“So what happened with Hannah? She said that you were upset.”
Ippy instantly felt sour. “She asked you to talk to me.”
Caelum nodded. “Yes. But I’d have come anyway.”
Ippy looked over at the boy and wondered why that would be. No, actually Caelum wasn’t a boy anymore. At four years older than him, Caelum was a man now. And Ippy had to start thinking of him like that. They weren’t kids rushing off to go save Hannah’s selkie anymore. She was an adult now, so was Caelum, and he was still him. Forever too young and trying to catch up to his best friend. “I told her I loved her.”
Caelum looked surprised. “What’d she say?”
Ippy turned his head to stare up at the clouds, refusing to look away. “That she cared about you and it wouldn’t be fair. I don’t understand. We’ve always said that we loved each other. Why is this time different?”
“Maybe because you love her as more than a friend?” Caelum offered him.
Ippy frowned. He didn’t know what kind of love that was. He’d always loved her. Always wanted to spend time with her. How was that any different now? “I don’t understand.”
“Me neither most of the time,” Caelum admitted. He sounded like he was laughing and Ippy turned his head to look at him. He was laughing, and his smile was big enough to take over his whole face.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Caelum said, sitting up and quickly getting to his feet above Ippy.
“I want to stay like this,” Ippy countered.
Caelum smiled and slowly shook his head. “Wish we could, Ippy. But you’re about to be woken up.”
And just like that Ippy found himself pulled out of the dream and roughly shaken awake. Bleary eyed, groggy and irritated, he looked up at his mom as she stood over his bed. He reached for his notebook, sticking out of his bag where he’d left it, but she laid into him before he could even start to ask her what she wanted.
“Your teacher called,” she said.
Ippy flinched. That was her angry voice and he could figure out what was coming. Grounding, extra chores, more homework—
“You are not to see Hannah Glass outside of pack functions anymore,” she quickly said, her voice stern as Ippy stared up at her, not believing her words.
This time he did go for his notebook and quickly scribbled out that she was his best friend. His mom looked at the message before shaking her head, making Ippy’s stomach do really strange things.
“I don’t care. She’s a bad influence on you. I thought you two would have grown up and hopefully even grown apart since that stunt she pulled when you were just a child. Kidnapping my son. She should have been thrown in jail. But no, of course precious little Hannah Glass didn’t face any real consequences. And now she’s fighting at the alpha’s house and you aren’t paying attention in class. Well, Phillip, I’ve had enough. This is over. No more friendship with her. She’s not even a wolf. You should be friends with people like yourself. Like other wolves. She’ll never understand who you are. I should have done this a long time ago. I just never thought it would get this far. Well, that was my mistake. And now I know better. No, Phillip, this is final. You are not to see that girl again. I will not have her and her father’s beliefs being pushed onto you. Inclusion. Really. And this used to be such a good pack once.” She was still muttering and shaking her head as she left his room with Ippy staring after her.
His hands shook in his lap and he reached for his phone, intent on texting Samson and telling him that he needed to do something about this, that he couldn’t lose Hannah. But as he held his phone between trembling fingers he couldn’t make them work. If he told Samson, then his parent’s beliefs would get out. Samson got rid of people like his parents, and he’d have to go with them. It wouldn’t just be about not being friends with Hannah. It would be not seeing her ever again. He curled onto his side on the bed and cried until his father picked him up and made him come down to dinner an hour later.
He didn’t want to eat, especially not when it was salmon. He hated salmon. Hated all fish. They tasted weird on his tongue. Too much salt. And he was never full after eating them. His mom knew that he hated eating fish and she’d made it anyway.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” his father asked him.
Ippy shook his head and pulled out his phone, quickly typing a message before showing it to his dad. He didn’t like fish.
His dad started eating and shrugged off his note. “Too bad. This is dinner. Your mom has gone through a lot of trouble for this meal. The least you could do is eat it.”
Ippy crossed his arms over his chest and hung his head. He didn’t want it. He wouldn’t eat it.
His mother banged a spoon on the table to get his attention. He glanced briefly at her before staring at the fish in front of him that was making him sick with its smells.
“Now, Phillip, you’re going to eat this meal or you can go upstairs and not eat dinner,” she told him.
Fair enough. Ippy got up from the table and walked right back upstairs. He didn’t close his door behind him. That wasn’t allowed in the house, even when he was alone. But he hadn’t understood why his mom had insisted on that when Hannah came over either. He could hear his parents talking downstairs and put on his headphones and some music to ignore their words. People lied all the time, maybe they were lying about what they were saying about him too. He didn’t like lying or liars, but if they were saying the truth, if they really meant all those words—he turned up the music and closed his eyes. Moments later, his parents were gone from his present.
“You’re back early.”
Ippy got to his feet and went to where Caelum was standing with his back to the surf. The ocean was a dark blue behind him, an impossible blue, like the kind seen in paintings. Ippy stared at it for several long minutes before turning to look at Caelum.
“Do you love her?” he asked Caelum, dreading the answer because he knew the truth behind what Caelum would likely say.
Caelum crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Ippy.
He tried not to fidget under that attention.
