Page 6 of The Bairwick Witches
“But I also don’t care. For sex, sure, I’ll rock his world. Leave him thinking and feeling me for days. But what are we going to talk about in all the space between the sex?”
“Tilda Swinton?”
Sky grumbled. “Why do I ask you? Fuck, why am I even looking?” Sex he wanted, a relationship maybe, but the headache in procuring either, not so much.
“You’ve only been gone a few years; didn’t you have a small circle ofbuddiesbefore you left?”
Schuyler did indeed, though he’d avoided reaching out until he felt more ready to talk about everything in his life. He laid-back and threw the phone onto the far end of the couch, staring up at the swinging plants above him, all being misted by sprinklers, the droplets of water lightly falling onto his skin. He didn’t know what to tell anyone when they asked what was up. Was he dating? Was he looking for a husband again? Was he looking for fun? He didn’t mourn the former relationship, just the time and self he’d lost to it, so why refrain from going out? In turn, however, what was there to go out to?
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” Schuyler confessed, saying the thought that plagued him endlessly. “I feel like I do, then I look around and I go…oh…guess not.I’m lost. In myself, in this world. I don’t even know.”
“Monkey,” Beau said lovingly, using Schuyler’s childhood nickname. “You’re home now. You’re in the right place to figure ev-ery-thing out. That’s what home is for.” Beau moved the concoction to the bubbling cauldron and stirred furiously. “That’s why we always come back—to recenter. To find ourselves again.
“You aren’t you right now; you’re not the silly, goofball we’re used to. I’ve seen you in every era of your life, but right now, you’re a stone-cold curmudgeon, you’re bitter, and you’re angry, and baby, anger is sadness with nowhere to go. Ask yourself, what do youneedto get back to you?”
“I don’t know.” Feeling defeated, Schuyler stood up and grabbed his phone. “But I hear what you’re saying. I’m glad I have you, Marshall, and Estelle to come back to. I’m gonna go.” He left before Beau could respond, knowing his uncle would want to dive in deeper, and Sky wasn’t up for the cross-examination.
He returned to his room at the top of the turret which overlooked the street, Schuyler stood fresh from the shower, looking out the windows, lost in the same cycle of thoughts which followed him all afternoon and were not washed away.
Bairwick stretched out before him, and beyond the tallest buildings on Main Street was the south side. He was home, as Beau pointed out, and maybe Bairwick could help him find his equilibrium again. In fairness, in the past few weeks, he’d not ventured anywhere but the house and the shop. He’d not visited any of his old haunts. He exhaled as he scratched his ass and resigned himself to getting out of the house.
Using one of the seven pathways connecting the town, Schuyler passed under Main Street and onto the south side of Bairwick. While the north side mainly consisted of residences and a few eateries, the south side was the town proper: resident businesses, town officials, bars, clubs, the library, and schools. Beyond that lay the farmlands, where everything they ate came from.
He took the first right after exiting the pathway and, within a block, strode past his old high school, Bairwick High. A wash of mixed emotions fell over him as he did, and instead of heading to the library, he took an old hiking trail that ran behind the school and looped around the south side.
Schuyler took in the serene beauty of the forest nestled directly against the trail. During the town’s inception, the residents relocated the trees they’d removed to build their infrastructure, transplanting them to other spots in the forest. And the forest repaid the action in kind, growing thicker and impassable to create a barrier around the ever-growing town.
Memories awoke as he walked, cinematically aided by the somber set of songs his playlist had queued up on its own. Teen years are messy. He passed familiar spots: the track field of the school where Danny Limon tried to beat his ass, but Schuyler bested his in their duel; the log at the entrance to the trail where Trisha Dolez admitted her feelings for him—andher subsequent sobbing at his confirmed homosexuality. She had made him feel awful, as if he’d somehow deceived her, despite never showing any interest.
