Page 73 of The Boy Who Loved Wicked
Phoenix
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
~Aristotle
Pulling into the lake house driveway, I threw the car in park, took a deep breath, and dug into my duffle bag for the key Sebastian had given me a year ago.
It was the weekend after Thanksgiving, the anniversary of when Bash and I had come here, and with all that had happened over the past week, it was where I needed to be. Even if I had to be there alone.
Safrin had been giving me the cold shoulder, and I lived my waking hours teetering on the edge of a panic attack wondering if he would change his mind.
Sebastian and I were vigilant about not speaking to one another. I’d even stopped participating in class.
I’d already made up my mind to get through these next couple weeks of the semester, and then work on transferring schools. Denwin University wasn’t worth the pain. I’d transfer out of state, and deal with commuting until graduation. At least I’d get to be with Bash.
But then I’d received the department’s email, the night before Thanksgiving, alerting students to Sebastian’s resignation. Effective immediately for personal reasons.
I thought I’d be sick. I rushed to the toilet but could only manage a dry heave. I couldn’t face him. Not now. Not after costing him yet another job, his dream job at that. I needed a couple days to myself first.
I stepped inside, and my bag slipped from my shoulder as my body tensed. The fireplace was going, and there were at least a dozen shoe boxes covering the kitchen island.
Inside were letters, sealed and addressed to me. I tore the lid off of each box. More letters jammed inside, return senderSebastian.My brows curved in on themselves.
“Sebastian!” No answer. With a trembling hand I ripped one open, my lips moved in silence as my eyes flew across the page. Then another. And another. “Oh, my God.” I sank to the floor with a death grip on the counter’s edge, breathing and counting backward, then with a surge, I took all the letters across the open room to the living area and worked my way through them like a timer had been set. That’s where Sebastian found me almost two hours later. Enveloped by his letters, buried by the words on their pages.
“You wrote me a letter every day?” The telltale stinging behind my eyes told me I wouldn’t be able to strong-arm my emotions much longer. This reunion would be a hard one.
He looked over at the fireplace before setting down his groceries. I tracked his gaze.
“Were you going to burn these?” The letters creaked as I hugged them to my chest, I made a slight adjustment to my body on the floor, prepared to defend the others as well. Had I not shown up these thoughts of his would’ve remained unknown by me.
He scratched at the back of his neck like he did when nervous. “I never intended for you to read them. There’s some not so pretty things in there.” He remained by the back door, blinking over at me.
“You mean where you describe in detail the hell you’d rain down on my body for going to prom with Mason?” I remembered that night. I’d gotten home lonely and mad and had decided that I needed Sebastian enraged too. I’d posted a photo Theory had taken of Mason and I innocently hugging, knowing Bash would see it as anything but. I sat at my desk stripped to my underwear, jerking off to twisted visions of Sebastian’s possessiveness getting the best of him. I’d hiked my leg onto the armrest so I could dig my other hand into my briefs and finger myself while picturing him nailing me to a wall with his cock. It had taken effort to keep my eyes open, watching for some sign that Sebastian was there. My heel dug into my carpet, sending my chair back, banging into the closet door. And then there it was, a thumbs up from Plato The Great. And I came. Some may have thought that to be a sign of support, but no one knew Bash like me. That was his way of letting me know that he knew, that he saw. And never in my life had I been so happy to be seen.
“Phoenix.”
My name on his lips brought me back to the lake house. I grabbed another one of his not-so-pretty letters. “Or when you cataloged every blemish on my body down to,” I read from the page in my hand, “‘the beauty mark between his pinky toe.’” I snatched another letter, swiping roughly at my face. “Or your weekend trips to the park where you read your father’s diary near a frozen pond and rolled down the hill, crying for me when you reached the bottom alone?”
“Phoenix, please,” he choked on his words, and I pushed on.
Another letter. I was openly sobbing by now. “Or...or when you wrote ‘Once our journey of self-discovery is over, we’ll be anus. A family. Emily and her happiness will be there too. We’ll sail the rocky waters and navigate the turbulent skies together. Because the best things in life are the people you love, and I’ll have that. And the best part of a long journey is coming back home. And Phoenix is my home.’” The sheet of paper floated from my hand, no sign of turbulence during its flight to the ground where the shores weren’t rocky. We would make this work. He wanted to make this work.
I took him in with a different lens then. Because for the first time in so infinitely long, I believed I had it all now. I would no longer have toseehim but not have him. The new and improved parts of him and also the pieces that would always stay the same could be mine now. Minestill.
Dark and handsome, not even his scruff could hide that. He’d aged, not physically but emotionally. Maybe spiritually too. The changes were internal but presented themselves outward. The soft cotton t-shirt he wore again in preference to a suit, which told me he didn’t take life so seriously anymore. Still stoic and contemplative, which I suspected was a part of who he was, what made him endearing, and what made his moments of vulnerability all the more intoxicating.
If we were kids on a playground, he’d be the one with his head down, kicking at the earth with the toe of his shoe. I’d like to think I’d close my book and ask if he wanted to play, bringing him out of his shell. We’d have rolled down hills. We’d have been kindred spirits.
“Can we be together now? Can the pain end?”
“Yes, my love.” Finally, he found his way over to me. Kneeling, taking my face in his capable hands. “I’ve missed you, Phoenix. Terribly so.”
“Then show me.”
“I plan to spend the rest of my life doing exactly that.”
I nodded, my face contorting in the battle lost to another round of tears. “Make love to me, Sebastian. Surrounded by these letters.”Surrounded by love.
