by H. S. Valley
She lays out some house rules and gathers us into a circle, having each of us space ourselves out evenly and keep our hands visible. ‘It eliminates sneaky behaviour,’ she says. Presumably because no-one can slide a hand into their pocket and nudge the bottle into a favourable position with magic. She’s a bit wrong, of course, because all the Elementals who are here – plus Elliott, apparently – could absolutely move an almost empty bottle with nothing but air, but it seems confrontational to mention it.
The first few rounds are pretty safe. Ana’s first spin points to Matt, who looks startled despite the entire purpose of the game and quickly video chats his girlfriend back home for permission to play. He gets the all-clear – he can do anything he’d be OK with her doing back in Taranaki. It’s declared a decent overall rule for couples, and all affected parties agree to it. In a telling turn of events, Manaia, Sam and Silvia all look discreetly over at us when we don’t volunteer our immediate agreement as well. I ignore them. Elliott and I might be sharing a couch, but we aren’t actually touching. You could fit a whole other person between us.
The turn moves around the circle to the left and Manaia kisses Corey. On her left, Silvia kisses Hana, Sam kisses Hana, Hana kisses Matt, then Nikau gets to spin and ends up kissing Hana, who swears she isn’t doing this on purpose. Elliott stretches his legs out and burrows his feet under my arse while a clutch of Elementals I don’t really know that well take their turns.
It goes past us with no major embarrassments and all the way back around the circle. At some point Elliott tugs his foot free and impishly slides it behind my back, his fluffy socks tickling my skin. The only way I can stop him is to pull his feet onto my lap and hold them there while he wriggles. Nikau spins again and kisses Manaia before he hands over to his left again, to Corey. I’m too busy thinking about it being my turn soon to realise when his spin has landed on me and I have to do something now.
‘Tim?’ Corey asks. He’s kneeling, facing me, and I hope he doesn’t take my confusion for horror. ‘Sorry?’ he says.
‘No, it’s fine, I was –’ What do I say? I was distracted by my impending divorce? ‘Nothing.’
I close my eyes and Corey must think I do it for him and not because I’m embarrassed, because he leans in then, quickly, and there’s a girlish ‘whoop’ from the circle after a couple of seconds pass and he’s still on me. Even then, I’ve barely recovered from the surprise before he pulls away, flushed and incapable of looking me in the eye. I force myself to wonder if there’s anything in it – if he’s actually into guys – because objectively, he’s not a bad option for when all this shit with Elliott falls apart. Clever enough, decent looking, and not too much taller than me. I’m half hoping I’ll land on him with my spin because his lips were soft and he seems pretty normal and maybe it’ll make me feel better to have a foot out the door already.
What I wasn’t hoping for, after pushing Elliott’s feet away and leaning out of my seat to swipe at the bottle, was for it to land on him. But it does.
I don’t know how to kiss him without it being obvious we’ve done it before, and the thought of people thinking we’re together when we’re on the cusp of being separated is too depressing. I can’t tell what Elliott’s expecting by the look on his face when I manage to get back onto the couch. Maybe he’s thinking ‘inelegant as ever there, Te Maro’. Or maybe, if Dad’s right, and he loves me, he’s waiting to see if I’m happy to kiss him in front of all of my friends.
So I stalk towards him on all fours, knees sinking into the couch cushions as my hands find the armrest behind his head. His expression goes neutral, which probably means he’s freaking out and doesn’t want anyone to know. He’s surrounded: I’m hovering above him with my thighs either side of his legs and my wrists almost touching his shoulders. He’s trapped. If he protests, then we’ll look more suspicious. And if he calls my bluff and tries to sex it up, I might just do it.
So all I do at first is say, ‘Hi,’ and lean a little closer.
And then I kiss him.
Properly.
Like I would if we were alone, except we aren’t; we’re in a room full of people and they’re all watching.
Silently. Waiting. Wondering, maybe, if there was more to it than an egg-baby. But they can’t be expecting the softest kiss I’ve ever delivered, or for Elliott’s eyelids to flutter shut, or for his hand to drift to my jaw, holding me there as he opens his mouth under mine and rises up in his seat. I know they can’t, because I didn’t, and I’ve kissed him before.
