Scott

Natalis forgive me, that hadn’t gone well. I watched Nick stand up and leave with this weird sense of detachment. And part of me was agonizing that I had messed up, and the rest of me insisted that he was being foolish with his money and disingenuous with his intentions. I held my breath and focused on the comic on my desk.

“The Stranger” was printed across the top in a long, bold script. At the bottom was the tagline, “Can the Queen trust these new Strangers who join her?” This must have been the issue where Gnomon’s children revealed themselves.

“Are you okay?”

I looked up to Mark gazing at me with his headphones around his neck. I released my held breath slowly, deflating with it. “I have no idea, but I’m sorry if I’m interrupting you.”

“It’s okay. Were you thinking to each other half the time? Your conversation made, like, no sense.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about us fighting, I don’t want—”

“No, you’re fine, you gotta work stuff out somewhere and it’s not like dorms have a whole lot of privacy. You can tell me to take a walk next time.”

I shook my head. “There’s probably not going to be a next time.”

“Hey, as far as I was aware, Nick really—now I’m not going to say he’s in love with you, but . . .”

“No, I don’t think . . .” I started, but it was too much to process. “I don’t know.” I studied the comic as Mark said some sort of platitude and turned back to his computer.

The Queen sported Empress bangs and a thick wool jacket, the Stranger had gears on his boots and buckles on his coat. There were so many little details I could have pointed out to him: This is how they’re showing how the Queen is like Natalis, and the Stranger is like Gnomon. Look right here, the color of the jacket, deep scarlet, is from the Empire trying to equate the Empress with the gods.

I could have shared so much with Nick, showed him how much divinity he already knew. He could have shared so many things with me, things about characters and heroes and pop culture and everything I missed growing up removed from other eccentrics. Then there was everything else. The feeling of his telekinesis on my skin, my desires in his mind—

And that was the crux of it, huh?

I was so afraid of our growing commitment that I’d blocked out all signs of it until they couldn’t be ignored, and then I sabotaged it?

How could I do anything different? How could I—

I swiveled my chair around to my altar, Mom’s wise words coming to mind, guiding me. Scott, you just gotta pray.

Okay, yeah, I did. I greeted Natalis with a caress, and Laesth with a mental push. I lit a candle and watched the flame come to life and dance gently, the creamy wax aglow with its orange light. It calmed my stress enough for me to take and release a deep breath. Then I regarded the statue of Natalis.

I pushed him away and I don’t know why. I mean, maybe I do know why. But I can’t sit here and know why I did it and tell myself to not do that— To the gods, I’m not making any sense.

Maybe if I went to church I’d have better clarity of thought. Though, Monday evening wasn’t a usual time to go. For a few minutes, indecision kept me still. I breathed, and watched the flame. The rain had restarted, the pat-pat on the window enough white noise to distract me from all the thoughts around me. I tried purposely to construct whatever shield I could between Nick and me.

I did it because who’s to say we wouldn’t have ended up like Mom and Dad. What if I found out that who I think Nick is, isn’t really who he is, and I don’t like him anymore? And vice-versa. It’s inevitable, so why bother?

My throat squeezed and my gut clenched at that thought. It felt wrong, but it kept repeating. All that time, wasted, wasted. All the time they’d spent together and the love they’d shared. For what?

And what about Kat and me? What did it mean for us?

I blinked back tears, still watching the orange flame dance, Natalis’s shadow flickering on the wall behind her, almost like she was dancing with the flame. It’d be quiet and peaceful at the church tonight, and I didn’t have too much studying to do. I could bring a book, and sit in the pews, and try to figure this out.

Just me and the gods.

The patter of rain on glass, rain on the roof, returned to my consciousness. Maybe it had grown louder.

The problem, I continued, refocusing on Natalis, is that I know I’m feeling this way about Nick because of my parents, yet I don’t know how to get myself to stop.

The little quartz statue stared at me.

Maybe I needed to talk to Mom.

It was dinnertime anyway. I’d get some food and give her a call. So I pulled on my jacket and slipped out of the dorm.

Oh no. The DC was packed. I grimaced my way through the line, shielding myself so thoughts would be muffled enough for me to function. As soon as I could, I settled at a table separated from other students with a plate full of spaghetti and meatballs. It was exactly the sort of comfort food that I wanted, but one bite was enough to turn my stomach. So I pushed the plate away and got out my phone. Mom answered on the first ring.

“Are you okay, Scott?”

Seemed to be the only way she greeted me now. “I’m fine, but I’m not fine.”

The groan of a chair being pushed out from the table. Dad asking if I was okay. She was home tonight? A knot of hope tightened my chest.

“He’s fine, just wants to talk. I’ll be back,” she said. Then ostensibly to me, “I’m going upstairs.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to level my optimism.

She exhaled when I assumed she got to her reading chair in her room.

“You’re not at Grandma’s? You’re eating dinner together?”

“We’re doing it for Kat.”

