Chapter 24
Despite everything else, Bryn wanted to write her book.
She had dreamed about this forever. No, it wasn’t ideal.
The timing was bad. And maybe in her heart of hearts, she wished she hadn’t made the decision she’d made.
Maybe if she was very, very honest with herself, she wished the email had never come and she was still teaching, even badly, still meeting up with her fellow teachers after school, still looking forward to Amelia—the scent of her, the feel of her, her lips.
But she’d made her decision, and Amelia had made hers.
All of the fantasies, all of the alternate universes, all of the wishing in the world didn’t change that.
The best Bryn could do was follow through.
She found an out-of-the-way brewery she hadn’t been to before and set up at a table in a corner.
She tried their non-alcoholic brew and didn’t love it, but they made a pretty good chai latte, so she went with chai after that.
She’d brought a backpack full of paperwork and notebooks, and her laptop—everything that contained all the spells that she wanted to try, techniques, little quirks she thought might improve their efficacy or duration.
She’d brought everything she could think of, thankful that she had a car, because lugging her biggest backpack on the bus would have been a nightmare.
Today was the day. Before she left the brewery, she vowed to have a plan and an outline for the book that she could send her editor.
She’d been back in Denver for only four days, and it already felt like a trap she had willingly walked into, locked up behind her, and thrown away the key.
But that wasn’t the book’s fault. Wasn’t writing a spell book sort of like teaching anyway?
With more students and less feedback, and no Lukes to annoy her and cause her to take a deep breath before saying, “Luke, please return to your seat,” and no Violets to go from rage to excitement to brilliance in the span of forty-five seconds.
And no Circe to look to for a nod or a head shake or a moment of quiet kindness.
Before Bryn even realized she was doing it, she’d stopped outlining her book and somehow begun outlining a whole new curriculum for spellcasting and magic class, for an educational plan that didn’t separate everything into subjects, but crossed over, integrating the world for students the way the world would be integrated for them when they were no longer students.
She wrote faster and faster, her fingers flying across the keys.
She thought about the after-school club kids, their spell objects: Luke’s bunny, Circe’s glitter globe, and Violet’s practical gloves.
They hadn’t stopped to consider what subject each attempt belonged to; they’d come up with their ideas and then pursued those ideas with trust and dedication.
On impulse, she opened the share menu and added Piper to the document, without comment, without even sending a message or an email.
Writing a book was a little bit like teaching, yes, but teaching was better, even though she wasn’t nearly as good at it.
Even though it would probably take years before she felt like she’d reached basic proficiency.
But the rewards, on a good day, were astronomical.
And even on a bad day, hearing from her fellow teachers that she wasn’t the only one who’d struggled, that even Mr Wicks had needed a mentor when he had first started teaching, made up for it.
Or perhaps not made up for it exactly, but gave her the strength to keep trying.
There was so much depth to teaching, so many different levels of challenge and interaction and opportunity.
She missed the intellectual part nearly as much as she missed the people, which was ironic given how much she’d struggled in the beginning.
Hell, maybe teaching was what Bryn had really wanted to do all along, and she’d picked writing books as a way to do that without having to confront her specific difficulties with people.
It felt weird that she hadn’t known that before.
She’d never even considered it. When she left Grimoire Academy, she hadn’t ever wanted to go back into the classroom.
But from the second she returned to campus, even before she saw Amelia, she’d felt something there.
She sat back in her chair at the table she’d commandeered in the darkest corner of a little-utilized brewery in Denver, Colorado, and realized that this sudden insight was only half of her problem.
Maybe not even half. She could pursue teaching at any time, now or later.
She could write the book. She could choose not to.
But if she was being nakedly honest with herself, the biggest regret wasn’t about feeling like she’d betrayed the kids, or her career, or even about whether or not she could learn something new at the ripe old age of twenty-three.
It was about Amelia, and whether they could find their way back to each other after Amelia had told her she could go, and she had gone.
It wasn’t strictly a betrayal, but when they’d had the chance to fight for whatever they felt for each other, both of them had turned away. Both of them had chickened out.
The realization left her breathless and aching.
She wanted to say she was sorry; she wanted to say she had figured it out now, and she needed a quick do-over so she could make everything right.
She could set things back on the correct track, the one she’d been afraid to take, the one she’d seen as having only two potential outcomes: complete failure (of their relationship, of her teaching, of her writing) or complete success (they lived happily ever after, she was the best possible teacher, and she had a satisfying career writing spell books as well).
Bryn preferred the world to sort itself neatly into boxes, each one with a guarantee scribbled on the side so she didn’t need to worry about uncertainty.
She could almost hear Piper’s voice saying, That’s not how it works, honey.
When she got home that evening, she organized all of her notes and files, and sorted and stacked the boxes of Professor Herringbone’s books that had arrived earlier that day.
She pulled out the ones she thought would be most helpful, and put away those she would read when she had time.
She hadn’t done any big grocery shopping since returning to Denver, maybe because she hadn’t known how long she would stay, or maybe because she’d become used to stopping at the school kitchens for anything she liked, and was too lazy to cook again.
She acknowledged, ruefully, that this was probably the most likely explanation. She’d never enjoyed cooking anyway.
She looked at her calendar, where MSE WEEK was still blocked off. It was Friday. The kids had one more week to prep for exams. Bryn forced her fingers to stop beating a frantic drumroll on the table.
It didn’t matter now, not really. Her return wouldn’t suddenly drill the notion of proper spell syntax into their heads.
Arguably, her absence hadn’t made much of a difference either.
Yet, exams were not just about skills, but also about confidence.
Especially magical exams, where the caster’s will factored in so heavily.
Mouth dry, Bryn opened a text to Amelia and began typing.
Then she deleted what she’d written. She tried again, attempting different tones.
Casual: Hey, do you still need a teacher?
Casual but self-deprecating: Hey, do you still need a totally unqualified teacher?
Super way-too-serious: When we said, “I love you”, I meant it with all my heart. Can I come back?
She deleted every single one of them and instead of typing another one, she did what she always did when she didn’t know which way to go.
She got out a notebook and began to write.
When she thought about Amelia, her heart grew.
Her capacity for feeling grew, until it was almost more than she could encompass.
She tried to think of any other sensation in her life that had even come close, but there was nothing.
This was like petting a kitten to the millionth power.
It was also the best sex she’d ever had, even before they touched each other.
She didn’t know how that was possible, and she wouldn’t have believed it without proof, but she had experienced it now more than once.
The anticipation of having sex with Amelia was hotter than actually having sex with other people, but she had no guarantee that Amelia felt even a fraction of the same way.
The more she thought about it, really thought about it, the more she realized that she was looking for a guarantee that trying again was the right thing, that it would result in success.
She was trying to go into the experiment already knowing the outcome, which was folly, if nothing else, not to mention completely unscientific.
She acknowledged that wanting a guarantee was natural, but refusing to take action without it …
Well, if she didn’t act, she would fail, no matter what.
There was no future with Amelia if she opted out of choosing.
As scared as she was of rejection and loss and the deep emptiness of heartbreak, which would inevitably be the result of Amelia not wanting to try again, Bryn knew she had to give it one more shot.
She might be a bad teacher, and Amelia might be better off without her in so many ways, but she hadn’t said that.
She hadn’t said, “Bryn, I want you to leave.” She’d said, “Bryn, this is your dream.” And it had been.
But, too late and too far away, Bryn realized she had different dreams now. These dreams required no less dedication and commitment than writing books had, so she could do no less than take a chance on them.
She didn’t text Amelia. She looked up flights out of Denver and bought a one-way ticket home.