Chapter 23
Bryn didn’t remember ever feeling lonely before, or at least never processing it as loneliness.
Sure, when she was a kid, when she was the only witch she knew, when she was still trying to be somehow what her mother wanted, even though she suspected she couldn’t be …
Maybe that had been loneliness. But as an adult, she thought she was just a loner, not lonely.
There was a difference. She didn’t want to get tangled up in romance.
Once left to her own choices, she’d landed in a city that had a very sparse population of witches, which now, looking back, she wondered about.
It hadn’t been intentional; she hadn’t looked at a witchy heatmap and picked the coolest possible place to live.
She’d wanted somewhere more urban than Grimoire (but less urban than a big city); less coastal than Grimoire (but not without a strong sense of the natural world around her).
Perhaps she hadn’t realized what it would be like to be so far away from a sense of witchy community, or maybe she’d forgotten what it felt like to be so firmly rooted in a place where no one knew her context.
The adjustment had not gone well, though she couldn’t rule out the notion that mostly it was down to how bad Bryn was at peopling in general.
After all, the few other witches she knew in Denver had great lives.
They were friends with all kinds of people.
They were happy. Those who wanted partners had them.
Some of them had families, children, extended networks of connection.
While Bryn had none of that, she told herself this was not a problem for now.
Now was suddenly very straightforward, in contrast to the last few months.
Problem: the book.
Solution: write the book. That was all she needed to do.
It took two days to sort out all of her notes: some of them had been written a year ago, but most of them had been written over six months ago, before she had become so inured to the idea that there would be no second book that it was hard to focus on writing it.
She didn’t even have a skeletal outline to send her editor, who seemed to email her every few hours, asking in a slightly different way if the structure was ready yet.
The editor was clearly not pleased that Bryn had so little to share.
But she’d pull it off. After all, this was no more than another school report, and she had been good at those.
She was excited about the work, at least when she was working on it.
But after the third day of finding a new café to work at, the old ones all having been tainted by her failure to achieve anything in them before, she went home early and sat down on her tiny couch.
It wasn’t working. She needed to make it work.
She didn’t have a choice. She had thrown everything away to write this book, everything she cared about.
The kids, the school, Amelia. The looming MSEs that she wanted to ask for updates about, roughly as often as her editor asked for updates about the book.
She had failed the kids. She knew that now.
It was so much clearer from far away. Failed them not by being a lousy, untrained teacher, but by abandoning them.
Violet’s intense, factual I hate you, you know seemed to echo in the chambers of her heart.
The worst part—one of the worst parts—was that she had no one she could turn to now.
She’d given that up too, without even fully acknowledging she’d had it.
Only, looking back, it was clear that for a brief moment, she’d had a support network.
Now even messaging Piper, who readily replied the second they had a moment, felt cheap.
They didn’t have a ton of free moments, because they were picking up the slack she’d left in her wake.
Thinking about Amelia hurt most of all. If she could have stopped herself from thinking about her, she would have.
It was the first time she’d ever understood the temptation of having memories removed altogether.
Then she wouldn’t have to think about anything.
Any woman with a haircut even close to Amelia’s made her do a double take, fingers tingling with the desire to stroke Amelia’s neck, through the short hair there.
Any glimpse of a flowy dress, a pale ankle.
Any scent of jasmine that she happened across made her think of Amelia and long for her with a desire so intense that it took her breath away.
Even though she’d never been in love before, she’d felt so certain of it—most of the time.
So clear on what it was to be in tune with Amelia, so seduced by the way energy and magic crackled between them.
But now? How was she meant to cope with this deep, hollow place inside her?
Like she had lost some part of herself she’d only just gotten to know.
Was this what being heartbroken felt like?
Because this was awful. The siren way of not becoming entangled made so much more sense now than it ever had before.
Why would you risk this? Why would anyone do this to themselves willingly?
She even longed to call her mom and ask if this was why she was always so cold.
Did she stay detached from people because she couldn’t handle emotions?
Couldn’t handle being tangled up with other people’s emotions?
But she suspected her mom would have nothing to do with such a conversation.
She did, however, call Luna, having completely forgotten to tell her she was leaving California.
And with the unerring instincts of a sister, Luna said, “But what about Amelia?”
“What about her?” Bryn replied, like she had no idea what Luna was asking.
“Don’t do that,” her sister said. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I saw the way she looked at you and I saw the way you looked when you talked about her. What are you doing, Bryn?”
“I’m pursuing my career.”
“Are you? Or are you running away from something?”
“I’m not running away from Amelia.”
“Okay, then why haven’t you told me about how hard a long-distance relationship is, or how much you miss her, or when you plan to travel back to see her? Why haven’t you told me when to keep an evening free so we can go to dinner? The obvious thing to do would be planning your next trip.”
“We’re not doing that.”
The silence that followed this was very loud.
“No offense, big sister, but I think you fucked this one up.”
Hearing those words—words that Bryn feared, somewhere deep inside, were true—pissed her off. “We weren’t even together that long. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just a romantic eighteen-year-old kid. You don’t know anything about love.”
Luna choked on something that might have been a laugh, though it sounded anguished. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Bryn realized she was right. She knew about little bits of Luna’s life, but they’d never been close. They’d been specifically encouraged to remain distant. Until recently, when it had felt like maybe they would someday attain the status of not just sisters, but friends.
“You’re a siren,” she said. “Don’t sirens inherently not care about other people?”
“Not all sirens are Mom, you know.” Luna’s voice sounded tired beyond her usual happy self. “Anyway, I hope your book goes well. I should go get ready for work.” Before Bryn could follow up on this, Luna was gone.
Feeling more bereft than she felt the situation warranted, Bryn waved her wand at her phone to disconnect the call.
She stared at her phone and thought about all of the things it symbolized: connections to other people, the ability to have conversations even when far away.
What would happen if she called Amelia right now?
Left a message, saying, “I’ve been thinking about you. ”
Except Amelia had pushed her away. Amelia hadn’t fought for her.
Hadn’t fought for them. If Amelia wanted her back, she could reach out just as easily as Bryn could.
And she hadn’t. Which meant she didn’t want Bryn back—a thought that should have been a relief, but in the end just made her feel gutted and heartbroken all over again.
She’d been in Denver long enough to know which restaurants she liked and which streets to avoid during busy times of day, but not long enough to have anyone to tell that she was back. Not long enough for anyone who knew her to even notice she’d been gone.
And that thought brought her back to loneliness.
If she didn’t go to breakfast at the castle, someone would ask how she was doing, or if she needed anything sent down.
If she didn’t check in with Mr Wicks, he would check in with her.
Maybe he wasn’t exactly supportive, or not supportive in the way she imagined Professor Herringbone would have been, but she knew she was on his radar.
He was invested. She missed Andi telling funny stories about things the kids got up to in the dorms, as well as talking teaching and strategy with Piper.
And in the middle of the night, when she couldn’t sleep, when the insomnia was very bad, she thought about Amelia.
About their separate strands of magic twining around each other, filling the space between them, making every hair on her body stand up, waking up every cell.
The way she thought she’d never feel anything like that in her life, and then she did.
A gift, she’d told Amelia the night they’d made magic and love in the grotto.
A gift she had thrown away.
It was very, very hard to get back to sleep on those nights.