Page 22 of Below the Shadow of the City

CHAPTER 22

SATURDAY, LATE OCTOBER

T he basement is cold, mildewy, and has horrendous lighting. It’s no place for a proper date. We both have limited time tonight, heading off to separate Halloween parties in separate realms.

Truthfully, I’m amazed that no one has come down here and found us, we’ve grown far less cautious about being discovered. This god-awful laundry room serves as a third place, somewhere in between our two disparate existences. Maybe only he and I even use the laundry room to begin with, or it’s just a magical space our collective yearning conjured up.

I’d told him about Margo’s party, I’d even invited him on the off chance he thought he could pull off his appearance as an intricate Halloween costume, but he was adamant about not coming. And I certainly wouldn’t force it. Instead I had snapped a picture of my stupid pun costume, Snow Walter White, and sent it to him when I was giving it a test run the other day.

The princess dress is doing something for me.

The hat, sunglasses, and faux mustache, not as much.

Sorry. You’re committing to the full package or nothing.

Maybe the dress will make an appearance, or maybe the hat, sunglasses, and mustache will.

Guess you’ll have to take the risk.

Happily.

Ready for whatever comes my way, Heisenberg.

We’re catching glimpses of one another in between our independent lives. We’re doing that thing real couples do, finding fleeting moments to spend together because we can’t spend more time away from the other.

Right before we were planning to meet, I received a stiff mirror picture of him wearing a white button down shirt with three black circles stuck on the left side. He’d grown more accustomed to sending me selfies and mirror pics, usually at my insistence. If he mentioned an article of clothing, a unique place, or anything else that warranted a follow up photo, I typically asked for one.

In the photo he sent, a tuft of deep brown fur crests over the top of the opened buttons, and the way his forearms flex in the rolled up sleeves send a flurry of sparks to my core. Three black paper circles are pinned to his left side. Nothing close to the self-proclaimed “sexy” costumes peddled to men willing to wear tight spandex with their abs out, but probably the hottest Halloween fit I’ve seen in a good minute. The sparks between my legs fizzle out and a twinge of FOMO wraps itself around my heart.

Three hole punch Maddox, really?

You couldn’t think of anything more creative?

I’m not a Halloween guy!

Consider me actually shocked.

I hate the whole dressing up thing.

Love the parties.

Especially love the themed drinks and free candy.

I just can’t believe I’m finding out a literal monster is the most boring guy at a Halloween party.

I wouldn’t say MOST boring.

One of my buddies has worn the same “this is my Halloween costume” shirt for the last five years. And he’s an incubus!

You’re friends with a sex demon?

Since ninth grade.

And remind me to keep him far, far away from you.

He has his own party to go, one with people he’d be actually comfortable with. An invite was haphazardly offered to me, but we’d silently agreed that it would need to be a slower merging of our separate lives. Even if I was deeply curious about what werewolves and vampires and other supposed “monsters” dressed up as for the holiday.

There’s an ache twitching millimeters beneath my ribcage that we’re not going to these things together, and I wonder if we ever will. Maybe we are doomed and I’m just setting a self-fulfilling prophecy into motion. Different realms, different lives, parallel lines that may never fully cross. Of course I’m not going to dive in if I don’t know if I’ll drown.

For now, I’m enjoying eating cake straight from the baking dish with someone I truly, deeply enjoy spending time with. I sit atop one of the washing machines while Maddox leans against a concrete support column. My puffy Snow White dress covers the entire washing machine top, I’m not used to wearing something with such volume. To Maddox’s benefit, I didn’t wear the fake mustache and sunglasses down here.

“Sigrid, this is incredible,” Maddox breaks through the silence I didn’t even notice settled between us. “You need to open a bake shop or go on Food Network or do something with this kind of talent.”

I flush deeply at the discomfort of receiving a compliment. He means incredibly well but hearing anyone offer praise so casually makes my heart drop into my stomach. “I mean, it’s nothing crazy, apples and homemade salted caramel and some other stuff, and the ice cream, obviously.” If he only knew what I used to bake, this apple cake would seem like child’s play.

“ Just apples and homemade salted caramel and some other stuff ,” he mocks. “Yeah, no, you’re right it’s nothing. Only the best cake I’ve had in my life.” He’s eating the dessert with such feverish enthusiasm I want to spread my legs and top myself with the bourbon vanilla ice cream I made .

Instead, I tense. The fortress walls begin to close their gates.

“Don’t do that,” I say sharply.

“Do what?” He asks the question with such an innocence I feel guilty for even feeling like I do. He doesn’t know that words of affirmation feel like a knife twisting in my back because I wholeheartedly don’t believe he means them.

