Page 11 of The Deer and the Dragon
“Are you happy?” came the low rumble of his lips against mine as he cupped my face.
“Now I am.”
Chapter Four
It was the strict upbringing of my deeply religious parents. It was the stress of college. It was the toils and failures of my first job out of school. It was the mental and emotional taxation of living dollar to dollar. It was the struggle of adjusting between this medicine, that therapist, this schedule, that routine. It was the transience of living abroad. It was the sex work as it coincided with indifference to romance. It was the deadlines and ceaseless texts from my editor to turn in new pages. It was the fantasy novels and the impossible standards they set for love. It was my newfound passion for writing that made the very thought of leaving the house lose its sparkle.
Those were the reasons my heart was unavailable.
It had nothing to do with my vibrant imagination, the lifelong presence that filled me in the shadows, or the tantric, unparalleled orgasms that shattered my very cells until I was one with the universe. It wasn’t that my only friend, the one who made me laugh, the one I trusted, who I shared every secret, every hope, every dream with, waited in the night. It had nothing to do with my only reprieve, my only salvation living in the shadows, visiting me in the dark, caressing me, holding me, refusing to let me go.
It couldn’t be that.
That would be crazy.
Chapter Five
FEBRUARY 5, AGE 23
I drummed my fingers against my table with manic excitement. I’d passed the time to go to sleep and caught a second wind fueled by giddy adrenaline. Three days of empty takeout boxes surrounded my laptop like tiny tombstones, sentinels overwatching my slipping sanity. I polished off the remnants of a coconut rum and water, then grabbed one bottle after the other and refilled my glass with the lazy drink.
“You need to sleep,” Caliban said, heavy hands resting on my shoulders as his fingers began to knead my tightly woven muscles. Under different circumstances, he may have succeeded in relaxing me.
“You love when I stay up late!” I said, glancing at the clock. It was nearly three in the morning. The bright white glow of the computer burned into my retinas in the otherwise-dark apartment. “Besides, I’m celebrating.”
“I love when you stay up late so that we can spend time together,” he countered. “Not so you can drive yourself mad.”
“That ship has sailed, my friend.” I sipped at my rum drink as I spoke.
He chuckled, brushing his lips against my temple. I closed my eyes to appreciate it only briefly before enthusiasm over my project consumed me once more. “I’m proud of you,” he said, “but not surprised. You’ve been working on thisfor a long time, and you’re immensely talented. It was time someone else saw that, too.”
“There had just been so many years of rejections…”
“They weren’t the right fit,” he said, voice matter-of-fact. “It took a while to get you in front of the proper eyes. And I’ve been more distracted than I like. Things have been…” He made a dismissive sound and then pressed a kiss into my temple. “I’m sorry, Love.”
I waved away his words and stared at the email anchoring me to the planet.
I’d been writing since I could hold a pen.
My first exercise in creative fiction had been my journal. I’d known from the day I asked my mom to buy me a diary that she’d be reading it. So with poetic imagination, I began to spill my life’s fabricated details onto the speckled black-and-white notebook. I wrote for the church newsletter. I rewrote biblical parables in a modern setting. I wrote for class. And then when I started college, I’d begun working on a novel. I was a junior when I sent out my first query letter, and a junior when I received my first rejection. I knew my odds of getting struck by lightning were higher than my chances of being published, but I continued writing anyway, launching into the second novel in a series that would never see the light of day.
My first six months in Colombia were peppered with rejection letters, but Caliban had encouraged me to keep trying. He’d said the agents, editors, and publishers who passed on it weren’t a good enough fit, which felt like a painful mockery from my own ego. He told me he was certain something great was right around the corner. That if I just held on…
Now here I was, rum-drunk in the dead of winter, staring at the same email that had sent me into a tailspin hours earlier. An agent wanted to represent me. Not just any agent. Julian Asher. The woman with a list of blockbuster authors and number one bestsellers longer than my phone number. She’dloved the first book so much that she immediately asked if there was more and was thrilled to learn that I was already sitting on an unpolished draft of the second book.
“We need to do something,” I said. “We need music. I’ll make cocktails. I’ll get us dinner. Or whatever meal happens after midnight.”
I may have continued rambling, talking a mile a minute before he said, “You know precisely what I like to eat.”
My face heated.
We used to make each other laugh. He’d been terribly funny, wise, patient, and clever. But every time I cracked up at a joke alone in my home, it would take only a second for the mood to turn, my face to fall, my heart to cool. He’d said time and time again that it made him sad to make me sad, so our bouts of laughter became fewer and further between as we walked a tight rope of conversation that wouldn’t set me off.
I closed my laptop and turned toward the thick shadow, always regretting when I did. It was easier to stay pointed away from the empty space. I closed my eyes, resting my elbow on the counter and propping up my chin. I allowed the silence to stretch between us, and he didn’t prod.
He knew when my mind was working.
What a sensation to know someone well enough to hear the cadence of their silence. I knew his mouth turned down in a gentle frown simply from the shift in energy. Though he didn’t rush me to speak, I sensed he knew he wouldn’t like what I was about to say.
