Page 18 of Shroom for Improvement

We were quiet for a few moments. Goldie lit a joint, took a drag, offered it to me. I almost refused. Almost ended this moment and took myself back downstairs to bed, but then I remembered Josh, naked and beautiful and... wrong, curled up in my bed, and I decided there was an edge to the night. I wanted to take my finger and smudge that edge like it was drying paint.

I didn’t want to think about Josh, or the sex we’d just had, or the future we definitely wouldn’t have, because he was simply not... right.

I sucked in a lungful of smoke and held it there while I mulled over what I might say to Goldie next. Ordinarily, I spent my time trying to cram words back into my mouth, or trying not to accidentally let stupid things slip out. Oat jizz, for fuck’s sake. But when I was around Goldie, I didn’t care if I said strange shit. Wasn’t worried he’d look at me weird, because, well, he was always frowning anyway. But also because he simply didn’t seem to care. Nothing seemed to faze him. Almost like everything I said had validity, even if it was completely unhinged.

He accepted me and my pee-bale with open arms. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Maybe because he was fae, and the whole fae-no-lie thing made it easier for him to accept my weirdness. I was so used to working with other species—werewolves, humans, gorgons—I’d become accustomed to the sideways glances they gave me.

Or maybe because Goldie was such a chill guy. Sure, the humans didn’t like him, but humans and fae always did have a fraught relationship. They just didn’t understand him.

I’d been watching Goldie and Holly from my veg plot since they’d moved into my building about a year ago. I’d never seen two people more devoted to each other. They would come up here two, three times a week, usually at night, sit on their sun loungers and just be near each other. That was it.

Goldie would close his eyes and nap, or else sketch on a drawing pad; Holly would read a magazine or play on a pocket-games console. They chatted occasionally, but more often than not, they would simply share each other’s silence. Entirely comfortable around each other because they were each other’s person.

That.

That was what I wanted.

To find my person.

Someone who “got” me the way those two “got” each other.

But where? Where do I even begin to look for that?

I knew with one hundred percent certainty that was not Josh. He was not my person.

Not the person I wanted to share my silences with.

“What happened to that shroom fae you liked?” Goldie asked as though reading my mind, or at least reading where my mind had been heading next.

“He’s . . . decidedly not interested in me.”

“Bummer,” he said, taking another drag on the joint.

I laughed, hollow and forced. “Yeah. I need to move on from him. Thought that’s what I was doing tonight, but...”

He passed me the joint again as he blew out his smoke. “Maybe. Though, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. You can’t fight it. Fuck knows, I’ve tried to fight it.”

“I don’t want to fight it, though,” I found myself saying. “I just want it to be easy. I’m ready for it.” I leant back on the sun lounger and cupped my palms around my mouth. “Come and get me!” I yelled into the night.

Goldie gave a lazy, one-sided smirk. “It’ll happen soon. I swear that’s how it works. You just have to keep your eye open for the opportunity, you know?”

“No,” I said, and he laughed.

And we sat there in silence as the drugs began to cradle me in their warm fuzzy blankets, making everything—Josh, Claude, work, life—seem decidedly and deliciously insignificant.

I shut my eyes and let myself get swept under the euphoria of the buzz. When I opened them again, the sun was up, Goldie was no longer on the lounger next to me, and when I went downstairs to my apartment, Josh was no longer in my bed.

Slightly Miffed Bees

Claude

The box on the reception desk hummed. Like, vibrated. Like the U-rail tracks seconds before a train pulled up. Simultaneously, both high- and low-pitched frequencies. The address label read:Mr J Dupont. Care of The Night Cap Bed and Breakfast.

It was really none of my business what the box contained.

Willow and Oggy had told me to wait in the reception area, and after they’d finished serving breakfast they would accompany me to the ley lines. Then, hopefully, whatever the heck I was meant to be doing twice a year to save the house and its occupants would simply click into place. I wasn’t optimistic.

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