Emerge (25 page)

“Never mind. What do you think of this one?” I ask, holding up the peppermint soap.

Lapis tilts her head, staring at me. “Oh no you don’t. Don’t go changing the subject. You have boy face.”

“She does!” Lazuli squeals. “She has boy face.” She turns to me. “You have boy face.”

“No I don’t,” I insist.

I’m met with two identical looks of skepticism. Despite their drastically different interests, the twins are sometimes scarily alike.

“I was just wondering … I mean, I know you’ve hooked up with a bunch of guys from school … ”

“Very true,” Lazuli says. “But we haven’t tapped anyone younger than us, so the junior class is all yours.”

“In case you’re worried about sloppy seconds,” Lapis finishes.

“Ew. No. What I mean is, have you ever thought about,” I look around, checking that no one can hear me in the nearly empty store and lower my voice, just in case, “actually dating a human? Like getting serious?”

The teasing looks vanish. The twins glance at each other, communicating silently like they have since they were toddlers. Then Lapis puts a hand on my shoulder and steers me to an overly-stuffed chintz couch in a secluded back corner of the shop. As she and Lazuli sit down with me, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.

“It’s that guy you’re doing your project with, isn’t it?” Lapis asks.

“Clay.” Lazuli says. “Clay Ericson, right?” The look she gives me is understanding, but grim. “We’ve heard rumors about the two of you around school, but we figured you were just messing around—finally.”

“We didn’t think you’d ever consider anything serious,” Lapis says. I can hear the part she doesn’t say:
We didn’t think you’d ever be that stupid.

I can’t bring myself to admit they’re right. This conversation is painful enough without having to talk about Clay. Besides, what would I say?

“No, it’s not about Clay. It’s … hypothetical,” The lie sounds lame even to my own ears. Great. Now they’ll really rub it in.

But the twins don’t call me on it. Don’t taunt me. In fact, when Lazuli speaks, her voice is comforting. “I’ve never
hypothetically
,” she emphasizes the word, “thought about getting serious with a human guy.”

“Me either,” Lapis says. “No matter how tempting a mortal guy might be, he’s just not worth it.”

“But what if he’s—”

She cuts me off, “He’s not worth it.”

“Lia,” Lazuli says, putting her hand on mine, “you know you’d never be able to tell the truth, never be able to be yourself.”

It’s the advice I would have given myself before all this happened. But now, after everything I’ve been through with Clay, after feeling what it might be like to be with him … I want to know—no, I need to know—that if I get us to the other side of this, if I stop Melusine and find a way to free him, and if by some miracle he can forgive what I’ve done and feel something real for me, then I need to know that there’s hope for us. Some hope that we can be together.

“And not to sound momish or anything,” Lapis adds, “but there’s a reason we don’t choose mortals for mates.” Her voice is forbidding when she says, “You don’t want a seal, do you?”

These words hit me like a splash of icy, Arctic water. “No,” I whisper. Seal is a slang word. It means a baby born from a Mer-human union. A seal looks just like a human baby and can’t survive living underwater, but it has an innate affinity for the sea. It hears a muted version of the call of the ocean and can never be satisfied with life on land. As far as anyone knows, none have existed for hundreds of years, but stories from before the curse tell about Mer who lived for eternity with broken hearts after being forced to abandon their children to the human world. Seals are a major reason Mer-human romances are so deeply frowned upon, are taboo; they are creatures who belong to neither world and can never be happy.

I can never have a life with Clay. I have to find a way to free him—then I have to let him go.

Lapis and Lazuli must see their words have sunk in. They don’t belabor the point the way Em would. I’m grateful for this because I don’t think I can bear to hear the words again.

All Lazuli says is, “You okay?” I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak.

Lapis squeezes my shoulder. We all get up and head back to the main area of the store.

“You know, Lia,” Lazuli says, the smile back in her voice, “you’re way too young and hot to be worrying about choosing mates. If you like … someone hypothetical,” (I’m glad she didn’t say his name. I don’t think I could stand hearing it right now), “then you should just have fun with him.”

“Definitely,” Lapis says. “That hypothetical guy of yours sure has one grabbable ass.” She and Lazuli laugh. “Enjoy that boy while you can, that’s my advice.”

On the way to the register to pay for Lazuli’s box of chocolate soaps, we pass the baked goods inspired items. From among the cookie-dough lip gloss and devil’s food bubble bath, I pick up a simple bar of cream-colored soap with little brown flecks. I lift it to my nose and inhale the sweet, familiar scent of cinnamon. This one I don’t put back.

That night, I use it in the shower. Later, when I lie in my sponge bed under my blanket of salt water, I zero in on that rope connecting Clay and me. Tapping into that part of myself will make the call of the ocean almost unbearable, but I can stand it if it means knowing Clay is safe in his bed. Knowing he’s warm and content. I rest my head on my arm, and my skin smells like cinnamon. I fall asleep with the scent and the feel of Clay swirling around me.

“If you won’t let me kiss you, can I at least hold you?”

“Um … I don’t think that’s a good idea.” No matter what the twins say, I can’t let myself enjoy my time with Clay. They don’t know the whole story. They don’t know that Clay isn’t my boyfriend by choice.

“I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to touch you,” he says, sounding so sincere.

My cheeks burn. My pulse skyrockets.

We’re lying in the grass in Clay’s backyard. He’s tried to kiss me three times today. That’s up from yesterday. My hold on him must be getting stronger.

Every day, I tell him no. Every day, it gets harder to refuse him.

Today, at this moment, with Clay spread out on the grass, his shirt off so he can fully relish the sunshine, it’s nearly impossible.

