Page 109 of Hopelessly Teavoted
“I wanted to give it to you before you left for college.”
“Azrael,” Vickie pleaded, and she held her hand out. Part of him resisted, too afraid to show her everything. But he had waited long enough.
Azrael tossed it gently over to her, releasing the weight of all those years of folding and unfolding it.
She read it aloud, voice just above a whisper, and he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling each word, unwilling to watch her as she tasted the emotion he had held for her.
Victoria,
I know things are not always easy. I’m a witch and you’re my beautiful, human neighbor, gifted with an impossibly cool power beyond anything I’ve ever known. But the truth is, I’m in love with you. I have been for as long as I can remember, and maybe it’s silly, but I wanted you to know.
I love you for now and always. I love you in a way that unmakes me and then brings me back together. I love you an impossible amount, Vickie, the way you brighten a room, and the way you sing into your hairbrush with abandon. The times you’ve slept in my bed, I have wanted so badly to wake you and ask you if you could ever love me, too, but I’ve never had the courage.
So now it’s time. I love you with the fire of a thousand universes racing across time and space and being reborn constantly into something new and burning. I love you amounts holding the stars apart. I love you.
-Azrael
P.S. I also want to touch your body. If that’s creepy, burn this, and we will never speak of it again.
P.P.S. Here is a poem. Devil damn me, I might never be able to look at you again when you read it, but I have to give it to you. It’s how I feel, and besides, I’m about to be an English major.
the light of your dark house shimmers
a blinking beacon harking, heralding
gold light freezing within your flaming eyes
your face when all else crumbles into clay
hearing your voice when my mind starts to stray
feeling your hands on all my stolen days
holding my still heart close and shut away
hopelessly keeping feelings locked away
devoted, golden light across the bay
He cleared his throat. “Do keep in mind that I was eighteen when I wrote it. It’s so cringey. But it’s honest.”
Vickie’s eyes flashed.
“It’s perfect. Is it time?” she asked in a voice breathy enough that he wanted to taste it. Heneededto taste it. They had to be only a few short steps away from touching, but it felt infinite, stretching taut between them so that he feared he might snap. “Is it time for the spell? Or midnight, at least? Because I might kiss you anyway, even if it kills you. You’re perfection. Everything. Even in teenage poetry. If my mind had known then what my heart has probably known always, Azrael Hart, it would have sung right back to you after this note. This poem.”
Azrael’s voice caught in his throat, and for a moment he was unsure of whether he could actually form words anymore.
“It’s time,” he said. His voice shook. “For the spell, anyway.”
He snapped his hand over the cauldron, and two goblets rose up from its depths, shimmering with pinkish-red liquid. A double snap and the goblets rested on the table in front of them, cooling.
“What’s next?”
“Fire,” he said, and he swore for a moment that flame roared in her hands, as though she wielded witchery, too, but it was only the reflection of the fireplace. He put a box of matches on the table and slid it toward her, careful not to let their fingers graze. “Can you light the flames while I work the spell?”
“Yes, I’ll light your fire, Azrael.”
“Oh yeah?”
