Chapter 41 Gwenna
FORTY-ONE
GWENNA
I run, but Cal gets there first. Is there first.
He kneels, ash-streaked and bruised, glasses caked with soot, and clutches Lanz’s face. “Lanz!” It’s like he’s trying to scream, but he’s too hoarse. “Lanz.”
Lanz’s eyes are closed. His skin looks gray. Is he…
No, no, no no no. I think, no. I fall to the ground beside them, between them, slide my hand over Lanz’s chest, and…
He’s breathing—oh, thank God, thank Christ—but barely. At my touch, his eyes flutter open, and he smiles. Of course he smiles.
“Hey,” he says. “Hi. I’m, um—ah!”
A sharp, almost animal cry of pain cuts him off, his back arching off the ground so violently I yelp in surprise.
“Jesus Christ.” Lanz says through a tense jaw, settling back, sweat on his forehead. “Jesus.”
Cal starts looking frantically up and down Lanz’s body, touching him gently as if searching for wounds.
“They didn’t…” Lanz breathes out hard through his nose, his neck corded with effort and eyes still closed. “They didn’t get me. I’m just…”
When Cal looks back up, there’s a single clean streak down each dirty cheek. He’s crying.
I can feel Kingston and Kai behind us somewhere, looming but not wanting to intervene. And suddenly it all feels surreal, incongrous: the warm, perfumey air and soft breeze an alien contrast to Lanz’s panting, the dying boy lying on the new patch of green grass.
“He’s cursed or something,” I say to Cal. Then I look at Lanz. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
“I’m…” His lips move open and shut, his eyes still flickering. “How did you…”
“The honey.” It’s Morgan’s voice, behind us. She crouches, a few feet back. “I showed her how. A little diagnostic, because she said you were—”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Cal’s voice is shaking, his chin juddering, the twin trails of tears cutting more paths through the dirt on his face. “Why didn’t you say something? How many times did I ask you? How many times did she ask you?” He gestures at me.
“I didn’t…” Lanz coughs, swallows. His breathing is shallow and rapid. “I didn’t want to be a problem. I didn’t want you to have to deal with it, on top of everything.”
“I want you to be my problem!” Cal says. “What do you even think this is? It’s not just hand jobs in wine cellars. It’s letting someone else’s problems be your problem.”
The shock of the language coming from Cal’s mouth only barely registers. Lanz notices too. His brows are just drawn together before he spasms in pain again.
“Lanz!” I cry.
“It’s…” He tries to push to his elbows and fails. “It was going to happen no matter what, okay? And now I know you’re okay, Gwenna, and—”
“It didn’t have to happen,” I cut him off. “It doesn’t. It doesn’t. Right?” I look at Cal, but he’s only staring at Lanz, still crying, clutching one of his hands between his. I look back at Morgan, at, over her shoulder, Kai and Kingston.
“Your father,” Kingston says. “He went like this.”
All of us look back to Lanz.
“Yeah, well,” Lanz gives a watery laugh. “Dell’Acqua men love too much, so…”
“So it’s a curse,” I say, glancing at Morgan, “right? If it runs in a family?”
She nods.
I wheel back on Lanz. “What is the curse?” I say, urgent and low. “Tell me.”
He presses his white lips together, shakes his head. “It’s too late. I don’t know what you could—”
“Tell me,” I say. “You don’t get to die with secrets.
” My voice is fierce, almost unrecognizable to myself.
“Tell me, because if there’s any way we can undo it…
” Then I will, I think. I’ve done it once.
I can do it again. What’s two miracles in one afternoon?
I almost want to laugh, how absurd this all is.
Lanz breathes in. Breathes out. Overhead, a sparrow trills.
“It’s my whole family,” Lanz says at last. “The men, anyway. I don’t know how long it goes back. They alwys just said, love shall claim him once, then again. Death shall come with a heart split in twain. And so…” He tilts his head back, eyes squeezed shut, like he’s waiting for something to pass.
It does.
“Yeah,” he mumurs. “Fall in love a lot, then meet the right person, and, uh, die of a broken heart?” The last few words are shaky, as if he doesn’t even like saying them.
“This isn’t funny,” Cal says sternly. “It’s not funny.”
“Trust me, I know,” Lanz says. “Except…it’s a little funny. ‘Cause I thought, you know, this whole vow was gonna keep me from finding the woman who was gonna end me, and then you just wander into French class anyway.” He laughs.
“What do you…” I can’t even finish the sentence.