My shoulders slumped. I should have figured. I squeezed the bridge of my nose, stubbornly resisting the urge to not ask the next question. “Are you still moving into an apartment?”

“Well . . .” Mom started, and from her high, nervous voice, I knew that was a “well” that wouldn’t be accompanied by something great. “I want you to understand how much your father and I love you and Kat.”

“Mom, tell me.”

“Yes, I am, baby. And Kat’s going to keep going to school here in Ralston.”

I let out a sigh with a burst of disappointment that made my hands tremble and my eyes itch again. “And then what?”

“I don’t know, Scotty. We’re taking this one step at a time.”

“But Mom, don’t you love him?”

Her voice was leveled, pulled tight. “Yes. Very much.”

“Doesn’t he love you?”

“He tells me he does.”

“Then why? Why are you still separating?” I wiped tears from my cheeks and tried to ignore the questioning students around me. My shielding was going to shit because I had to hear what Mom was saying, and to the gods, the thoughts getting through—yes, sometimes guys cry, get over your damn self—I really wanted to go to church now, for the quiet, for the clarity, for the—no, I didn’t want to think about Nick. I didn’t want to.

And then Mom’s answer came in planned, empty words. “Because . . . sometimes, even when people love each other, there are too many obstacles in the way of that love.”

“And you put them there!” My voice was too loud. A few conversations stuttered as eyes glanced at me.

“Scott.” Mom sighed. “Your father has freely admitted that those obstacles are just as much his as mine. We’re not blaming each other here.”

I managed a few bites of spaghetti as she spoke, knowing Mom would want me to eat enough for dinner.

“It’s just . . .” I started, putting down my fork as an exhalation shuddered through me. “If you two didn’t make it, how does anyone? Do all couples lie to each other?”

“There are many couples that spend their whole lives happy. Your father’s parents, for one.”

I wanted for her to name more people, or for her to answer the rest of my question, but several moments passed, then we spoke simultaneously.

“Scott, you know that—”

“Mom, how can I ever—”

We stopped. Mom spoke first.

“How can you ever what?”

The words died on my lips, my tongue pressed against my teeth unwilling to move.

“Nothing. I gotta go. I’ll call you again soon okay?”

“Okay. I love you.”

“Lo—uh, you too.”

I hung up. I couldn’t even say it. They were separating. It was happening. Their love wasn’t going to survive their truths.

How can I ever try to love someone, when I’m watching your love die?

Nick

My mind kept spinning and spinning, and the more I stewed over what Scott said to me, the worse I felt. I didn’t think I was a bad person for wanting to get Scott something nice. But had I gone about it wrong? Had I not thought it through? I wasn’t sure.

What I was sure of was that I couldn’t keep sitting at my desk pretending to read a book for another second. Instead, I stuffed the book in my backpack. I’d go get a coffee and a pastry somewhere and try to read there. Not at the dining commons. I didn’t want to see the soccer boys or Mark or Scott, not when the last thing I wanted to do was put on a smile and try to crack some jokes.

I rounded the corner to the stairs and bounded down. Oh, of course it was still raining. I flipped up my hood, eyeing the dark sky out the front door. I insulated myself with a telekinesis bubble and charged through campus. Resolute. On a mission.

Completely freaking out inside.

I didn’t want to lose Scott before I had a chance to properly be his boyfriend. But I had tried to fix us and had made it worse, and now I wasn’t going to get another chance.

By the time I left campus, the rain had picked up enough that it was too much for my telekinesis. My bubble dissipated, and I wished I had brought my umbrella.

Raindrops broke up the light from streetlights and oncoming cars, from neon signs and lit-up window displays, into wavering splashes of sparkles. The mall stood welcoming. Right by its main entrance was the coffee shop, a warm orange glow escaping its windows.

Past that was the church. The parking lot was mostly empty, with a half dozen cars clustered near the front doors. Maybe . . . maybe one of the priestesses could help me figure out what I did wrong with Scott.

Though, I didn’t want to bother them. It wasn’t like I belonged in there, like I knew anything about anything in there.

I stood in the rain, glancing from mall to church and back. The church still seemed like a good idea. When I couldn’t really go to Dad, when I couldn’t go to Mom, when my friends didn’t get it and my cousins didn’t either, where else could I turn? So finally, I continued down the block instead of heading toward the mall.

At the edge of the church parking lot, I hesitated. Man, this was silly. I had to think to even recall the gods’ names; I didn’t deserve to be in there. The coffee shop and lonely brooding lay not that far away. Ahead of me, a religion I had largely ignored. Maybe a path not quite to Scott, but to help me understand what it brought to people, what compelled people to come here. Maybe the gods could help me figure out who I was supposed to be.

I recalled Mom at her altar, kneeling and quiet.

Okay, yeah, I was doing this.

Once inside the church, I took off my wet jacket and enjoyed the warmth of the place. A priestess with long, dark hair gave me a friendly smile.

“You can hang your coat up on the rack beside the door,” she said, gesturing somewhere behind me.