I came over on the pretext of doing homework, so now I sit up and try to refocus my attention on my history textbook. But my gaze keeps sliding to Clay’s bare chest, to the line where the dark denim of his jeans meets the skin of his cut abdomen.

“You know you want to.” His voice is teasing. “I don’t get why you keep saying no.”

I tear my eyes away from the tantalizing expanse of skin and meet his eyes. “One day you will.”

“Fine,” he says and stands up. “We’ll study.” I breathe a sigh of … relief? Disappointment? But then, instead of getting his textbook, he sits right behind me, one leg on either side of my body, and reads over my shoulder.

He rests his chin at the base of my neck, and his stubble tickles the soft skin there. It’s an entirely new sensation. New, but not at all unpleasant.

My tank top is low-cut in back, and I can feel the sun-warmed skin of his chest against my nearly bare shoulder blades. My breath hitches.

When I don’t move away, he tentatively wraps his arms around me. I don’t shrug them off. They feel too much like they belong there. Like they’ve been missing for years. There can’t be any harm in relaxing back into his strong embrace, in letting all my worries fall away for a few minutes, can there?

We sit like that, bodies fitted together, in a sun-drenched moment of bliss. The scent of fresh-mowed grass and of azaleas and of Clay’s skin creates a heady combination that has me closing my eyes so I can take it all in. So I can capture this living daydream in my memory. After—when all this ends—I want this moment crystallized for keeps.

Clay raises his chin and replaces it with his lips. A slow kiss covers my shoulder, his lips firm and cool against my heated skin.

“Mmm … sun-kissed,” he says.

“Clay-kissed,” I murmur.

He plants a trail of kisses across my shoulder, toward my throat. As soon as his lips make contact with my neck, a shudder runs through me and I want to grab him to me and hold him there forever. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I should stop this. I know this isn’t real. But it feels so real.

“This is what I wanted,” Clay says against my skin. “To touch you. To taste you.”

His words melt into the air and caress me alongside his lips.

“Lia, you’re all I’ve … ” He falls silent. Then pulls his head back, his arms loosening, “What … what was I saying?”

I keep my eyes closed—squeeze them shut—willing time to freeze. Clinging to a feeling that’s already slipping away.

“Lia, what were we talking about?”

I work hard to keep the quaver out of my voice when I say, “I guess we both zoned out for a minute there. Don’t worry about it.”

I stay still as a stonefish. Clay’s body remains molded to mine, and I wait to find out what he’ll do. Some days, once the claws of the siren spell retract their grip, Clay continues to hold my hand or stroke my cheek. The persistence of these small touches after the spell wears off makes me hopeful that his feelings are real. I hold my breath. Are they real now?

The moment stretches into eternity, and Clay keeps holding me. My heart swells with relief as his arms stay wrapped around me. He wants to hold me. Wants to touch me. I’m enough. Even without the spell he wants—

When he peels his skin away from mine a mere millisecond later, something shatters inside me.

He scoots backward in the grass and twists his body away from mine. I feel the loss of him in every part of myself.

“What were we doing?” he asks, bringing a hand to his forehead in confusion.

I gesture toward the textbook. “Studying.” My voice sounds dead.

“Oh.” He looks down at his own shirtlessness but doesn’t ask. He just picks his t-shirt up from where—only half an hour ago—he threw it eagerly onto the floor of the nearby gazebo.

As he slips the soft cotton over his head and tugs it down over his stomach, I can’t force my eyes away, even though I should. Two minutes ago, he was mine to look at, mine to touch. Now … now I’m an intruder.

When he glances up, I lock eyes with him and beg him without words to remember how he felt before. To feel that way now. He looks down at the crushed grass.

I stand and take a step toward him, but he backs away. I stop walking, stop breathing.

“Lia, I’d really,” he runs a hand through his mussed dark hair, “like some time alone.”

“Oh.” There’s more to say. There must be. But I don’t know what it is.

“I feel like you’re always here, even when you’re not. Like you’re inside my head.” He still sounds disoriented, but his voice gains clarity with every stinging word. “I just need some space.”

“Of course.” Of course he doesn’t really want to hold me. He doesn’t even want to spend time with me. It was ludicrous to think he might. “I’ll leave right now.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t want to be rude. I just feel like I really need time to myself. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” I say, stuffing my book into my backpack, “it makes perfect sense.”

Now that I’m ready to go, I stand there in silence. I’ve forced myself into his life. I’ve stolen his freedom, and I need to give it back.

But I can’t. It isn’t safe. Not with her out there, waiting. I open my mouth and hate myself:

“Come, come, come to me

Let’s explore eternity.

Come, come, come to me

I want you irrevocably.

Come, come, come to me

And promise that you’ll stay.”

My voice comes out strangled with unshed tears, but it doesn’t make my magic any less potent. Any less dangerous. The worry vanishes from his eyes, iced over by rapture that isn’t real. He moves toward me, the tide pulled to the moon.

Clay wraps his warm, toned arms around me for the second time in the past hour, holds me tight against him, and kisses my hair.

I let myself breathe in the grass-stained, sun-soaked, cinnamon scent of him before I extricate myself from his embrace and pull away. I can’t give Clay his freedom, but at least I can give him freedom from me. Freedom from my unwanted presence.

I put a few feet of space between us. Space Clay asked me for.

He starts to step forward, but I put up a hand to stop him.

“Can I hold you?” he asks.

“No. Spend some time tonight on yourself.” I want to protect Clay, not consume him. “Try not to think about me or about what I want. Try to think about what
you
want.”

He tilts his head as if my words are unfathomable. “But all I want is you.”

I leave him standing there, alone in the middle of his backyard. Once I’m out of sight, a tear slides down my cheek, a single pearl of sadness.