Finally Caelum nodded. “Yeah. I guess I do. But I think in a big way I fell in love with her when you both came to rescue me. I’m not sure how much she’s told you about when I come to visit, but we’ve been spending nearly every night together since I came back here. She still needs her sleep and I can’t spend all day in her mind so it’s only a few hours at a time, but I like to think we’re pretty close. Well, as close as we can be while we’re an ocean apart.”
Ippy nodded. He’d been afraid of that. “You can’t be mean to her. And you can’t hurt her.”
Caelum put his arm around Ippy’s shoulders and before Ippy could pull away, Caelum’s hand was in his hair, pulling on his curls. He hadn’t felt that since the car ride to the ocean when they’d dropped Caelum off the last night he’d seen him. Ippy closed his eyes and enjoyed the touch as the sound of the surf rumbled through his mind. This was nice. If only he could stay like this for a while longer. He tilted his head back, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face. Even if it wasn’t real and just a dream, this felt nice.
His eyes shot open as he felt Caelum’s lips on his cheek. He was out of Caelum’s hold a second later as he stared at the other man, his hand pressed against the cheek Caelum had kissed. “What was that for?” Ippy demanded.
Caelum looked startled as well. “You didn’t want me to?”
Ippy didn’t know what he wanted. But if Caelum was with Hannah and Hannah was with him, then Caelum shouldn’t be kissing Ippy’s cheek. “Hannah wouldn’t like it. Don’t do it.”
Caelum’s smile was slow in coming and Ippy didn’t like it as much as his big smiles. “She and I have talked. And I’ll get to that. But can I show you something first?”
Ippy nodded, but hesitated to follow him when Caelum turned and headed into the surf. When Caelum turned back to him and held out his hand, though, Ippy did follow him, g
oing into the sea until his knees were sloshed with frothy water and his jeans were soaked. “What am I looking for?” he asked Caelum as he took the guy’s hand.
Caelum’s black eyes shone and he pointed to where a group of seals were playing in the surf a dozen or so yards away from them. “That’s my cousin and his wives. They’re polygamists.”
“Like lions. One lion and multiple lionesses,” Ippy said, remembering a show he’d watched recently about different forms of family groups that were found in nature.
Caelum nodded and the seals disappeared.
“Where’d they go?” Ippy asked as he put his free hand over his eyes to shield the glare from the sun as he looked for them.
“They were never really here. This is my world that I’ve projected into your dream. I’m awake here while you sleep there. I’ll teach you how to manipulate your dreams, too. Then you can show me your world, too.”
Ippy nodded, instantly thinking of the things he wanted to show Caelum. “But why show them to me?”
Caelum gave him a soft smile. “Because there are all types of families. I like Hannah, but I also like you. And I think, given the chance, we could make that work. If you like me, too.”
Ippy yanked back his hand and clutched it to his stomach. “You’re gay?”
Caelum lifted a single shoulder in a little shrug. “Bi actually.”
“And your family doesn’t mind?” Ippy asked as he stared at Caelum.
He laughed and shook his head. “I think they’d accept whatever I wanted in life at this point. They’re just grateful I’m home. And they want to meet the werewolf and the human that rescued me someday. So I hope you’ll come visit.”
Ippy shook his head. “My parents would never let me.”
Caelum nodded. “So come over when you’re an adult. Hannah said you two were talking about coming and staying over here. The three of us. Like it was that night when we were all kids.”
“We were running for our lives,” Ippy reminded him with a smile.
“Yeah, but remember how much fun it was?” Caelum added with a wide grin that showed off his teeth.
Ippy wasn’t so sure that it had been fun. He remembered being afraid, hiding in a forest, being in a cage and not knowing if he was ever going to get out again. But he also remembered holding hands with his friends and being touched in a way that Hannah hadn’t done to him before or since then. She didn’t play with his hair, not like Caelum did. And he liked it when Caelum touched him like that.
“How’d you know that you were bi?” Ippy asked him.
Caelum took his hand and led him back out of the surf. Ippy thought getting dry would take a while but when he looked down at his legs as soon as he was out of the surf he was dry again. “Dream ocean.”
Caelum smiled. “Yeah. Dream everything here. But this is where I am right now, so it’s the easiest thing for me to share with you.” He sat down and Ippy went with him. “I started to have an idea when I met you, actually.”
Ippy shivered and kept his attention on the ocean in front of them. “Then?”
Caelum leaned forward and Ippy watched him out of the corner of his eye. “Then I figured it out. It wasn’t just that you two rescued me. I went on a date with a guy last year. I was attracted to him. But he wasn’t you. So then I knew.”
Ippy didn’t understand. Not at all. He didn’t know how anyone could want to be with him, despite what Hannah sometimes told him. Because it was what his parents said that was so much louder. They were so loud that sometimes they hurt his ears with what they said. “I think you’re lying. And I don’t like that,” he said as he got to his feet and brushed the imaginary sand off his legs.
Caelum looked up at him. “Why would I do that?”
Good question, and one that Ippy didn’t have an answer for. But it made more sense than Caelum actually wanting to date him. Or being attracted to him. “You can’t want me,” Ippy softly said, his voice barely louder than the waves.
