“But you don’t think so, do you?” Sawyer said.
“No, I think it’s Owen,” Thea said. “Why Phoebe is allowing him to stay here, I don’t know. I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, I don’t think anyone does,” Sawyer said.
* * *
Agler was lying awake, waiting for Maddie, the way he’d been doing most nights. It was now late April. March had passed by in a flurry. Maddie had spent all her time at the food enclave, planting new crops. Any other time that she had, she spent in the dance enclave. She volunteered to take the late shift watching Owen. She started when it got dark and followed him around until he went to sleep, which was generally well after midnight.
Agler didn’t have to ask her if she had done it because she wanted to avoid him. He saw it in the way that she kept herself completely busy, and in the way that she was never around.
So, every night, Agler lay in the hammock in the tent that they shared. Every night, he told himself that maybe Maddie would come home earlier that night. Every night, he told himself that he would stay awake for her. That night would be the night that they talked.
But every night, the hours wore on, Agler grew tired, and often a little bit drunk. He had taken to having a few drinks in his tent alone before he went to sleep. The longer he waited for Maddie, the more past a couple he had.
He missed her.
He missed her presence, that was true. He missed seeing her every evening, talking to her.
But he would be lying if he said he didn’t miss her in other ways. They still slept together in the same hammock. Every morning, he woke up to find her body pressed against his. Occasionally, when he woke up, he would run his fingers over the small of her back or the curve of her hip. He would whisper in her ear in the voice he used only for her.
But she would push him away, or laugh, or claim she had to go to the bathrooms, or ignore him, even though he could tell that she was awake.
They hadn’t talked about it.
He wanted to talk about it. Well, he didn’t really want to. He knew that any talk they would have would turn into an argument. Really, he simply wanted her. He wanted her more than he could possibly explain. Before this had started, he would’ve said that the sexual component of their relationship was nowhere near the most important part. But now that it was missing…
Maddie came into the tent, surprising him.
He sat up straight in the hammock. “You’re here early.”
She nodded. “Sawyer insisted on taking over for me. He said he couldn’t sleep. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I came back here.”
“Anywhere else to go? This is your home, Maddie.”
She laughed a little. “No, I know. It’s only that I usually don’t come back this early.”
Agler felt awkward. He wasn’t sure what to say to her, how to act around her. It was almost as if they hadn’t been together for years. Almost as if everything between them had been erased, and they were back to being the way they had been when they first started dating. He got up off the hammock, holding out a bottle of wine to her. “Want some?”
Maddie took the bottle. “No glasses?”
“It was just me drinking. I didn’t see the point of dirtying them up.”
She shrugged. She took a swig out of the bottle.
It was quiet. Agler watched her. She was beautiful, as always, but she wasn’t looking at him. He remembered that she used to look at him with almost… adoration or something. It used to be that when she looked at him, he felt like he was better than he deserved to be. Now she wouldn’t even look at him at all.
There wasn’t any point in talking about it. Talking about this sort of stuff took the fire out of it anyway. He wanted her. An argument wasn’t going to make them closer.
He crossed the tent, closing the distance between them. He was going to touch her. He was going to put his hands on her body, and he was going to smooth away all the badness between them, and she was going to turn to him, opening her mouth to his mouth, and pressing her curves into his hardness, and then—
Maddie backed up. She shook her head.
Agler stopped. “You okay?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t?”
“I know what you want to do. And I told you, not until we’re ready.”
He sighed. “Maddie, it’s been months.”
“I know.”
“I miss you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t miss me. You miss the sex.”
“I miss sex with you,” he said. “That’s gotta count for something.”
“Only that you’re a big fat jerk,” she said.
So, she was insulting him. He wasn’t sure what to say. He knew that all the arguments that he could make would, in fact, make him sound like a jerk. He couldn’t say that he had needs, or that relationships were supposed to have a certain amount of intimacy. He couldn’t say anything. But he was going crazy. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand living like this. It wasn’t just about the sex, it was about… About feeling almost as if it he’d lost her. As if they weren’t on the same wavelength anymore.
He licked his lips. “Don’t you miss it?” Maybe if he put the impetus back on her, maybe that would do something.
Maddie took another drink from the wine bottle. “Sure, I do.”
He hadn’t quite expected her to say that. “Then why…?”
“I explained this to you. I’m not ready for this. And I don’t think you are either.… There’s a reason that people have sex in the first place. And it’s in order to have babies.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It really isn’t. That’s what happens sometimes. But we don’t want that to happen—”
“And that’s why we’re not doing it any more,” she said.
He sighed heavily. “Look, it was a false alarm. I know it freaked you out. It freaked me out. But everything turned out okay.”
“And what if it doesn’t next time?” she said.
“As long as you’re halting your aging, then I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t—”
“If I had to go through something like that, Agler, I would need you. And you proved to me when I was going through that ‘false alarm’ that you would be a total flake. I don’t know why I’m with you sometimes.”
