Page 64 of Hopelessly Teavoted
The bedroom door had clicked shut and locked itself, the lights dipped low, as if the room warmed to embrace them.
Whatever happened between them, the house approved, and it shifted to make a cat door appear and disappear for Emily Lickinson to escape out of, yowling in judgment as though she was slightly offended that they were kicking her out.
It was warm enough that Vickie’s cheeks were spotted with color, and she moved to tug off the thick sweater while Azrael checked the door.
“You take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch while we wait.” He watched, mesmerized, as she slipped her pants off and slid, in a T-shirt and underwear, in between black satin sheets.
He snapped to add blankets and pillows, and then lay down, face up, on his couch. “Vickie?”
“What?”
“When do you think you knew? That you loved me?”
She laughed from between his sheets, and goddess, he wanted to be there too. “I think I knew for sure when you walked away in the rain. Though I definitely suspected the night with the margaritas, and I was too scared then and for years later to admit it to myself.” She paused. “When did you know?”
“I think the moment you moved in next door, if I’m totally honest,” he said.
“Az,” she whispered. “I love you. We should try to get some sleep until after midnight.”
For the next hour, he pretended to sleep on the couch, yards apart from the bed to keep from accidentally immolating himself.
By the time he heard Vickie wake up, the couch was practically touching the bed, as though his furniture understood that he hadn’t been able to bear the distance.
He pushed his hand against the velvet of the curtains, safely in the middle and away from the edges, and he felt her hand through the other side, pushing back.
He hoped she had slept while he’d tossed and turned on the couch, counting down the minutes until the spell would be ready and they could fix this thing between them for good.
The curse would be gone, and to go through with the soul-binding, even though they didn’t have to, well, that meant something to him.
Something big, and life defining, and he had spent the better part of the past few hours up thinking about it.
Judging from the shadows under her eyes, though, and the sound of his bedsheets rustling at her every movement, he doubted she’d slept more than he had.
They made their way back down to the library, where a fire rose in the hearth as though to greet them, the warm contained flames of the house licking at the grate.
“Victoria,” Az said, turning to her while fishing in his pocket. He pulled out his wallet, and from it the small, crumpled sheet of paper, once fine with newness and hope, now wrinkled by age and time that had defeated even its elegant weight. “I wrote you this.”
“You wrote me a letter? Today?”
“No.” He bit his lip. It was embarrassing, but it was a secret he’d kept from her. And for the seal to work, he would need to make sure there were no secrets between them. He would need to tell her. To show her. “I wrote it eight years ago.”
Her eyebrows raised, and she blushed and whispered, “It’s the thing your mother said was in your wallet. You’ve carried it with you all this time?”
Azrael swallowed. His whole heart was on the line now, and he had waited too long to give it to her. The note and his heart.
“I wanted to give it to you before you left for college.”
“Azrael,” Vickie pleaded, and she held her hand out. Part of him resisted, too afraid to show her everything. But he had waited long enough.
Azrael tossed it gently over to her, releasing the weight of all those years of folding and unfolding it.
She read it aloud, voice just above a whisper, and he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling each word, unwilling to watch her as she tasted the emotion he had held for her.
Victoria,
I know things are not always easy. I’m a witch and you’re my beautiful, human neighbor, gifted with an impossibly cool power beyond anything I’ve ever known. But the truth is, I’m in love with you. I have been for as long as I can remember, and maybe it’s silly, but I wanted you to know.
I love you for now and always. I love you in a way that unmakes me and then brings me back together.
I love you an impossible amount, Vickie, the way you brighten a room, and the way you sing into your hairbrush with abandon.
The times you’ve slept in my bed, I have wanted so badly to wake you and ask you if you could ever love me, too, but I’ve never had the courage.
So now it’s time. I love you with the fire of a thousand universes racing across time and space and being reborn constantly into something new and burning. I love you amounts holding the stars apart. I love you.
-Azrael
P.S. I also want to touch your body. If that’s creepy, burn this, and we will never speak of it again.
