Page 72 of The Slug Crystal
Ben snorts so hard he nearly falls off the couch, pages scattering as he clutches his stomach. "Holy shit, Em! Tell us how you really feel!"
Marco raises an eyebrow, scholarly composure momentarily disrupted. "That's... remarkably direct," he says, but the smile tugging at his lips betrays his approval.
Luca sets his tablet aside, a slow grin spreading across his face. "I particularly appreciate the use of 'hottest.' Very accurate per my self-assessment, of myself, at least."
Jake shakes his head, but he's smiling as he crosses the room to stand behind my chair. His hands come to rest on my shoulders, thumbs pressing gently into the knots that have formed during hours of writing. "Your publisher is going to have questions. "
"Our publisher is going to love it," I counter, leaning back into his touch. "She specifically asked for 'more spice, less gastropod biology.'"
"A directive I wholeheartedly endorse," Ben adds, finally recovering from his laughing fit. He pulls himself off the couch and moves to join us at the table, leaning over to read the line again. "Though Marco's snail reproduction footnotes would certainly qualify as a different kind of spice."
"Scientific accuracy isn't 'spice,'" Marco protests mildly, abandoning his desk to join our growing cluster.
His hand finds the nape of my neck, fingers threading through my hair in that absent-minded way that tells me he's still half-thinking about research while the rest of him is entirely present.
Luca completes our circle, sliding onto the edge of the table beside my laptop.
His fingers trace idle patterns on the inside of my wrist as he reads the line again.
"We should consider changing 'hottest' to something more specific.
Like One “Hottest’, which is clearly me.
One 'Most intellectually stimulating' perhaps for Marco.
And one 'Surprisingly adept at navigating complex emotional terrain’ for Jake. "
"Or we could just admit that 'hot' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here," Ben suggests, his hand finding the small of my back.
“Ahh, I forgot about you. I had nothing to say about what you bring to the table, so maybe you should not be written into the book. We can replace your parts with more of me,” Luca responds.
I lean into their touches and ignore their bickering.
This has become our language, this constellation of casual contact that grounds us to each other without words.
After months together, we've learned each other's bodies, each other's needs, the silent geography of comfort and desire that maps our unconventional relationship.
"The line stays," I decide, saving the document with a definitive tap. "It's honest. "
And it is. Honest about how far I've come from that night in my apartment when I thought a crystal had transformed my ex into a snail.
Honest about how what started as a mad adventure across Italy became the foundation for something I never knew I needed.
Honest about how facing Alex when we returned to Boston, his embarrassment, my righteous anger, and our eventual awkward truce, freed me in ways I hadn't expected.
"Speaking of Italy and adventures," Luca says, his thumb still drawing circles on my wrist, "I've confirmed our villa in Bali for next month this morning. Three weeks, private pool, secluded enough that Ben can work on his tan without scandalizing the neighbors."
"You mean my all-over tan," Ben clarifies with a wink.
"The Spiritual Lotus retreat center is only twenty minutes away," Marco adds. "I've been corresponding with the director. She hasn't heard of Sarah, but she's willing to introduce us to several crystal healers who might know her."
Jake squeezes my shoulders gently. "No pressure," he reminds me. "If we find her, great. If not..."
"It's still a vacation in Bali with my four favorite people," I finish for him. "Win-win."
The truth is, finding Sarah isn’t as urgent as it once seemed.
I'm still curious, still want to know the woman who sold me a bogus crystal and lives a life of such sporadic adventure.
But the desperate need to explain everything, to fix what I thought was broken, faded with the realization that Alex was never a snail.
Six months ago, I thought the worst thing that could happen was my boyfriend turning into a snail.
Now I know the truth. The worst thing would have been never carrying that blue snail to Italy, never meeting Marco at customs, never finding Ben in that bar, never encountering his cousin Luca, and never discovering that Jake's friendship could transform into something deeper.
Never finding this unconventional, perfect balance.
Our laughter mingles in the sunlit room, five people who found each other through the strangest of circumstances, building a life together one touch, one word, one day at a time.
And if that isn't the best kind of revenge against the end of a relationship that I thought would destroy me, I don't know what is.
Turns out the real revenge isn't turning your ex into a snail. It's moving on. And maybe getting railed in Italy by four of the hottest men you've ever seen.