He felt stunned. Hurt. “That’s not fair. When you came to me and told me about it, you had all this time to think about it, to think about what you were going to do and how you felt about it and everything else. And you just dumped it on me. Then when I don’t react exactly in the proper way, you practically exile me from Helicon.”
“You ran off,” she said. “I told you I was scared, and I needed you, and you ran off.”
“And I’m sorry about that, but I don’t think you need to punish me by withholding sex for months on end.”
“That’s not what this is about,” she said. “And that’s the only time you’ve apologized, and you buried it in the middle of an accusation.”
“It is not. I’ve apologized tons of times. I should have handled it better. I know that.”
“You have not apologized tons.”
“Well, I meant to. If I haven’t, then consider this a retroactive tons of apologies. I’m very sorry, Maddie. But for the sake of the gods, can we please be together again?”
She thrust the bottle of wine at his chest. “You’re such an idiot, you know that?”
“I don’t mean to be,” he said. “I love you. I miss you. I want things to go back to the way they were before.”
“Well, they can’t.” She was heading for the door to the tent.
“You’re leaving?”
“I need to get away from this.”
“But you’re never here in the first place.”
She opened the tent flap. “I’ll see you later.”
Agler took a big swig of wine and considered going after her.
But then he went back to the hammock and sat down and did what he usuall
y did.
Waited for her to come home.
* * *
“Hey,” said Sawyer to Maddie, looking up from his perch in the tree house. “I thought I gave you the night off.” He had a perfect view of Owen, who was sitting around the fire pit in the tweens and rebels enclave, drinking beer and talking to Nora and a few other muses. Owen had been there for hours. He’d probably end up going to bed after this, but Sawyer was hoping not.
He’d rather be sitting up watching Owen than lying in his tent, staring at the ceiling and feeling impotent and unimportant. He didn’t understand how months could simply slip away, weeks sifting through his fingers like nothing, and he still hadn’t figured anything out, still hadn’t been able to help Nora.
If Nora was, in fact, not the Nora that he could see below him on the ground, then the real Nora was likely trapped somewhere, possibly hurt. He needed to help her.
Maddie plopped down next to him. “You did give me the night off, but I can’t be around Agler.”
“What’s wrong with Agler?”
“He’s a total sex maniac, that’s what.”
“Um…” Sawyer gave her a funny look. “Look, not that I want to know a lot of intimate details about you and him like that, but is that actually a bad thing?”
Maddie groaned.
“What?” he said.
“I miss Nora,” she said.
“Me too,” he said. “But you can talk to me. I’m here for you. I’m your friend too, Maddie.”
“Okay, so Agler and I haven’t exactly been doing it since the pregnancy scare,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Wasn’t that in February?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Not since February?”
“You sound like Agler. You’re such a guy.”
“No, I’m only…” Sawyer looked back down at Owen and Nora. That was why he was up here, anyway. He should concentrate on the two of them. “I know that when Nora and I were together, I didn’t feel the need to, you know, be sexual all the time. Have you considered the possibility you’re a lesbian?”
Maddie smacked him. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Hey, that hurt.” He rubbed his arm.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize I did that so hard.”
“It’s okay. It only stings now. I don’t think I’ll bruise or anything.”
“Sawyer!” She glared at him.
He laughed. “Come on, Maddie. Don’t you like Agler anymore?”
“I don’t want to get pregnant,” she said.
“Oh.” Sawyer nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess I can see why you’d be a little flipped out.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Still, couldn’t you guys like… I don’t know… mutually masturbate or something?”
“Eew, seriously?”
Sawyer peered down at Owen and Nora. Owen had pulled Nora onto his lap. Sawyer thought he might throw up. “Seriously. There are all kinds of ways to satisfy yourself without actually doing the deed.”
“Yeah, but…”
“You’re so straight sometimes, I swear.”
“So, you take back that quip you made about me being a lesbian?”
He smirked.
“I don’t know why I even talked to you about this.” Maddie hugged herself.
He shot her a glance. “Hey, I’m sorry. Look, I’m guessing it’s not really about you being afraid of getting pregnant.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, if that was all it was, you’d be finding a way to be intimate with your boyfriend without the possibility of conception. But you’re avoiding being with him at all. So, what’s it really about?”
Maddie shook her head. “You know what? Let’s drop it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Did I say something that pissed you off or something?”
“No, I’m fine.”
They both watched Nora and Owen. She was laughing, stroking his face. They were gazing into each other’s eyes.
“What’s going on with her?” Maddie murmured. “I can’t believe she would do this.”
“Everyone I talk to thinks she’s acting differently,” said Sawyer. “But I don’t know what to do about it. If that’s a shape shifter, and not Nora, then we need to fight it, but if that’s really Nora, then…”
“I miss the way things used to be,” said Maddie. “Back when we were younger, and it was just the three of us.”
“When was that?” said Sawyer. “I mean, it’s not like we all haven’t had boyfriends.”
