Page 74 of Truly Madly Magically

We fly, but we stay connected.

Inside and out.

I find that even when I think I want to hurry it all up, chase all this sensation, something spools out into a kind of sweet, heavy light, slow and hot. It doesn’t stop the unraveling—the pulsing, gasping cliff fall of release.

Zander’s low laughter inside me drives me up all over again.

I tell him what I want. More.

He responds in ways he shouldn’t, in ways I shouldn’t let him. Always.

On and on we go, light and hot and forever, until there’s nothing left but the both of us, shuddering our way through a meteor storm.

Out there in the cosmos, upending everything.

Open your eyes, baby.

It’s only then I realize I closed them a while ago, as if I’m trying to fight back the sea change that I can feel inside me, sweeping us both away. Maybe I don’t want to see where we’ve ended up.

I would love to claim I can’t be ordered around, but I open my eyes on command. I let my gaze meet his, and there are no words for this. There are no words for us.

I feel something inside me tremble as Zander presses a kiss to my mouth. Then again as he smiles while he’s there, then rolls over and tucks me next to him, as if it isn’t momentous that he thinks we’re actually going to sleep together when that, obviously, has been outlawed between us forever.

In fact, now that I think of it, I’m not sure we’ve ever slept a whole night together. We were teenagers with parents who wanted to know where we were—because they knew what we were likely to get up to.

It’s okay if you want to stay here, I tell him, piously, because we’re safety buddies. We have to stay in pairs. That’s the only reason it’s okay.

Say it out loud, El, comes his sleepy, amused voice inside me. Daring me. Go ahead.

I don’t. Because I can’t.

Instead, Zander reintroduces me to the cosmos, and I don’t care that I cry all over him when he turns me into starshine and comet tails. Then holds me as we float back down to earth.

This time I don’t talk shit when he holds me against him in the dark of my bedroom. I settle in, breathe him deep, and sleep.

When I wake up some hours later, I can see the sunlight outside my windows. Morning has come to Main Street. I can hear the odd car bumping over the cobblestone bricks and the voices of pedestrians—at this time of day, likely kids walking to school.

What I really notice is that I’m the only one in my bed.

I rub at my eyes. I smooth my hands over my bump, saying good morning to the baby. Then I sit up and listen like my life depends on it. I don’t hear any water running. No shower. Nothing in the main living area. The apartment is still and quiet.

A whole lot like Zander up and left without a word.

It’s good he left, I tell myself. It’s great. Otherwise, we might have to discuss what happened, and why would I want that? It was...well, it wasn’t a mistake, exactly.

Let’s call it a misstep. The reality is, we can’t make those. Not as grown-ass adults who are going to become parents.

This wasn’t a beginning as I might have imagined at certain moments last night. This was an ending, and I congratulate myself on how maturely I accept that as I twist my hair back and tie it in a knot on the top of my head. I take pride in how calmly I then get up and put on my fluffy robe, in how not at all angrily I shove my feet into my owl slippers.

Though, speaking of owls... Aren’t you supposed to warn me? I demand of my familiar, whose tail feathers I can see out my window, indicating she’s on her favorite perch. When I’m about to backslide?

Ruth is resolutely silent.

Dick move, I tell her.

If I was angry instead of mature, I would make some owl stew commentary, but I’m not. So I don’t. What I am is starving—apparently a new stage of pregnancy, I tell myself, having nothing at all to do with any caloric outputs last night—and I walk with tremendous dignity and calm out of my room, ready to eat everything in sight.

Then come to a stop that is very nearly a stumble, because he’s here.

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