“Compliment me so…enthusiastically,” I’m flustered as I try to convey my thoughts in a way that doesn’t make me seem like a complete sadist. “I know you’re trying to be nice, but I don’t need the patronizing.”

He lowers his brows and lets out a hot huff. “It’s not patronizing. I’m being sincere. If you don’t want compliments, fine, no compliments,” he says assuredly, and I believe him this time. “My lips are sealed. I’ll just moan from how good this is instead.” He stabs his fork into the last bit of his slice and shoves it into his mouth with grossly exaggerated moaning sounds, so loud I’m convinced people on the floor above us can hear.

I grab his arm and shake him a bit to quiet him down, and he nearly chokes laughing. It pisses me off how easy going and affable he is, like his default setting is to embody the persona of a golden retriever. He brightens up a room in a way that feels unnatural. There’s no sun in his underground neighborhood, but he’s got enough warmth and light radiating off of him to more than make up for it.

I hadn’t brought up the cookbook or my old account to him before. Another thing that I’d avoided in my fear of emotional intimacy. “I used to have a baking Instagram, which sounds so silly to mourn like it was a real accomplishment. I had a lot of followers, and I was getting more before?—”

“Before?” He perks up and turns towards me, his face softens at the sound of my voice trailing off.

“Before things changed, but I’ve always thought maybe I’ll go back to it one day. I love baking, I really do. It’s like, the only thing I do where my stupid brain actually turns off.”

“You should, genuinely,” he says as he takes a bite of his second slice. I shoot him a faux annoyed glare I disarm with a smile. “Sorry,” he corrects. “No sincerity.”

“Those cookies I left down here for you were the first thing I’d baked since January.” He was the reason I started finding footholds in this passion again. Cynics would scoff at the fact that I decided to pick it back up to impress a guy, but here we are, enjoying a cake that I wouldn’t have even thought to make if I hadn’t met him.

“I have an opportunity to actually do something with it. Or, had, I should say.” I speak hardly above a whisper. I’d said yes, and have done close to nothing with the opportunity since. Except for this singular, measly, cake.

“What was it?” He crouches beside me and lays his paw atop my thigh, the weight of him is like a comfort.

“A cookbook, an editor reached out and asked if I wanted to participate. I’d send in eight recipes, they’d select six. I said yes, without a real plan, I still need to develop all these recipes and I don’t know how I can get it done in time. I’ve thought about backing out?—”

“Sigrid. You need to do it,” the firmness in his voice tugs at something in me. I feel his fingertips grip tighter around my leg.

“Eight new recipes, by December first, and I haven’t baked for anyone but you in so long,” I ramble. “It feels impossible. I don’t know if I have it in me. I told you I’m a terrible procrastinator, I think I’ve flown too close to the sun here.”

“Use my kitchen, cook in my apartment, there’s plenty of space and you already know I rarely use it. I can help you, I’ll be your scribe, I’ll happily taste test, you have a gift, I won’t sit idly by and let it go to waste.” I don’t know why I’m tearing up at his words. He’s saying exactly what I’d dreamt of hearing from someone for years and it feels unbelievable to hear it out loud.

“You don’t—” the sentence is impossible to finish.

“I don’t need to, I know. But I want to. And I’ll take any excuse to keep you around.”

“Thank you,” I nearly whisper after another beat of silence.

He shoves half the slice into his mouth. “I mean, I’m the one who actually benefits from this. You getting fame and fortune from your baking is an added bonus.”

I let out an exaggerated groan. “Why must you oscillate between overly sincere and completely facetious?”

“I like keeping you on your toes, just like you’re keeping me on my toes by wearing that dress down here. Don’t you know what looking like that does to me, Sigrid?”

“What, that the beast is obsessed with the princess? I’ve heard that one before.”

He kneels on the ground before the washing machine. My legs swing against the metal door, back and forth like a pendulum. On his knees he’s eye level with my hips, and I see that familiar wild look in his eyes.

Slowly, like he’s drinking in the sight of me, his thumb drags up my bare calf.

“So soft,” he coos, inspecting my legs like I’ve accidentally stumbled into his cave in the woods. “So fucking beautiful.”

The cheap shitty polyester that makes up my dress crinkles as he pushes it up my thighs, layers of crinoline poof around my hips as we both try to get them out of the way. His hands glide along my thighs, and he slides my underwear down my legs. I murmur a thanks that he opted to not shred them off of me in this moment.

“Perfect, perfect,” he repeats, like he doesn’t have anything else to say. “And wet for me already.” His head disappears below the yellow skirt, and he wraps my legs around his shoulders. He whispers things against my thigh, things I can’t hear but I know are pleading compliments.

