Ellsbeth hadn’t looked at the menu, and so she deferred to Rawlins, who ordered them a gomen and a doro wot to be shared on the spongy, sour injera. If he had planned on breaking up with her this entire time, they had chosen the wrong restaurant—this was a place where they would be using their fingers to scoop up their entrées from a shared flatbread. It was only a degree less intimate than practicing writ magic together. “And a green salad,” Rawlins added.
When the server had left, Rawlins cleared his throat and continued speaking. “It’s kind of a miracle I haven’t been fired already, given everything we’ve done.”
“I thought being tenured meant you never had to worry about things like that.”
He smiled a little at that, but he didn’t show his teeth.
The heating in the restaurant had caused Ellsbeth’s underarms to become sticky with sweat. She gripped the small water glass and felt the condensation cool her palm. Rawlins was still talking, had gone into professorial mode and continued his lecture on why the two of them couldn’t be together.
“It’s only going to lead to problems,” he said. “Not just for me, but for you, too. For your reputation as a scholar. For the wonderful career I know you’re going to have. It’s only a matter of time before people in the department begin talking…”
“It’s not like I’ve told anyone,” Ellsbeth snapped. “If you were worried about that. About us. Or about…what we were working on.”
“I wasn’t,” Rawlins said. “Worried, I mean. I just know how these things go.”
“Okay, fine,” Ellsbeth said. “Great. You’re breaking up with me. I mean, not that you can even break up with me given that we’re not actually together, but it’s fine. I get it.”
“It really is for the best,” Rawlins said, pat and dismissive and self-satisfied in a way that made Ellsbeth want to slap him. She hated the sound of his nails stretching his beard, the small smack of his lips when he took a sip of water and swallowed. “If you’re comfortable, I would love to continue working with you as your adviser, but I understand if—”
“—if what? I’m going to ask Professor Tran or Gallway to supervise a thesis on writ magic?”
“No, I just—”
“—No, it’s fine. Yeah. I’ll think about it. Maybe writ magic was a stupid idea to begin with.” She took a sip of water and looked away from him and forced herself through sheer force of will not to cry.
Their food arrived, and when their knuckles accidentally touched as they ripped the injera, Rawlins apologized.
“Here’s another life lesson that you probably should know by your age,” Ellsbeth said. “When you go out to dinner to break up with a girl, don’t do itbeforethe food comes. It’s right up there with ‘send a message the morning after rough sex.’ I should write an advice pamphlet or something for middle-aged men.”
Rawlins laughed, the first genuine laugh of the evening, and she hated it. She hated that he thought she was able to make jokes because she was okay, and not because it hurt too badly to admit that she wasn’t.
What had caused the sudden, seismic change in him—this new guilt because she was his student and fear they would be found out? Ellsbeth couldn’t figure it out. She had been careful not to make her closeness with Rawlins obvious to the cohort, but was it possible that someone had seen the way her gaze lingered? Had someone noticed the brief electric jolt that flashed between them in class when they made eye contact?
Or maybe it was something else entirely. Ellsbeth remembered the delirious sense of helplessness when she had been bound to his bed, and the distinct moment when it became apparent to both of them that helikedit. Liked tying her up, controlling her. Maybe he was ashamed at the realization that he was someone who wanted to dominate a woman in bed.
Ellsbeth wished she had the right words to explain thatshe liked it, too.It was something she still had trouble articulating to herself. It feltgoodto submit, to stopthinking and planningand let her brain turn off, to feel herself sink into someone else’s control like it was a warm bath. And not justsomeone—someone brilliant, with taut arms and a smile that still made her stomach involuntarily clench. Someone who seemed to want her with the same illogical animal passion with which she wanted him. She wanted them to become depraved together. Shewanted to descend into ruin with him and then emerge with their limbs entangled, smiling at each other from across bedsheets.
But that was all over now.
“Your ritual really was extraordinary,” Rawlins said after the meal as they were walking to the door. He had loosened up over the course of dinner when it became apparent that Ellsbeth was not going to cry, or scream, or throw a drink in his face. Not going to email Dean Lennox or publicly ruin his reputation or perform any of the many acts of retribution that were technically now available to her as a woman scorned. “It’s a shame it’s illegal to perform it. Because I think it might actually work.”
“It does,” Ellsbeth said before she could stop herself.
Rawlins paused, his hand still on the handle of the door, and turned back to her. “What do you mean?”
Ellsbeth scrambled. “I mean, Ithinkit does. You get that sense when you write a ritual, you know? I can just tell.”
Rawlins swallowed hard and pushed out into the cold night air. “Yes,” he muttered. “Of course. You would never actually perform obscuration on someone.”
“No,” Ellsbeth said quickly. “Of course not.”
Rawlins blinked, seemingly mollified. He stepped forward, seemingly to hug Ellsbeth, but then extended his hand at the final moment. She shook it awkwardly. “Well, Miss Storer. Have a lovely evening,” he said. She mumbled something incoherent back at him and set off walking back to her apartment.
She missed the Rawlins who still wanted her, who cooked her dinner and licked his way down her thighs and sighed into kisses with her that made her head spin. She missed the Rawlins who would have spent that entire dinner talking through every step of the ritual she had sent him, who would have been as astonished and excited as her by what she had managed to put together. They should have spent the night discussing Poirier and debating the criminalization of rituals, making each other laugh and letting their feet touch under the table. They should have ended dinner by slipping around the side of the building and finding a shadowed door stoop to kiss against.
Instead, Ellsbeth was walking down the narrow, darkened streets alone. Rawlins had ended their relationship, and all she could think about was how badly she wished she had been able to change his mind.
Rawlins
