanted to share this thing that meant so much to her with her sister, whom she increasingly felt like she didn’t know nearly well enough.
There was only a five-year age gap, but five years had always seemed like a very long time.
Now that they were both technically adults, it seemed like much less.
She returned to the campus with her package in a bag, and even thinking about using it with Amelia, or perhaps on Amelia, or even deep, deep inside Amelia, made Bryn shiver.
Her body immediately flowed into a state of arousal that made her wonder if she should be carrying a change of clothes.
That always seemed so melodramatic, and yet in that moment, it was just hot.
Yes, I am so turned on by the woman I’m in love with that I am soaking through my underwear.
How something so impractical could be sexy, she didn’t know.
They had a date planned for the following evening, which was a Friday.
It was always so nice to plan a date for a weekend night.
She had skipped dinner to hang out with Luna, getting takeaway from the place down the street from the spell shop, and even that had felt good.
She’d texted Amelia that she wouldn’t be there, that she was hanging out with her sister, and Amelia had texted back heart emojis and said, Have fun.
Tell her hi for me. How lucky could Bryn be?
She was with a woman who delighted in the things that pleased her.
Still riding a high, both of anticipation for what she was planning to do with her new toy and for the pleasant feeling of having spent so much time with her younger sister, she got back to the cottage and settled in, sated, warm, and happy.
Amelia was prepping for an early meeting in the morning and wouldn’t be coming down, but that was okay.
Bryn had gotten comfortable enough that she was far less worried that she would wake up and all of this would be a dream.
Amelia Hexford was no longer her schoolgirl crush, but her girlfriend.
At least, she was pretty sure. They hadn’t talked about it.
They should have talked about it. They would talk about it.
She found herself playing with the idea of using the word partner instead, but it still felt too soon.
She was in this for the long haul, but also, whoa, that was a commitment word.
She wasn’t quite ready for a commitment word yet.
They’d talk about that too. Girlfriend felt juvenile, but then, they didn’t need to define their relationship right now. They didn’t need to define it ever.
As she was tidying her cottage for the evening, she logged on to her computer one more time, just for the normal things: shut down all the open programs, close all the tabs in her browser that she’d been using throughout the day.
This was a task that she had genuinely designed a spell for, but it was finicky.
Any spell that interacted with technology was a little finicky, and she rather liked the mechanical resolution of doing it the old-fashioned way, clearing the decks so she could start fresh tomorrow.
And that’s when it happened. She had a handful of new emails, most of which would be either spam (no spell to prevent spam yet) or things she’d subscribed to: offers, notifications of sales at her favorite online spell-supply shop.
Except one. One email immediately caught her eye.
It was from her editor. The subject line read: I know this is last minute, but …
Bryn sank into her chair. She hadn’t bothered to sit down when closing down her computer because it usually only took a second to shut down for the night, but now she read the email once, then twice, then she drank some water, refreshed the page, and read it a third time, just to make sure she wasn’t imagining the whole thing.
All the bright lights in her life that had seemed so vivid just minutes ago dimmed.
The publisher wanted a second book. This was the email she had been waiting for since before her first book had even launched, except it was the last email she wanted to receive right now.
Because they wanted the book immediately.
She stared at the dates, willing them to be different.
Mid-June. Who demanded a book to be written in a month?
Except, she had told the editor she was already working on it, which hadn’t been a total lie.
It had just been maybe more aspirational than realistic.
There was no way she could get a book together by mid-June, the week after MSEs. July, sure, she could do it by then. August would be even better. But … there was no earthly or indeed magical way she could get her book written while teaching every day and prepping students for their exams.
The email was very clear: offer contingent upon stated deadline. Another book had dropped out of the calendar, and her editor had thought of her, assuming she was already much further along than she was with the writing. The editor even signed off with a celebratory confetti emoji.
Bryn stared at it and wanted to cry.