P.P.S. Here is a poem. Devil damn me, I might never be able to look at you again when you read it, but I have to give it to you. It’s how I feel, and besides, I’m about to be an English major.
the light of your dark house shimmers
a blinking beacon harking, heralding
gold light freezing within your flaming eyes
your face when all else crumbles into clay
hearing your voice when my mind starts to stray
feeling your hands on all my stolen days
holding my still heart close and shut away
hopelessly keeping feelings locked away
devoted, golden light across the bay
He cleared his throat. “Do keep in mind that I was eighteen when I wrote it. It’s so cringey. But it’s honest.”
Vickie’s eyes flashed.
“It’s perfect. Is it time?” she asked in a voice breathy enough that he wanted to taste it.
He needed to taste it. They had to be only a few short steps away from touching, but it felt infinite, stretching taut between them so that he feared he might snap.
“Is it time for the spell? Or midnight, at least? Because I might kiss you anyway, even if it kills you. You’re perfection.
Everything. Even in teenage poetry. If my mind had known then what my heart has probably known always, Azrael Hart, it would have sung right back to you after this note. This poem.”
Azrael’s voice caught in his throat, and for a moment he was unsure of whether he could actually form words anymore.
“It’s time,” he said. His voice shook. “For the spell, anyway.”
He snapped his hand over the cauldron, and two goblets rose up from its depths, shimmering with pinkish-red liquid. A double snap and the goblets rested on the table in front of them, cooling.
“What’s next?”
“Fire,” he said, and he swore for a moment that flame roared in her hands, as though she wielded witchery, too, but it was only the reflection of the fireplace.
He put a box of matches on the table and slid it toward her, careful not to let their fingers graze.
“Can you light the flames while I work the spell?”
“Yes, I’ll light your fire, Azrael.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. In truth, I already burn for you.”
“Fuck. That makes it really fucking hard to remember the spell work.”
“I bet,” she said, smirking. “Tell me how hard it is.”
He swore softly, digging his hands into the table to stop himself from tossing caution to the wind and touching her.
“You know how hard, Vickie,” he growled, and he trailed his eyes along her neck, snapping so the magic traced the threads of his vision.
“Do the spell. Please.”
Clearing his throat and swallowing, he reminded himself to focus.
“First, fire burned between us, with the warmth of desire.”
A few finger snaps and a trace of his essence whirled, gold and green, and shimmered in the flame of the candle closest to his goblet. He did the same for Vickie; hers was pinkish and shot through with a similar gold hue. The scent of strawberries and longing, ever-present.
“Victoria,” he breathed, and she didn’t admonish him for using her full name. Maybe she heard it for the prayer that it was, the brush of devotion against his unworthy lips.
“Azrael,” she replied. “Tell me what to do next.”
“Hold out your hand,” he instructed. “Next, glass—sand forged in the fire.”
Rolling his shoulders, he breathed deeply and summoned it from the sea, a handful for each of them. The reach of magic was a strain, but it felt good , like running a fast mile or lifting enough at the gym to be pleasantly sore the next day. Magic was as much a part of him as Vickie was.
It was time to let both in.
Snapping his fingers, he moved the sand from each palm to above the flames, and coaxed them to flicker higher and hotter, glistening and forging with enough searing, contained pressure to make glittering glass torches where fresh New England sand had hung suspended before.
He lowered them to the table with care, and wrapped them in a heavy cloth napkin.
“Finally, we shatter the glass, to bind us together for as long as it would take to build it again, higher.”
“For an eternity,” she whispered, and the weight of her words was a pleasure. He needed to run his hand along her face and feel her.
Close. So close.
Vickie was breathing faster now, and he pointed to a dragon-shaped paperweight on a bookshelf behind her. Tried not to watch those dimples above her low-waisted jeans as she stretched up on tiptoes to reach it, smiling back at him in a way that lit fires beyond just the candle and the hearth.
“Smash it.”
The weight of the carved brass dragon rocked through the table, shaking them the way he wanted to, and she handed it to him to do the same.
Shards and dust inside the napkin now, fire in the candle, and goblets cool enough to drink, he nodded at her.
“Now repeat after me.
“I set you in my soul, Victoria Elaine Starnberger.”
“Exactly after you?”
His mouth twitched, and she blew him a kiss. Always stubborn. Always going her own way. And he always loved her.
“I set you in my soul, Azrael Ashmedai Hart.”
“As a seal upon my heart.”
“As a seal upon my heart.”