Page 119 of The Slug Crystal
Jake's brow furrows. "You think he's been trying to contact you this whole time?"
"Only one way to find out." My thumb hovers over the screen for a heartbeat before I navigate to my blocked contacts. Alex's name sits there. With a quick tap, I unblock his number.
The effect is immediate and overwhelming. My phone erupts in a cascade of notification sounds. Dings and buzzes overlap like an electronic symphony gone haywire. Seventeen text messages, two voicemails, and four missed calls flood in all at once. The device vibrates so violently in my hand that I nearly drop it.
"Jesus," Ben mutters, peering over my shoulder. "Someone's been persistent."
My hands shake slightly as I scroll through the message previews, each one a tiny window into a reality I've been completely disconnected from. The timestamps tell their own story; a barrage of messages sent at first, then a couple more sporadic messages sent over the last few weeks.
"What do they say?" Luca asks, moving closer until his thigh presses against the couch beside me.
I take a deep breath and open the earliest message, dated three days after I thought I'd transformed my ex into a gastropod.
"I came by your apartment on Friday night to drop off your favorite hoodie. I was trying to be nice. I heard you and your friends through the door doing some kind of... spell? Chanting? I thought you were having a weird girls' night, but then I heard my name. It sounded like you were trying to curse me or something. I almost knocked, but then I had a better idea. I felt a little bad for eavesdropping. But then… I thought a little prank might lighten the tension between us. I went to that exotic pet store by your house and bought a snail, they didn’t have slugs, and dropped it in a pile of my clothes in the apartment."
"There's more," I say, “I need my key back now, though Emma. Also, did you take the snail? I can’t find it in my apartment, and I’ve torn the entire place apart. I don’t want a snail carcass in here that’s going to start to smell.”
"You've got to be kidding me," Jake mutters, running a hand through his hair in disbelief.
Marco adjusts his glasses, his scholarly brow furrowed in concentration. "He appears to have been aware of the situation from the beginning."
“It keeps going,” I say, then read the rest. “Emma, are you ignoring me now, or is something wrong? I just want my key back so we can both move on. I'm going on vacation with Tyler and Mark in the Hamptons. My phone's been acting up, so if you've been trying to reach me, that's why. But seriously, Emma, don’t go into my apartment again without me here.'"
"The Hamptons," Ben repeats, a note of derision in his voice. "Of course, he was in the Hamptons while we were schlepping his supposed gastropod self across Europe."
I continue reading, my voice growing tighter with each message. "Emma, did you call my work and tell them I had a family emergency? What is wrong with you?"
The final message, sent just yesterday: "'It's been weeks, Emma. I don't know if you're still mad or if this is some elaborate counter-prank, but I'm done trying to get my key back. I changed my locks. For what it's worth, I'm sorry about the snail thing. It was immature. But this silent treatment is extreme, even for you.'"
I lower the phone, my face burning with a mixture of embarrassment and indignation. The men exchange looks of stunned disbelief, processing this new information.
"So let me get this straight," Luca says, breaking the silence. "He came to return a hoodie, overheard your crystalritual, and decided the appropriate response was to... leave a snail and disappear?"
"Who even does that?" Jake adds, his protective instincts clearly flaring.
"Apparently, my ex," I reply, my voice rising with each word. "My immature, prank-loving ex who thought it would be hilarious to make me think I'd transformed him into a snail!"
Marco clears his throat. "To be fair, it does seem he attempted to clarify the situation multiple times."
"After I was already in Venice!" I counter, anger building like a physical force in my chest. "After I'd already been carrying that snail around in a terrarium, believing it was him!"
Ben snorts. "You've got to appreciate the cosmic irony, though. If you hadn't blocked his number?—"
"Don't," I warn, but there's no stopping Ben when he's found an angle.
"—We wouldn't be here. All of us. Together." He gestures around the villa. "In Italy. With approximately fifty baby blue snails."
The reality of our situation hits me all at once. "We've been carrying around a random snail around Italy because my ex is an immature jerk." My voice rises with each word, indignation replacing embarrassment. "We've been searching for a witch who doesn't exist to reverse a transformation that never happened!"
"I don't think it was a waste," Jake says quietly, his steady gaze meeting mine. "Not all of it."
Something in his tone makes me pause, my righteous anger momentarily derailed. I look around at the four men who've become so much more than traveling companions in the past few weeks. My gaze lands on Jake with his unwavering support, moving next to Marco with his scholarly devotion to our cause, then to Ben with his protective humor,and lastly to Luca with his grand solutions to impossible problems.
"Maybe not all of it," I concede, sinking back onto the couch. My anger starts to leak away, fading as I process Jake's quiet words.
My phone buzzes again in my hand, likely another delayed message from Alex. I set it face down on the coffee table, not ready to deal with him yet. The terrarium sits beside it, the blue parent snail now surrounded by its miniature offspring, all of them blissfully unaware of their role in our absurd saga.
A small, reluctant laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It bubbles up from somewhere deep in my chest, past all the layers of embarrassment and anger and confusion. The sound surprises me, almost as if it's coming from someone else.
