A Knight to Remember (16 page)

“All right, Aidan.
 
We’ll be back in three days.
 
Hopefully with the…the beast.
 
Ready to be sealed into a portal,” I tell my brother, crossing my arms.
 

“No…no…” he blanches, shakes his head.
 
“Why don’t the two of you come back tomorrow night?
 
For the meditation?” asks Aidan, rising.
 
“Virago can meet the rest of the coven, we can discuss strategies, maybe try to open the portal, do a test run?”

“Okay,” I tell him quietly.
 
His brows are up, and his gaze is questioning, but I’m suddenly so tired and worried and nervous that I just want to sit down and curl up with my favorite book.
 
“Come on, Virago…”
 
I start to walk toward the front room.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Aidan,” she says, bowing to him, and then I’m through the beaded curtain and into the shop proper.
 
I flip the sign on my way out, banging against the door as the tears come into my eyes, making everything blurry.
 
“The witch is
in
” keeps turning in the breeze behind me as I practically run to the car.

Virago is slower—maybe Aidan’s showing her something in the shop—so I unlock the car door sit inside and put my head against the steering wheel.

I swallow down most of my tears but two squeeze out, splashing against my jeans.
 

Everyone is eventually vanquished
.

It’s all rising in me, all of these stupid thoughts that I always try to ignore.
 
That I fail at ignoring.
 
I think about Mom, about how happy she was when she finally left, how the cancer never actually
changed
her.
 
She was just Mom, and she was this really fucking happy person, and that never changed.
 
Not ever.
 
Because she believed that she’d done what she was supposed to do.
 
I remember her telling me that, over and over, as I raged and grew angrier and angrier as the cancer claimed her for its own.
 

And after Mom was gone, I stayed with Nicole, because I was afraid to be alone.
 
And I was afraid to end it.
 
And it was easy, staying with her.
 
It was so much easier to live my puppet life, to go home from work, to dream of other things and places and tell myself that I was perfectly content with not going out or doing things because it was safer, wasn’t it?
 

Everything was safer than what my mother did, which was live like crazy.
 

A knock on the car window.
 
Virago peers in, her brows furrowed, a frown deepening her features as she leans down, looks into the car.
 
I unlock the doors, and she gets in, setting her scabbard in the back seat and folding her hands in her lap as she shuts the door quietly behind her.

“Sorry…” I mutter, rubbing at my eyes, wiping my wet fingers on my jeans again.
 
“Sorry…something you said.
 
I was just thinking about my mom,” I tell her, then, staring down at my lap.
 
I can already feel myself redden.
 
I don’t talk about my mother.
 
Not ever
.
 
And then, somehow…

“She was this really amazing woman,” I tell her, can feel the tears start to
plink
on my jeans again.
 
I ignore them, stare down at my hands that are clasped so tightly together that my knuckles are white, my fingers red.
 
“You would have really liked her,” I manage, swallowing down a hiccup of a sob.
 
I keep going.
 
“She was so strong and so brave…she loved life so much, and she did all of this amazing shit.
 
She was a painter, an artist…” I say, closing my eyes tightly.
 
“And she painted things as they really are.
 
That’s how she always said she did it.
 
She loved experimenting with colors, getting the exact right shade to capture something.
 
She loved…everything, everyone.
 
She loved life.
 
She rode horses, and she did rock climbing, and she did it
all
while raising Aidan and me, and she loved us both so much, and she taught us so much…and then she got cancer anyway.
 
Even though she lived the best life in the world, cancer still got her.
 
And she died.
 
And she was perfectly at
peace
with it all,” I whisper.
 
“And I was so
angry
at her for being at peace with it, because it was taking her away from us…”
 
I trail off, swallow.
 
“So I’ve kind of not really been living since she died.
 
I mean.
 
I
live
.”
 
I wipe away my tears, stare holes into the steering wheel.
 
“I go to work, and I
love
my work.
 
At the library.
 
So much.
 
I love my patrons.
 
But then I come home.
 
And I’ve stayed with Nicole because she never really has time, so it’s this great, casual thing, and it’s easy.”
 
God, I just came out to her.
 
But I keep going, steel myself, keep talking.
 
“Everything I do is just…easy…”
 
I turn and look at her, and she’s not staring into space, not watching out the window.
 
She’s looking at
me
, and looking at me intently, brow creased, eyes bright and unwavering as she gazes into the very heart of me, and so much wells up within me in that moment that I just start to cry.
 
There are so many tears, so much grief wracking my middle, and Virago reaches out and wraps her arms around me, and she holds me.
 
I sob against her shoulder and her tie.

“I miss her so much,” I whisper, after a long moment.
 
“Like…my gut’s all empty.
 
Like she filled it with this great joy and possibility.
 
I don’t know how Aidan believes in magic anymore.
 
Mom took it all with her when she went.”

Virago rests her chin gently on my head, squeezing her arms about me in a comforting hold.
 
After a long moment, she whispers into my hair:
 
“I went into training to become a knight because I lived with my mother and father in the poorest section of Arktos City.
 
It’s called the Ratter Prison.
 
It’s
very
poor,” says Virago, voice clipped short and sad.
 
“My mother and father died in the winter from a sickness when I was seven.
 
My father had wanted to be a knight, but hadn’t started young enough.
 
So I went into the training because he’d wanted to as soon as I was able.
 