I don’t know how long it lasts, but I feel his tongue against mine and a gasp from the circle and the distinct sound of the lounge door closing before I bring my lips together and pull back. His pupils are blown wide and he looks … startled.
‘I’m never going to get my room back, am I?’ comes a voice from the entryway, and we turn simultaneously, our bodies frozen in position, to see Blake standing there with Lizzie’s dance-group friend. She has her hand wrapped around his arm and I reckon ex-friend is probably more accurate at this stage.
I retreat to my corner of the couch, Manaia staring at us still. I look over at Elliott and he seems … I don’t know. Maybe annoyed. I can’t tell if he’s plotting revenge or plotting what he’ll do once he can kiss me again. Maybe they’re the same thing.
Too dazed to contribute, the conversation about roomswapping happens without our input. This is the last night as we are; tomorrow everything goes back to normal. Eventually the hubbub settles, Blake and his new friend sit down and we all get back to it, though Manaia declares a switch to truth or dare. At one o’clock Hana dares everyone to go to bed, and we all grumble and mutter and crawl out of our seats with the finesse of pensioners.
We clear up the bottles and chip packets, and Ana and Silvia try to clean all the mugs with magic, despite being a little tipsy. Manaia hands me a pile of floor cushions and gathers a pile of her own, shoving me towards the storage cupboard in the corner. We’ve never put them back in there before and I wonder what her real objective is. She doesn’t beat around the bush with it.
‘Tim,’ she says, her voice low as she flings the cupboard door open, hiding us from the room. ‘If you hurt Elliott, I will kill you.’
‘What?’ The irony hits me like a brick. If anyone’s at risk of being hurt, it’s definitely me.
‘Don’t “what” me. You’re not an idiot,’ she snaps, loading her cushions in. ‘Not really. But if you don’t want him, and you lead him on, I will hex you until you have the brain capacity of a lopsided pavlova.’
‘OK …?’
‘I mean it,’ she says, taking my cushions and jamming them into the cupboard. ‘I will end you. I will make you sorry you ever touched him. I will make your dick cry fat, bloody tears.’
‘All right, all right.’
‘He’s waited long enough and he’s been through enough shit with Blake – I don’t need you adding to it.’ She snaps the door closed and smiles to cover up our secret chat. ‘Goodnight, Tim.’
‘Yeah. Night then,’ I say to her back as she flounces away, dragging Ana off towards the girls’ corridor.
‘You all right?’ Nikau says from my elbow.
When I turn, he’s right next to me, looking down with an expression of mild concern. I nod, not convinced but not wanting him to worry.
‘See you at breakfast,’ I say and give him a hug, because I bloody well need one. Bless him, he pats me firmly on the back and doesn’t say another word.
The next hour before Elliott and I have to meet Dad is weird. The game, that kiss, and what Manaia said are all hanging over me, but Elliott’s fallen asleep so I have nothing to distract me. Everything is quiet and it makes Meggan’s absence all the more obvious. Her little purple cot is still there, empty except for my T-shirts still rolled up in the bottom. It wasn’t long ago that I put them in there, and yet here I am. In bed with the guy I’ve been sleeping with, and marrying, and tonight I’ll be divorcing him. Add to that, his best friend thinks I’
m trying to lead him on. It’s not surprising I can’t sleep.
He’s curled against my side, his breath ghosting across my neck. His hair is tickling my ear and my arm is going to sleep under his head, but I don’t care. If this is the last night I get to hold him, then I’d put up with worse. We have no excuse to keep this up anymore. No Meggan, no more room sharing and, in a couple of hours, no magical approximation of marriage. Which means no more of this. And we’ll go back to being … what? Rivals? Or will we stay friends and I’ll spend the rest of the year pining, never far enough away to get over it?