“Why not?” Caelum asked him.
Ippy felt his face pinch. “I’m not normal. I’m autistic.”
“And I turn into a seal,” Caelum reminded him flatly. “Normal is relative.”
“People like normal,” Ippy countered, knowing it was the truth.
Caelum snorted, got to his feet, then tossed a rock into the sea. “Name one person that you know that you’d consider normal.”
He couldn’t, and Caelum had to have known that.
Ippy came awake as his music player ran out of battery. When he took his headphones off his parents were no longer fighting about him, which was more than nice, but he did have a few text messages that he’d missed on his phone. Only one person ever texted him and he didn’t know what to say to her. But he couldn’t just ignore Hannah either so he told her the truth.
We can’t be friends anymore.
There were a lot of messages after that, each sounding more hurt than the last, but he put his phone aside after turning it on silent and let himself cry into his pillow.
Chapter Three
He managed to avoid her and her texts for a week. But then on Tuesday afternoon she was waiting in his room when he came home from school.
How’d you get in? he asked her as he dropped his bag onto the floor by his bed. His parents weren’t home and wouldn’t be home for a few hours either, so they’d be okay. But as much as he didn’t want to obey his parents, he didn’t want her knowing their reasons, either.
She didn’t move from where she was sitting on his bed, his pillows propped up behind her. “Your window was unlocked. I climbed up the drainpipe like I’ve been doing for years. I’m mad at you.”
Yeah, he could tell that easily enough by the hard lines in her face. He nodded and sat down next to her on the bed with his shoulders against a pillow which she moved from behind herself and propped up in a silent hint for him to sit down. They weren’t touching, as much as he wanted to.
But she didn’t know that and wrapped her arms around him anyway. She didn’t ask and for once he didn’t get mad at her. It was just so nice to have her holding him again, to be touched by anyone at all. She was the only one that touched him anymore. No one else really even tried. He pressed his face into her neck and tried not to cry. It didn’t work for too long.
“What the hell happened?” Hannah demanded. Her words were harsh even though her voice was soft. He shook his head, refusing to tell her. When she started to pull away, though he grabbed the back of her shirt, not letting her go so easily. She didn’t try to get away again until he let her go nearly ten minutes later, when he pulled away to wipe at his eyes.
Can’t talk about it, he told her, answering her earlier question.
She made an angry noise and flopped back on his pillows. “Are you mad at me then? Can you at least tell me that much?”
He shook his head and she sighed loudly.
“You’re being difficult,” she grumbled, narrowing her eyes at him.
Ippy hoped she didn’t see through him. He didn’t want her knowing what was going on at all, and he couldn’t even begin to tell her, either. So he changed the topic to something he’d been wanting to talk to her about all week. When I talked to Caelum he said he liked us both. She didn’t say anything, only nodded and took his hand. But I don’t know what that means.
Hannah smiled at him. “Caelum’s bi, so he likes girls and guys. I was reading some forums online and people were saying that some bi people like girls and guys unequally so they may like girls more or guys more and some keep it pretty even. I think he likes guys more, but I’m not really sure. Caelum’s also pretty open to the idea of all of us being together. Which isn’t how I grew up, or you, but it’s how he did. And Evangeline has her guys, but we haven’t known them for more than a few years. You and I have talked about it at times, but it’s still a bit odd. You’re both my best friends, but I don’t know about having a relationship with you both.”
You mean with
me, Ippy reminded her, remembering that she couldn’t say that she loved him back before.
Hannah turned onto her side to look at him better, but he wasn’t looking back at her. Instead he was looking in the mirror across from his bed, staring at himself and seeing all of his flaws. He’d wondered a lot of the time if his autism was visible. It wasn’t, at least he didn’t think so, but he still saw it when he looked at himself, like it was a hazy thing sitting there on his skin and telling everyone around him that he wasn’t normal at all.
“That’s not what I meant, Ippy,” Hannah told him as she gave his hand a little squeeze.
This time he did look at her. Then what did you mean? He wanted to say that she’d pretty much said it. But she hadn’t, and jumping to that would be a lie.
She licked her lips. “Caelum and I, we’ve been together for the past few years. My dads kind of know, but I don’t tell them everything. That would be too weird. They know I have dreams about him sometimes, even that he comes to visit me in them. But not that I see him pretty much every night or what we do when we’re together. They can’t stop me from sleeping or from dreaming, but it feels special to have Caelum like that. Like he’s all mine, and it’s just us in that little world and no one can intrude.”
Ippy nodded—that was how he’d felt when Caelum had come to visit him, too. I did that with him too.
“I know. He told me. I don’t want to be unfair to you, though, when I’m with him. Or anything like that. I don’t know what it would be like when we’re all together in Ireland. What if we can’t stand it? What if we fight about the stupidest crap? Like what movie to go see?” Hannah shrugged and turned over onto her stomach.
Ippy didn’t know the answer. He hadn’t even thought about that. Or what side of the bed to sleep on.
She blushed bright red and glanced up at him. “You’ve thought about that, too?”
He didn’t really know why she was blushing. About who gets to be by the window if there is one? Yes.
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