He recalled how easy those years were in retrospect, how at the time everything felt as if it were the end of the world, and now those same scenarios involved people who weren’t even around, including Devion. Schuyler’s chest tightened. He hadn’t thought about how reminiscing would open the floodgates torecollections of his high school boyfriend: Devion Kincade, the dreamiest boy in their eleventh-grade English class. Black hair and piercing blue eyes, a jawline for days, a strong nose, taught body, and the darkest eyebrows and fullest lips Schuyler had ever seen. Traits he would repeatedly look for in other men over the years.
They hadn’t gotten along at first; they were paired up to do a project onOrwell’s 1984, presenting diary entries as if they were characters in the story. Schuyler wanted to make their characters lovers for a more dramatic effect. Devion wanted them to be plotting a rebellion only. Neither wanted to budge, and there was no compromise.
Schuyler traversed the curvy trail, approaching the gnarled and crooked tree that grew in the center of it. The same spot where they had their final argument about the project. The spot where Devion kissed him.
Talk about being stunned. I’d called him a controlling asshole and for a split second thought he was going to hit me. But instead, he just stood in front of me, glaring. Then his hand was around my waist, and his lips on mine. My first kiss.
The first of so, so many.
Ciati la boca! It was the first kiss with my first love.
After the kiss, everything changed; they became inseparable. Schuyler and Devion moved slowly, a rarity in the sexually charged ’90s. Kisses on walks, stolen glances, holding hands, everything they did, they did together.
Thenthe nightarrived, one weekend when Beau and Marshall were out of town with the coven.
There he was, in my bedroom, sitting on my bed, shirtless and casual. Me nervous. Candyman playing on the tiny TV I had in my bedroom. He read a spell book he’d found whileI watched the movie, but remained focused on him. We were awkward and silent. Both of us knew the moment was coming. He was smooth. Inching closer, acting as if the movie was scary. His hand on my leg, giving me a squeeze every so often. This was the first time he called me “babe.” He undressed me, sliding off my shirt. Our pants came off. There in the hot July evening, in my room, in our underwear. Every kiss felt different, a preamble for the excitement to come. We lay on the bed. Hands exploring, flushed with desire. Lips never separating. I felt safe and sexy, and we spent all night within each other.
When the opening chords of Jewel’sYou Were Meant for Mestarted, a song Sky associated with Devion, he snapped out of the daze as he smiled, until he realized he’d wandered the trail and had reached the wrought iron gates of the Witches’ Garden Cemetery. A large swath of rolling land dedicated to the final resting place of aged, but mainly fallen, witches. He hadn’t visited for a while, and the guilt of that began to pull at him. Still, he knew the way to Devion’s gravesite by heart: the third hilltop under the willow tree.
School had ended, and they were free, with their lives ahead of them. A future proposed. Plans made. Until one night, Beau burst into his room without knocking wearing an expression Sky hadn’t seen since that night in the hospital with his mother. The news of Devion dying in a car accident devastated him. All their magic. All the power at their fingertips to adjust and manipulate the elements, and still, an idiot in a car took his first love away.
Time builds a bridge over the hole grief leaves within us, and Schuyler shakily moved on. Devion’s kiss was the first time life changed who he thought he was; his death marked the second.
“Hey, babe.” Sky sat at the foot of Dev’s grave and apologized for being away so long, before catching him up on thestate of all things. He lamented the future he’d once imagined—a life with Dev. Maybe it wouldn’t have lasted as long as Beau and Marshall’s. Maybe it would have lasted longer. He was angry that the chance to find out had been taken from him. It took a long time to recover from such an abrupt loss, and over the years, he’d found himself in the arms of many lovers, always in search of the love he’d so badly wanted to feel again.
Time drifted on without him realizing, and when Schuyler finally stood to say his goodbyes, the sun was already setting. With tears in his eyes, he kissed his fingers and placed them on the etched letters of Devion’s name on the smooth granite gravestone, declaring his love. A love that had never faded and made walking away hard.
Leaving, he heard the familiar cracks and sparks of a duel occurring somewhere in the cemetery, a popular place for witches to duke it out. Rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness, he started back on the path, pulling out his phone, he started to message his old circle of sexual buddies. Fucking would be the best way to combat the sadness he was feeling.
