But as Cully settled into his hug, and Dante’s blood quickened and his breath came faster—like it always did—and his heart throbbed hard and painfully, he asked himself, for the thousandth time, for the millionth, why they were not lovers.
And felt as naked as he had that day with the fish, when he recognized what power we have over the forces in our lives that did not know who we were.
THE memory—and it was a true memory, a real memory, not the terrible, wonderful, delicious memories of making love to Cully that he only hoped were true—slammed into his chest, took his breath, rattled his brains in his damned head.
Maybe because he’d spoken the truth to his mother; he wasn’t leaving Cully whether they were lovers or not. Maybe because he’d been naked, figuratively of course, in front of Cully, and in spite of their closeness—in spite of seeing each other change or fresh out of the shower for years—being naked meant something else entirely. And maybe because in that moment he’d felt loved and accepted and cared for, and he’d known exactly how good he had it.
Maybe all those things.
But he knew that, in order to break out of this house—out of this curse or this spell or whatever was going on that had trapped them, wandering, lost, in a place where no memory was real—he was going to have to be that naked again.
And being that naked again meant confessing to the secret project, the “thing” he’d worked on, his sad attempt at creativity that wasn’t sewing or oils or baking or magic. He hadn’t confessed it to Jordan, nor to Alex or Kate or any of the others. And definitely not to Cully.
Seven. So many years of being the good-time guy who loved sports and plodded away on his typewriter and couldn’t think of a thing to be passionate about, and he was so afraid this one endeavor was another example of the same ole same ole. God, he really wanted to be wonderful at something.
Maybe if he was wonderful at something, he could get up the courage to ask Cully Cromwell why they hadn’t kissed.
Hadn’t they?
But had they?
The knock at the door shocked Dante out of the familiar spiral, and his doubts about what was real and what was not zapped him out of his seat. Involuntarily his gaze traveled to the calendar and his heart sank. More time had passed—there were only nine days left in October, and he and Cully hadn’t moved, hadn’t unstuck themselves from this whole muddle of what was real and what wasn’t.
And whenever his friends walked in, he forgot about everything—the weird limbo, the disassociation, all of it.
Still, seeing the stranger walk in with Alex and Bartholomew was a bit of a surprise. He seemed to remember meeting Bartholomew’s new boyfriend, and Alex’s too. This guy wasn’t them.
“Hi,” he said, looking from Alex and Bartholomew to the new guy. “What’s up?”
HE and Cully had once been to a dance party, the kind with the disco lights and the loud music and the strobe effects. The dancing had been fun, but by the end of the party, when some of the people they were there with—not the coven, not this time—had been juiced and ready to go drinking at a friend’s house, Dante and Cully had wanted nothing more than to go back to the dorms.
The door shut behind Alex and Bartholomew and… and who? Who had been with them? Another new person? Who?
And all Dante could remember was the fuzzy head, the loud strobing of drive beat in his ears, and feeling like a sock in a supersonic drier.
And not anything else. Nothing. Nada.
“Cully?” he called, hoping Cully was in a quiet mood.
“Dante?” Cully’s voice came from far away.
“How’s your head feel?”
“Like the inside of a disco ball,” Cully admitted.
“Do you remember anything about that meeting?”
Cully’s voice broke. “No. And I wanted to see the damned dog.”
“Fucking right?” Dante missed her. God, ever since he’d brought her home right after Cully had mailed out a big project—one that had been stressing him out a lot—Dante had lived in fear. Cully showed this creature more affection than Dante had seen him show anybody, including Dante. Dante couldn’t let the tiny little thing come to any harm.
“I miss you more,” Cully said, voice cracking. “This is so fucking stupid. How come we can’t even see each other? How come we….”
And then Dante could still hear his voice, but it was coming from farther and farther away.
He was in his bedroom, and he didn’t remember how he got there, but it didn’t matter. He sank down onto his bed—his bed, a queen-sized bed, because he was a big guy and liked to sprawl—and realized what it meant.
It meant that those memories of being lovers weren’t true, had never been true, and Cully was far, far away.
He curled into a ball then and cried.
HE’D fallen asleep—had he fallen asleep? He was sitting at his desk, and the world felt normal again, but his head ached like he’d cried all night, and the whirring of Cully’s sewing machine was on his nerves like electric-shock therapy.
There was another knock at the door, and Dante flinched, remembering the strobing in his head the day before. This time, though, the door opened, and it was Jordan, followed by… well, everybody.
Alex, Bartholomew, Kate, Josh, and—oh wow. Glinda! Dante was looking at her through the haze and the fugue that seemed to be controlling his mind when he realized Jordan was proposing a “magic experiment.”
“Hold my hand,” Jordan said, and the words coming out of Dante’s mouth were laughing, but inside his mind, deep inside his mind….
He was begging to hold his friend’s hand.
He clasped hands with Jordan, and it was like half a circuit awoke in his brain and started begging to be connected. While Jordan and the others reached out and grabbed hands, with Barty on the end, Jordan made him call Cully, and it was only then that he saw….
Cully. Slight figure, blond hair, blue eyes—oh my God—it was him. He faded in and out of vision at first, and while Dante was looking at his friends to see if they saw what he did, Jordan and the gang were insisting that Cully grab Barty’s hand.
The minute Cully and Barty made contact, a cold wind—mighty and fierce—picked up in the middle of their suburban living room, and then Jordan told Dante to grab Cully’s hand.
It should have been easy—oh Lord, it should have been easy. It was nothing—it was just holding hands. But reaching for Cully’s hand was like thrusting his fist through clay instead of wind, the moment stretching, pulling like taffy, as a mighty gale whipped around them, upending the furniture, blowing the photos off the walls, whipping Cully’s latest batch of costumes off the table and slamming Dante’s laptop shut, and still he was putting all of his effort, all of his strength, into reaching out and grasping the hand of the man he’d lived with and loved, in whatever capacity, for the last seven years.
The silence was deafening.
Dante clasped Cully’s and Jordan’s hands tightly and stared out into the exhausted, haggard faces of the family he felt like he hadn’t seen in a month.
“J…,” Dante said roughly, “what in the hell happened?”