She sighed. “But it wasn’t so serious. And Nora wasn’t with Owen.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish we could all be Maypole dancers again, just like the old days.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It was so much fun.”
“I don’t know. What I remember most is how Himeros was always hitting on me. Remember when he made me be the May Queen?”
Maddie laughed. “You were an amazing May Queen. I think you did a fabulous job.”
“Yeah, well, I’m glad to be away from the guy.”
“So you wouldn’t do it with me? If I got Nora on board, you wouldn’t be a Maypole dancer again this year?”
“There’s no way you could convince Nora to do it,” Sawyer said. “She isn’t even herself.”
“Well, all the more reason for us to convince her. If she’s not actually Nora, then we could get the chance to observe her, to prove that she was someone else. If she is Nora, then we get her away from Owen for however long it takes to do the practices.”
Sawyer sighed. “You really are going to try this, aren’t you?”
“It can’t hurt to try,” Maddie said.
“Okay,” Sawyer said. “You get Nora on board to be a Maypole dancer, and I’ll do it too.”
CHAPTER NINE
Maddie went looking for Nora in the visual arts enclave the following day. It seemed to be the best place to find Nora without Owen.
But when Maddie arrived at the visual arts enclave, Nora wasn’t around. She asked the other muses about her, but they said they hadn’t seen Nora in a week or two. They said she showed up sporadically. She was apparently spending all of her time with Owen.
Maddie didn’t like that at all. It worried her. In their weekly meetings at the tree house, she and the others reported to each other about Owen’s activities, but there wasn’t a lot of discussion of Nora. Nora was usually around, of course, considering she was everywhere that Owen was. Frankly, Owen’s activities were pretty boring. He didn’t do much of anything except lie around and get drunk. So, it wasn’t as if the meetings were rousing discussions or anything like that.
But the fact that Owen was interfering with Nora’s ability to create was a big problem. It was maybe something that they could all go to Phoebe with. Anything that interfered with creation was sacrosanct.
Maddie went back to the tweens and rebels enclave, looked around, but didn’t see Nora, then decided to head over to Nora’s tent. She opened the flap and called inside. “Anyone in there?”
“What?” called a sleepy voice.
Maddie entered the tent. “Nora?”
Nora sat up in her hammock. Her hair was mussed. She looked exhausted. “Maddie? I thought we agreed we weren’t going to talk anymore.”
“Really? That’s our lives? We don’t talk anymore?”
Nora rubbed her eyes. “Do you think you’re pregnant again?”
Maddie glared at her. “Give me some credit.”
“Sorry, I’m just tired. Owen stays up really late.” Nora yawned.
“You know you don’t have to do everything that Owen does,” Maddie said. “You can go to the visual arts enclave sometimes, for instance.”
Nora drew her eyebrows together. “I do go sometimes. Besides, how is this your business?”
“You’re a muse,” Maddie said. “You need to create. If you don’t do something creative, well, it’s not good for you or something.”
Nora got ou
t of her hammock. “Did you just come here to scold me? Because you’ve been doing that all year, and it hasn’t changed anything. I know you don’t understand what’s going on with me and Owen. That’s okay. I can handle that. But I don’t really want to listen to you go on and on about how it’s terrible.”
Maddie started to retort, but bit it back. There was no reason to get into an argument with Nora. It wasn’t going to fix anything. “Actually I didn’t come here to talk about that.”
Nora folded her arms over her chest. “Good.”
“I was feeling nostalgic,” Maddie said. “And I was thinking it might be fun if we all did the Maypole dance again this year.”
“Really?” Nora chewed on her lip. “I don’t know.”
“Come on. It’ll be like old times.”
Nora shook her head. “It won’t be, though. Things are different now.”
“But they don’t have to be,” Maddie said. “And besides, I miss you.”
Nora rubbed her forehead. “Just you and me?”
“Me, you, and Sawyer.”
Nora’s eyebrows shot up. “Sawyer’s gonna do it? I thought he was staying a hundred feet away from Himeros at all times.”
“Sawyer said he’d do it if you did it,” Maddie said.
Nora laughed. “He said that because he knows I won’t do it.”
“Oh, come on. Why not?”
“Owen won’t like it.”
“Seriously? Do you really care that much what Owen thinks?”
“You remember what happened the first year, right? I did that dance, Owen got all pissed off, and then he went off and had sex with a fairy.”
“Well, I don’t really think that should matter.” Maddie hunched her shoulders. “Even if he does get mad, you can’t let him control you.”
“If I let him control me, then he’s not controlling me, I’m controlling me.”
Maddie tried to follow that and couldn’t. “I really just don’t get it. Why are you with him? He’s bad news. He’s jealous and petty and—”
“Just stop right there,” Nora said. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t understand.”
“And if I could explain it to you, I would. But I’m tired. I’ve only had about three hours sleep, and I just want to go back to bed.”
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