When I’m with him there’s this insatiable need, it’s entirely inexplicable. He insists over and over again that magic has nothing to do with it, I disagree. How else can this feeling be put into words?

His tongue finds my slit, and grazes across the surface. I am twitching at this point, not even caring about the fact that I’m in a basement, on top of a washing machine that works only half the time. He blows a breath against me, the air curls up and around my folds and settles into my core. It coolly trickles in, and sends a shiver up my spine.

“M-more M-Maddox,” I eke out in a desperate whine, “p-p-please.”

He takes that as an invitation to completely overwhelm my cunt with his mouth. His tongue works itself around my clit and he suckles at it with an admirable enthusiasm. I bite at my lip to keep my moans from escaping, he’s bringing me right up to the edge.

His finger tracks in, and he moves his mouth. He lets his claw graze between my folds, towing a line between danger and delight. He then hooks it, pushing his knuckle into me, allowing it to stretch me out.

Maddox seems to relish in giving me pleasure, like it’s the sole purpose he’s been designed to serve.

His pupils grow so large his eyes are nearly black, hardly visible over the layers of fabric.

I push myself deeper into his muzzle, absorbing his heat, seeking his tongue. He readjusts himself, a firm hand on each of my thighs while his tongue works in concentrated circles around my clit.

I’m reaching, aching, pulling towards him?—

“God, I love you, Sigrid,” he moans against my hip. I quickly pull back, my mouth drops open. The words escaping his mouth seem to have stunned him as much as they’ve stunned me. I don’t think he meant to say it, not now. But clearly they were bubbling and bursting to come out.

And how did I react? I jerked away from him.

The worst part? Those words have been punching at me to escape, too. Because despite my best efforts to fight what’s happening, I am genuinely falling in love with him.

I’m too scared to admit it, even if he told me literally seconds before that he feels the same. If I utter those words and make it real that means there’s something tangible that can be ripped away from me. He stares at me, and I know the shock hasn’t faded from my face.

“Do you not feel the same…?” He quietly asks, there’s a familiar sadness tugging at his voice, he sounds like he did the first night I met him in person. He looks like he knows I’m terrified of him.

“I don’t know—” I start. He scoffs indignantly, effectively cutting my excuses short. He stands up and backs away from me, wounded by my words. Or lack of them.

“What do you know then, Sigrid?”

“Do we have to keep having these conversations?” My gaze tracks to the floor, I study the cracks and speckles in the linoleum tile. His eyes burn into the top of my head, I can’t return the eye contact.

“Yes, we do. Because if you don’t feel the same I can stop myself from falling in love with you more than I already have.”

I steel myself, nearly rattled by his confession shared so off-handedly. Like he’s as sure of falling in love with me as he is about something simple like a coffee order. I hate that it pulls at me like an invisible string.

“You can’t throw around love so casually like that,” because I think I’m jealous that this is so easy for him.

I sense his frustration. I’ve continually given him reasons to leave in a huff and he just…doesn’t. “Why not? Why am I not allowed to be so sure about this? Why do you keep calling ou r relationship ‘this thing’ instead of what it is? You say I’m the one who’s going to up and leave you one day but you’re the one who won’t even let me get close enough to have someone to leave. The back and forth is destroying me. And I don’t want you to be coy, or casual, or make jokes, or bake me cookies. I want you, Sigrid Larson, to actually believe that we’re something, despite your fears, despite this so-called curse you think you’re under.”

His hackles are raised, literally, I see the fur raise beneath the pressed cotton of his shirt. We’re in defensive opposing positions. I’m figuratively reaching for the gun in my holster.

Being in love with the idea of someone is vastly different than being in love with them. And in a strange way, I think I’m in love with Maddox himself, it’s the idea of being in love with anyone that is the problem.

I’d always been the first to say “I love you” in past relationships. Younger me had a naive certainty that the feelings bubbling in my gut were true and needed to be shared as soon as possible. He’s blown past any stop sign, he’s been gleefully and openly smitten with me.

I brace my hands against the sides of the washing machine, legs still spread apart and thighs still trembling from what he was about to do to me moments before. “Do you think I like being this way? Don’t you think if I had a choice I wouldn’t freak out and run away every time I got scared of commitment? It’s a weird subconscious thing. I can’t help it, and it pains me every. Single. Time. It is utterly exhausting to live like this, to believe that someone is going to turn on you at any moment.”

“How can I make you stop feeling that?” He sounds like he’s poised for a fight against an imaginary opponent.

I need to run, my legs are itching for an escape after teetering too close to any true revelations. I hop off the washing machine and smooth out my dress, my hands track over the yellow fabric over and over again .