I look down at him, peaceful in sleep, and wonder how I ever hated him. I try to think of anything he’s done to me directly, anything that wasn’t seventy per cent his stupid friends’ fault, anything I can cling to to push away the feeling building in my throat. Because if I don’t get to live with him, or be with him, maybe I want to at least stay married to him. And if I let myself want that, then I’m going to get it, because the magic isn’t as stupid as I am, and it’s going to know, and the reversal isn’t going to work.
I could tell him how I feel and hope he rejects me so viciously I can’t keep loving him. Or maybe I should ask him how he feels – maybe his indifference will hurt me enough that divorce will seem like a respite. Should I try now, before Dad’s around to overhear? Should I wait and let the undoing fail, then use the disappointment on my shackled husband’s face to change my mind?
There’s too much that might go wrong and no easy way out of any of it, so I’m almost glad when my phone beeps and my options diminish. Dad’s message says for us to meet him at the shuttle, so I roll out of bed and start pulling my boots on. I could say something now, but Elliott seems less than impressed that he has to be awake, and my most indulgent brain cells ignore all my uncertainty and pretend it’s because he’s sad we’re about to be unmarried. I’m my own worst enemy.
CHAPTER 35
THE UNKNOWN AND THE INFINITE
We’ve layered up, but it’s still cold in the corridor, and I want to reach out for Elliott’s arm and pull him close. I don’t. Even if I can’t control my feelings, I should at least control my hands.
There are lights on in the shuttle bay, and we see the Camry waiting for us, Dad loading things into the boot.
‘Morning,’ he says, looking far too OK with the ungodly hour.
‘Hey, Dad.’
‘Morning, Mr Te Maro.’
‘Elliott, as my son-in-law for the next hour, you can probably call me Henry.’
‘OK.’
It’s still weird hearing them talk to each other, let alone having Elliott call my dad by his first name. I should get used to it – they’re both going to have a lot to say when I inevitably screw this up.
‘Need a hand?’ I ask.
‘All good, son. I just needed to make sure we had a blanket and our feast for afterwards – gotta make sure we do this thing right. We’re ready now. Unless you remembered anything else?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘I see you’ve got your taonga,’ he says, pointing at the pounamu mere around my neck. ‘Were those the clothes you were wearing that night?’
‘Yeah, mostly.’
‘You were mostly wearing clothes that night?’ He wiggles his eyebrows and I die.
‘Dad.’ I give up and get in the car. I don’t know if this is worse than him being icked out or mad at us for violating his room, but it’s not fun.
Elliott gets in the back beside me and I make sure to keep my distance. There’s no point fuelling Dad’s sense of humour.
It’s been ages since I was driven all the way out of here in a normal car, so it’s interesting enough to keep me staring out the window the whole time. We cruise past the pedestrian exit where the shuttle bus drops us off to walk in through the woods, and it’s annoying how little time it takes to get to town from there. I get the need for secrecy and the increased risk of being seen if we drive the same van in and out multiple times a day, but I also resent the hour-long walk between the shuttle and the shops.
It’s a similarly short trip between the hidden on-ramp and the pub, and we find the old house easily. Dad pulls alongside and parks and Elliott asks how we’re going to do this without getting caught. Dad points out that if the locals had wanted to avoid a front-row seat to a divorce then maybe they shouldn’t have let two seventeen-year-olds get married. He also promises to be quiet and stick to the garden, though, so it might not be too bad.
Elliott picks the spot that feels the most familiar and dons his blanket, and I wish I could remember any part of our wedding so I had something to offer. He looks cute with the blanket draped over his head, though, a pale puff of curls poking out from underneath it, so at least I’ve probably remembered how I felt at the time.
Dad flicks through a notebook, pen between his teeth, an amorphous, blueish light hovering over his shoulder.
‘You kids ready?’ he mumbles around the pen.
It’s happening too fast and I still have no idea what to do. ‘Yeah.’
‘OK, so, Tim, you have your heirloom – your pounamu. Elliott, you said you were carrying something of your nan’s that night, did you bring it?’
‘No, it was –’ His eyes flick up to mine and then down to my left hand and my heart implodes a little. ‘The ring Tim is wearing was hers.’