I understand you, Holly.
 
I understand that grief.”

I rest my cheek against her shoulder, breathe in the scent of brand new shirt, and the sweet mint that seems to be all that is Virago.
 
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, sighing out.

She shrugs, and I can feel her warm muscles ripple beneath me as she squeezes me again.
 
“All is well,” she tells me, her voice gentle.
 
“I know that if my mother and father could see me now, I think that they would be at peace.
 
I have done the best that I could do to become a knight.
 
I have worked very hard, and I have poured my heart into my tasks.
 
I think that if your mother could see you, Holly, she would feel the same.
 
You’ve done what you could do, and you have done it well.
 
She would be very proud of you.”
 

“But I haven’t…”
 
I tell her, pushing away from her, gazing into her intense ice-blue eyes as I try to keep the tears from coming.
 
She returns the gaze with a quiet strength as she reaches across the space between us.
 
She takes a wisp of blonde hair and then softly, slowly, like she’s the lead in a romantic comedy, like theme music is playing somewhere to accompany her ridiculously romantic gesture, she tucks that wisp of hair behind my ear, her warm fingers curving against my skin.
 

We stay like that so long, my eyes wide, my heartbeat thundering, before Virago says, simply:
 
“We all do what we are meant to do.”

“What?” I whisper.

“We all do,” she murmurs softly, and I suddenly realize how close her mouth is, the warmth of her stealing over me by degrees.
 
If I lean forward, I could capture that mouth with my own.
 
I breathe out with a gasp as she leans forward, crossing that small space, “what we are meant to do,” she says, the words hot against me, because suddenly I want to make the distance between us dissolve.

I want, more than anything in this whole wide world, to kiss her.

Neither of us moves for a heartbeat, two, and then she sighs out, breaking the intense gaze between us.
 
I slump a little, and then her arm is around me, drawing me down to her chest again, rubbing my shoulder gently.

For the longest moment, I want to rewind time.
 
I want to kiss her.
 
But instead, I close my eyes, listen to her heartbeat, feel the softest sense of peace steal over me, by degrees.

I understand you, Holly
.

For the first time in…well.
 
Forever…
 

I feel seen.

Chapter 8:
 
Fiction

Because soymilk and ketchup, the two regrettable items still deemed as edible in my refrigerator, don’t exactly blend together into the most appetizing dinner, we make a trip to the grocery store and get a few frozen meals, fresh fruit and snow peas.
 
Virago’s cool visage melts at the doorway, and wonder abounds as she wanders the aisles in rapt fascination, lifting a mango to her nose and inhaling the heady aroma as she sighs in ecstasy.
 
Looking at the grocery store through that sort of lens—that you can pretty much get any kind of food you want at whatever time you want—I have to agree with her.
 
It is a kind of miracle.
 
I never thought that the same aisles I grumble about rising prices and squeaky shopping cart wheels would also be where a beautiful woman shows me that there’s a hell of a lot to be grateful for.

I buy a pound of Columbian coffee along with the meals and produce, holding the bar of beans up to her for inspection.
 
I tell her the best thing she’s ever experienced in her entire existence is
yet to come
.
 
Which, you know, I realize totally
does
sound like a come on, as she inhales the rich aroma of the coffee, but she’s too excited when I tell her that coffee is related to espresso, so I don’t think she noticed.

Just like I don’t thinks he notices the way I watch her move, how she prowls through the aisles like she’s grace personified.
 
A dancer and a warrior, all at once.
 

I haven’t let myself think about possibilities.
 
I guess I do believe her now.
 
I believe she’s from another world, as vastly impossible or improbable as that may be, I believe it.
 
I believe that there’s a wounded beast out there somewhere, just biding his (or her) time before it heals and then comes out to wreak havoc on the human race.
 

I believe that I have to break up with Nicole.
 
But even if I break up with her now, what I want is too impossible.
 

So I do my absolute best to not think about what I want.
 
Which is something I’m really good at.
 

We drive back to my house in relative silence, Virago fiddling with the radio dial every so often to find a new station, a new song, a new experience for her to immerse herself in.
 
I’m too overwhelmed by everything, so the relative silence is fine by me.
 
I have too much to think about.

And if I spoke to her just now, with all that emotion rushing through me, I might say something I’d regret.

Like:
 
you’re beautiful.
 
You’re exquisite, really.
 
And I’m attracted to you more than I’ve ever been attracted to anyone in my entire life.
 
And you’re from another world.
 
And if this all works…then you’re going back home.
 
And you’re probably not even gay.
 
But watching you makes me think that everything I’ve seen that I thought was good or lovely in my lifetime was a pale shadow compared to you.
 

So I stay silent.

And I say nothing.

But when we pull into my driveway, I sigh for a very long time.

Because there, ahead of my car, is Carly’s.
 
Parked.

She’s sitting on my porch on the old swing, practically vibrating with excitement as she pushes the swing back and forth with her sneakers, and the second that I turn off the engine, she’s dashing down the steps and is peering through the car window like a paparazzi.

“Hi, Holly!” she practically chirps, her big, goofy grin threatening to split her face in two.
 
I open my door, and she squeezes me tightly before leaning down and peering into the car to have her first glimpse of my passenger.

“Oh, my God.
 
Hello
,” she says then, turning her voice down about an octave and a half and purring like a Bengal tiger.