“I’m broken, ok? There’s nothing you can do. It’s not like I get some sick satisfaction out of making you pour your heart out over and over for me. There’s something disgusting and festering inside me that will infect you just like it’s infected everyone I’ve ever been with. I promise you. You will change your mind.”

“Oh my god, do you hear yourself? Do you know how wrong you are? Maybe, yes, other relationships fell apart. Maybe it was your fault, but have you considered that maybe it was theirs? Maybe, Sigrid, shit happens and people suck. You are not broken, you are not infected, or cursed, or any of the other bullshit things you claim to be. If you just let me love you, let me show you how to be loved just once, you would change your mind.”

I leave Maddox behind, scurrying up the stairs. Running away from him, from what I’m feeling, and from whatever future we could forge together. And I am incredibly sorry for it, but I can’t wrap my mind around an apology. We had fallen too hard and too fast and were careening towards disaster. I have to abandon ship, I can’t let us go down in flames.

“Sigrid, wait!” Maddox calls out after me. I keep going.

Breathing, heartbeat, and footsteps all sync together as I pad down the hallway. There are hundreds of variations on the “sincerity is scary” statement. I delved more into what made up the ragged collage that was Sigrid Larson and now I regretted being known.

For the last ten years, once anyone got too close and could see the jagged cracks through my smoothed over exterior they’d leave, so now I have to be the one to run first. Maddox bore witness to the most literal iteration of such. If I stayed down here a moment longer I’d completely combust.

Though the noisy sounds of cars on the street above are coursing through my every nerve, I turn on a dime the very second I notice a large presence from behind. Briefly relieved it is Maddox, I almost run towards him on autopilot. Heart and head are in conflict, and my rapid pulse and swirling thoughts don’t help.

We’re in the hallway outside the laundry room, feet from the stairs, the closest he’s been to above ground in this building. There’s the risk of him being spotted, but that’s hardly a concern now. Once I stopped moving, my heart catches up with me and I’m taking deep gasping breaths. He’s having his romantic lead moment, and it nearly makes me angry.

“Maddox, please leave me alone,” my chest rhythmically heaves. I haven’t run that quickly in a while. Truthfully, I don’t run. At all. “You don’t need to chase after me, ok?” Maddox furrows his brow at the remark, and takes a large step back.

“Fine, yes I will. I just want to apologize if I pressured you into feeling like you need to confess something you’re not ready for me to know. You’re right. Please, just stop running away from me like this.”

I study his quivering Cupid’s bow for a moment while we both shakily inhale. “I’ll go back to my place and leave you alone once I say this, I want to know you, I want to love you,” he continues. “More importantly I want you to feel safe enough around me that you can be your true self. I’ll leave you be for now, but I did not stutter with what I said. I love you, Sigrid Larson. And I’m not sorry about it.”

He turns to begin his walk back to the laundry room, I grab his arm. Maddox slowly turns back towards me. Sure, I’m a little twitchy and my eyes are damp, but I’m completely focused on him.

“Okay, fine. You want me to do the big romantic admission for you? I am so fucking in love with you, Maddox. So in love with you and still so fucking scared. I’m scared of the way I’m slowly releasing my grip on myself. I’m scared of you and how stupidly perfect you are. And yes, obviously I am scared of the way the world is going to react. I’m scared of the future of us because I can’t bring you to work Christmas parties or my parents’ house out of the blue. Honestly that hardly matters because above all of that, the one thing that keeps me up at night is that I’m scared of losing you one day. Because, actually, I don’t think I’ve ever loved someone as much as I love you. And losing you would actually be the thing that finally destroys me.” I grip harder onto his arm and pull him close, “I’m not used to being this vulnerable with anyone. I don’t know how to be.” I kiss him on the cheek.

Both his cheeks and mine are damp, I didn’t realize the tears had started flowing mid-confession. He’s pushed me to be more emotionally open than I ever have been, with anyone.

I thought that maybe saying it aloud would bring about some mystical end to this curse I’m under. My naivety pictured golden sparkles covering me or a whoosh of magic and suddenly all would be well. There are no sparkles or magic, only Maddox and I staring at one another in silence in this musty stairwell.

Grandiose emotional confessions of love were classic curse breakers in every fairytale imaginable, right? I got so swept up into believing that I was truly cursed just like those imaginary royals that I assumed it would be equally simple. Except, it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.

Because emotions aren’t pawns to play with in hopes of making real life complexities magically disappear.

“You love me,” he says softly. My phone buzzes. Real life is interrupting this fairytale moment before we can get our happy ending.

“Fuck,” I utter. “I’m gonna be late.”

“Right,” he backs away and brushes himself off. “Me too.” He fixes the bent piece of paper pinned to his shirt and quickly disappears down the hallway and through the laundry room door.