His eyes open, dull, glassy, but intent on me. “I’ve loved you ever since I saw you, Gwenna. I’ve always known. I just have. And then I touched you, and I really knew, and then, suddenly, the more I touched you, the worse it got, but…” He swallows again. “Worth it.”
My memory flies to the other night, in the kitchen, holding me, fiercely touching me, the way he said, I’m just glad I got to meet you. I’m so lucky. The tear coming out of his eye.
“No,” I say, and slam my palm against the flagstones. “No, we have to…” I pull back. Close my eyes. Breathe out. Think. Think. “Say it again,” I say, eyes still closed. “Say the curse again.”
“Love shall claim him once then again.” It’s Morgan, not Lanz, who’s speaking, like she’s been thinking about it this whole time. “Death shall come with a heart split in twain.”
I think. Really think. Death shall come with a heart split in twain. I turn the phrase over and over in my mind, like I’m looking for a keyhole in a lock box, trying to pry at the seams and find the one place where it will all spring loose.
“But it’s not causative.”
A deep, rumbling voice. I open my eyes. Callahan.
He’s still gripping Lanz’s hand, but now he looks at me.
“Right? It just says death will come with. Not be caused by. It’s…
you can only accept as true what’s clear and distinct.
What the words clearly say, not what they could mean.
That’s…Cartesian logic. Right? Isn’t it? ”
He looks at me, desperate.
“I—” My head is spinning.
“So maybe it doesn’t have to be the reason he dies,” Cal concludes. Even under the soot, he’s visibly blushing. He looks at Lanz, whose breathing has only quickened.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Morgan. She’s frowning. Frowning and thinking. Frowning and thinking and putting her hands together, thumb tips pressed together, fingers curled and touching at the ends. A mirror image.
A heart.
Then she cracks her hands apart, spreads them wide.
One towards me. One towards Cal.
Oh my God. Of course. It’s so stupid. It’s almost so stupid that I’m angry about it. I start crying, practically hysterical. “You idiot,” I say, laughing out the words. “You absolute idiot.”
Cal looks alarmed, staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I ignore him—for now—and look to Lanz. “Lanz,” I say.
“Lanzelin Dell’Acqua. I love you. I love you.
I love you.” I don’t know how many times I need to say it, but I know I haven’t said it before, not that I can remember, even though I know it’s true, and has been for I don’t even know how long.
“Do you hear me?” I put my hand on his cheek, brush with my thumb.
He swallows, nods.
Then I look at Cal. Cal, who has loved Lanz since before I ever set foot on this campus. Cal, who has never been anything but there for him. Cal, who has been too afraid to claim it and almost waited too late.
“Tell him,” I say. “Cal, tell him.”
“Oh.” The single syllable breaks in Cal’s voice. He tightens his hold on Lanz’s hand. “I love you,” he says. “I do. I should have told you before, I know, but… I do.”
We wait. All of us holding our breath.
Before anything can happen, before anything does happen, Cal rocks back on his heels, drop’s Lanz’s hand, fiddles with something on his finger.
His ring, I realize. The one on his thumb. A wedding ring. From his parents.
“Here.” Cal takes it, swallowing hard, lifts Lanz’s hand again, and slides it on the right thumb, same place as he wore it.
And it’s so sweet, it’s so kind, it’s so entirely real and so entirely Cal, I start crying harder, just at the beauty of it and out of adrenaline come-down and the fact that I can’t tell if this is even working or if I even got it right.
But Lanz’s hand tightens on Cal’s.
The color floods back into his face, slowly at first, then faster. His breathing deepens, his eyes open, he pulls himself up, and he kisses Cal hard on the mouth, so hard they almost lose their balance and topple into me, which just makes me laugh even though I’m still crying.
And then, as soon as there’s an opening, I gently push Cal away and take Lanz’s face and scan it to make sure he’s really okay and really alive.
“Hi,” I say. “I love you.” It’s all I can think to say. I feel like I’ve lost any other vocabulary.
“I love you too,” Lanz says, smiling and finally, for the first time in months, looking like the handsome, hapless boy I saw in French class all the way back in fall semester.
He frowns. “I love you two, too. Like, t-w-o, t-o-o? Uh…” He squints, tipping his head, even as I’m still holding on.
“Je vous aime les deux?” he says, tentatively.
“We get it.” Kai’s voice. “Would you just kiss her already?”
Lanz obliges, kisses me on a carpet of fresh spring grass and nodding clover flowers and green life humming all around us, and I feel like I can fly.