She wasn’t exactly pressuring me for the money. She wanted to know, first and foremost, if I’d taken the spell, and then, because I always said no, she wanted to know how I was.
And so I told her. I told her about black days and sleepless nights, and lying to Ari to save her more pain, and not asking for the money I knew I needed to ask for, and the worry on my mom’s face and the confusion on Kara’s. I told her that I wanted the spell more than anything, but the problem was, I couldn’t want anything properly, and so that weak wanting wasn’t enough to actually make me take it. The fact that the spell was right there in my sock drawer didn’t make it any more accessible. Ari was right there in front of me. My real life was right there. None of it came easily.
“I can’t force you to take it,” she said one afternoon. She sat in the passenger seat with her back against the door, head leaning to the side on the headrest. “But I wish you would.”
“I will. I will.” I shrugged out of my letter jacket and tossed it in the backseat. The truck got warm with two people sitting in it and the engine off. “I should pay you first, though.”
Echo watched me take off the jacket and tried to press herself deeper into the car door, farther away from me. “I told you not to worry about that. You’ll probably be able to figure out a way to get the money faster after you take it, anyway.”
“But then once you have the money, you’ll leave me here to go off and be a hero,” I said, trying to joke. “Maybe I don’t want to pay because I enjoy our chats.”
Echo didn’t laugh. Her neck and cheeks turned red and she stared at the glove compartment.
I tried not to move. I’d said something terrible without even knowing it.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She didn’t respond.
“I really do like our chats,” I said. “You’re the only person I actually talk to. Everyone else, it’s too hard.”
She still didn’t say anything, but she stopped glaring at the glove compartment and looked at me. Her eyes were so clear and warm and sad I had to look away.
“What is it?” I asked. “Please tell me. I’m an ass, I know. I’ve made you mad.”
“I’m not mad. It’s—I want you to take the spell. I want you to feel better. But . . . I’m not sure if I want you to give me the money. Not anymore.”
“Oh,” I said.
She meant she wanted to be in the truck with me, checking up on me. She meant she wanted to stick around town, put off her trip, not seek out any more hekamists and covens to save her mom and herself.
For me.
She reached out and took my hand, which was tapping nervously against the steering wheel. Her skin was cool. I exhaled, which created a vacuum in my chest that meant I had to breathe in right away, deeply, completely, and the air smelled like the leather of Echo’s jacket and the lavender in her shampoo and I raised my head and turned to her and she was right there and if I moved an inch I would be kissing her.
For a second I thought I would do it. I felt the possibility consuming me, an electric bolt from my eyes to my toes, all of me suddenly aware of this girl’s proximity and the reality of her body underneath her layers of black jacket now pressing closer to my own.
Then my hand jerked out of hers and I pulled back and away and breathed through my mouth so I would not smell the leather and lavender again. I covered my eyes with my palms to go back to numbness and darkness. The back of my head hit my window which was a jolt of pain that was nothing compared to how much I hated myself in that moment.
I did not kiss her. But it didn’t matter. I wanted to kiss her, and that was bad enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She was breathing hard, too. That’s all I heard in the car—that and my heart banging on my chest. “I’m sorry too,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“I know.”
“But you—I like you—”
“No, no. Please don’t say any of that.”
“I appreciate all you’ve done for me—”
“Definitely do not say that. Seriously, Win, let’s not talk. Let’s be totally silent and not speak and you drive me home and neither of us ever mentions this ever again. Okay?”
I nodded, and I turned on the car. I had to roll down a window because the air outside had gotten cooler and the inside of the car’s windows had steamed up. The seconds we spent waiting for them to clear were the longest seconds in the world, each one a thousand heartbeats or more.
I looped around the athletic fields to drop her off and then drove myself home. The whole time I was sure that now I would take the spell, that surely now I was such a miserable, pathetic excuse for a human being I had to take it—there was no other choice.
At home I took the sandwich out of my drawer and stared at it. If I took it and it worked, the next day I could be back to normal. I’d probably continue to feel guilty, but at least I could kiss Ari and really feel it again, the way I felt the voltage of Echo’s almost-kiss.
I didn’t deserve either of them.
I thought about it. And I put the spell back again.