I had assumed it was one of those expensive fashiony rings and that Elliott was just being edgy. The black stone and the angular setting seemed modern, masculine. Looking down at it now, though, I see something else: hints of Art Deco, as if the entire town of Napier had manifested in a piece of jewellery. I feel guilty for having taken it away from him and for being responsible for having something engraved in it so he won’t be able to forget any of this. Even if he has my dad’s ring on his hand, that’s only special because it’s Dad’s, and now that he’s back I don’t need it to remember him by.
‘OK, well, good that it’s with us. That’ll help ground your ancestral power here, where you stand.’
‘OK.’ Somehow Elliott looks more forlorn with the blanket on and I want to hug him, to make him feel better, even though it’s probably my fault he’s here and he’s sad. He’s going to be sadder soon, and that’s going to be my fault too.
Dad slips the notebook and pen into his pocket and gestures at us to give him our hands, then clasps each ring between thumb and forefinger. I curl my fist slightly so I don’t feel like it might slip off. He whispers a long incantation, and I don’t understand all of it, but the general gist of it seems to be ‘hey, Earth, please channel the power of a thousand generations of magic users so that I can fix my only son’s stupidity’.
But then he says ‘tēnā koe’ in a deep, reverent voice, and the feel of old magic permeates me, and I know we’re no longer just three men standing in someone else’s garden at stupid o’clock in the morning. Elliott feels it too and his face sort of crumples under the weight of it, so I reach out and take his other hand without even thinking. His fingers close around mine and he feels cold and his grip is too tight, but I squeeze back for a second before letting go, telling him I’m here too.
‘Are you ready?’ Dad asks, looking at each of us in turn.
Elliott nods, and I mimic him, because it’s too late now and I’m just going to have to let it fail. The whole thing seems so unfair, and I was an idiot to think I could ever be his friend after this. It feels like something is dying.
‘I’m going to recite the first part, and then each of you, in turn, need to declare that you no longer wish to be married. You’ll have to focus on why, and you’ll have to mean it, otherwise it won’t work, so …’ He shrugs. ‘Be sure.’
I’d give my entire savings and every single one of my NCEA credits to be living with a different type of magic – one that just did what you told it instead of constantly questioning the validity of your request based on how much you really mean it.
Neither of us says anything, and Dad seems to take that as assent. ‘Join hand
s,’ he says, and I take Elliott’s hand again. For the last time. Except it won’t be, because we’re going to have to do this again once I’ve found a way to get over him.
Dad starts speaking, low and quick, and he says our names and his own, and I catch the words that basically mean ‘let them be gone from each other’s lives and live happily apart’ and I feel like I might cry. To be honest, Elliott doesn’t look totally happy either, even though he probably doesn’t understand enough of what’s being said about his future and how I’m not going to be a part of it. I close my eyes and try to squeeze everything back in.
Dad finishes and nods at us both to say our bit. We look at each other and I bet Elliott can see the shine in my eyes and I bet he knows what it means.
He opens his mouth to speak, and there’s a pause, a tiny one, just enough, before he manages to say, ‘I –’
So I cut him off.
I just look at him and stop thinking, stop worrying. I let my sleep-deprived brain have a rest and instead I speak with my stupid, idealistic heart.
CHAPTER 36
THE LOVE CLUB
‘I love you.’
Dad turns his head. Elliott is frozen with his mouth half open and his eyes wide. I keep talking.
‘I know you didn’t mean for any of this to mean anything, and I know we had an agreement, and yeah, I know it’s our agreement and we can change it, but –’ I take a breath. ‘I don’t want to just keep hooking up with you and have it mean nothing.’
‘Oh …’ Elliott says.
‘But if that’s all you want –’ I take a breath. ‘Or, if you don’t like me like that, then OK, but I don’t want to lose you completely.’ I have to look away from him, and my eyes fix on our joined hands instead. ‘I’d really miss you. So … I want to stay married to you. And since I want to stay married then I don’t think this ritual is going to work. And I wanted to tell you before it didn’t.’