Then there is Que. His vulnerability in the basement. All the time we spent together in past lives that have only now resurfaced in my memories. He’s both friend and villain, depending on where you stand.
He is hurting just as we all are. And maybe even more so. If he found his promised, would he act the way Ry does with me? And all these important people in my life that I am just learning again who they really are to me. Who are they all truly?
It is with that thought that my eyes get heavy from the third cherry brandy I poured myself before I crawled into the long chair with Carya. The chaise that reminds me of the one Cher laid on under the moonlight in France, because it probably is.
My eyes close completely, and I am greeted by the box that holds two rings—meant to hold two stones. One is the one I currently wear on my finger—customized with hickory leaves and thistle thorns that I now know were made to pierce my skin. A rather morbid addition made so Ry can always find me.
The other is of a beautiful moonlit stone. I am no expert in rare gems, but if the moon were to be splashed with the waves from the ocean on a clear star-filled night, then this ring would capture it perfectly.
I watch as the jade ring is placed on my finger, pinching from the small thorns puncturing my skin.Is true love meant to hurt like this?I hear a small voice saying in my mind. My voice.
And another.But what is love without pain? Is it truly interesting if it doesn’t hurt a little?A male voice now, brimming with darkness.
It is Ry, but as I look up my eyes meet the moonlit acorn ones ofQue. He spins me around in my dream. I am floating, and when I spin to meet him again, Ry is back in his place. And that is how the dream continues, on and on. One man becoming the other. I don’t know what it means—only that I keep dancing. Dancing with two devils.
32
WORDS HURT
RACINE 1978
When I wake, my stomach is in knots. It wrenches together from all the downloads I’ve been receiving through my dreams and through the recollections of others. But to be honest, the sourness that meets my stomach and the heaviness that consumes my legs are definitely from the alcohol I had last night after having a self-proclaimed pity party with my dear beloved cat.
I vaguely remember the dream from last night. Could I have feelings for both Ry and Que? I’m not even sure what I should call them. Ry, Carya, Hickory? Que or Oak? What are their true names?
With Que, I hold this understanding of losing something you can’t find, much like my memories every time I reincarnate. Whereas my feelings for Ry are a bullet fast and piercing, ripping apart at my soul so that it is all I know. I know they are both men whose morals are almost nonexistent, but that doesn’t mean they’re unworthy of love.
On that note, I do in fact make a decision of my own. I decide to visit Ry, because for him my feelings are sure. A fated love that must find a way not to end in disaster as it has done in all our other lives together.
My heeled boots click up the steps to Ry’s townhouse. I am so scared from my last meeting with him, but that was because of all I did not know and all I felt toward him. He masked his sorrow over our fate with something darker—rage, cruelty. A disillusion I won’t let persuade me again.
I knock on the blue-green painted door, trying to make my knuckles sound sure and optimistic. The knob clicks, bringing the door open to reveal who stands behind it. The Ry who greets me is a very different Ry from the one I left months ago. A rigid, tired shell of a man stands before me now.
“I heard you were in town. Wanting to sell after all?” His coldness takes me back to our last meeting. The words of Gerry Rafferty float out the door to me. A mood that doesn’t match. But I note that it really has always been me, as the song suggests.
“Can I come in?” I ask hesitantly. Our confrontation feels like an atom bomb at the moment, and my words are the very unstable charge that could set him off.
“Now you want to come in? Such a different story from last time you were here.” His voice is nasty, unforgiving. “Don’t you remember leaving us with such unfinished business…for months at that? What is it now? February?” Ry says with disgust.
“But you were keeping things from me, Ry. And you were soangry. Now I know things. Things about us. About how I feel about us.” I say, trying to encourage him to let me in, but he doesn’t.
“Well, I know things, too. And believe it or not, I have a heart, and at this point in our many lives together, it doesn’t feel much anymore. Not for you anyway.” He laughs, mocking me.
“You know, it used to be that I would pop up in any town you were in, just by sheer want. Sometimes it took multiple lives of yours to find you, but I alwayswantedto. This last time, not so much. My heart is bitter. Made bitter by you, Jade. I want nothing to do with you.” His words cut.
I stare at him in disbelief. I blink hard, straining to seehim clearly through tears I won’t let fall. Tears that are betraying how I feel. His words don’t feel true to me, so why is he saying this? He is trying to fill a void. That is all. He doesn’t mean these things.
“I wish you were never promised to me, Jade. You make me sick just looking at you here—falling apart at the doorstep of someone you are just now even actually seeing. Well, here I am, Jade... Do you fucking like what you see?” He scoffs then adds,
“Chasing after a Being who has chewed you up and spit you out so many times just for his own fulfillment. That’s the problem with mortals and gods, Jade. They do not fucking fit. Not now. Not ever.”
If love is supposed to hurt, then this interaction is doing the job with pinpoint precision. I cannot speak. His words burning into my soul. Marking it.
Why is it that some men hold so much anger? Is it because they have to swallow up their feelings like Ry is doing now? Turn inward their emotions so deeply that they can even fool themselves. So hidden and barred by anger that any tears they should shed turn to a river of metallic rage pumping through their blood instead?
He doesn’t mean this. I know it’s a lie. So why does it still pierce so deep? A lie I can feel because he is of me and I of him. But nonetheless, I feel his next word wholly.
“Pathetic,” he whispers down at me. His final word guts me. And then the door slams, like a claim to my worth.