“Oh, thanks,” I bumbled, before doing as she suggested. After I turned back to her, she gave me another big smile.

“Welcome. I’m Amanda. We don’t have too much going on tonight, but there will be a prayer at eight, and there’re some refreshments on the community table. Let me know if I can help you further.”

She gestured to a table along the wall to my right as she spoke, and then with a curtsying bow, she left me, her sapphire robe flowing smoothly behind her.

With her departure, I took a breath, the size of the church striking me. After the crowds of the other week, the emptiness was weird; only a few scattered groups of people in the whole place. The high-domed ceiling of the main hall, glowing a warm pink from countless colored lights, gave the church a grand, cavernous appearance. The central podium stood elevated in the middle of a vast sea of mostly empty pews.

The gods stood in their alcoves at ten equidistant points, all with their own spotlights and space for candles and worshipers at their feet.

“Natalis the mother . . .” I whispered, not really recalling the nursery rhyme well enough to go much further. “Vogel . . . Claudia . . .” I looked around.

Someone else entered the church, their footsteps clicking as they hung up a jacket and walked briskly past me, carrying with them a whoosh of chilly air from the open door.

Wanting to get fully away from the cold, I wandered toward the refreshment table and watched this tall woman in heels and short, blonde hair, cross the church and drop to her knees in front of Claudia.

With the air still again, the familiar aroma of ginger and vinegar caught my attention. I scanned the refreshments table, my stomach flipping when I found its origin—a plate of dumplings with a dark dipping sauce in the center. I approached the table and plucked a dumpling off the plate. Still warm. The feeling of the wrapper on my fingertips brought back memories of Mom and Aunt Mei making dumplings on the weekends, folding the handmade wrappers closed and arranging them in a bamboo basket to steam. I could almost hear them chatting away in Mandarin, soothing and familiar in the background as I’d hang out with my cousins. The nostalgia ripped through me, eviscerating me with love and loss.

I could take a bite. It was okay. It was going to be okay. I had to take a bite, to see if they were like Mom’s. But my throat shut tight at the memory of Mom’s voice. My shoulders scrunched up at the memory of her hug.

I committed and dipped the dumpling before popping it in my mouth, the combinations of flavor something I hadn’t tasted since Mom’s funeral. They were similar to Mom’s but distinctly different, a shift of the spices I couldn’t place. But they still tasted like family, like my childhood at Grandma’s and Aunt Mei’s on the weekends and in the summers off school.

I grabbed another dumpling and sat in the closest pew. The love and closeness I had had with Mom squeezed me tight. For too long, I hadn’t dared think about her too closely because I was so afraid to feel this. The tears on my cheeks, the tightness of my chest, the gone gone gone coursing through me with these flavors that were so intimately her family and culture still teasing my taste buds. I lifted the second dumpling and drowned in another burst of memories with the tangy, hearty, touch of sweet.

I blinked back the tears and gazed out at the gods standing solemnly and patiently around the circumference of the church.

What were the chances? What were the chances that this random day of a random week, not even a regular day of worship, someone would bring something so inescapably close to me, and I would happen to come here out of the blue to have it and be reminded?

The gods waited in their alcoves.

Was it one of you? Or was it Mom, somehow?

But . . . gone was gone was gone. My lip quivered, and my slightly sticky fingers bothered me enough that I rubbed them on my pants.

The ache remained, underneath the doubt about why I was here, the uncertainty over whether I should try to believe. The ache throbbed slowly, somewhere in my chest, and I realized it had always been there.

Since Mom had died, and that long year alone with Dad, abandoning my friends who’d moved on to college, abandoning my own ambitions soon thereafter, the ache had been there. When I’d begged Dad to let me go to conventions all over the territory, and perused the action figures and comics with my mission to collect, the ache had been there. When I’d argued with Dad about going to the university, about where I would live, what classes I would take, the ache had been there.

Humankind and the gods were supposed to have all this power, but whatever power we had was useless to stop the inevitability of death. All the power I had, also useless. And I ached, and ached and ached. What was magic good for, if it couldn’t keep us all together? What was healing good for if it couldn’t prevent a single cell from losing its ability to control itself and going rampant?

We could do so much. But we were still human.

Gods, it wasn’t fair.

Why had someone brought those dumplings and brought me all of this hurt? This was why I had explicitly avoided talking about Mom, and even thinking about her, if I could help it. Because I didn’t want to feel this.

I sucked in a breath that pulled at the ache, stretching it painful and tight across my bones. Like my skin was pushing back at the telekinesis holding me together. The breath shuddered out of me with a touch of a sob, a sprinkle of panic, of life and love slipping through my fingers, through my ribs.

Then I felt the tingle of telepathy at the base of my skull, and the panic gripping my chest squeezed hard as I whipped my head around to the church door.

They were shut. The air was still. It wasn’t Scott.

I faced forward on the pew again and caught the gaze of the dark-haired priestess. Her eyes widened, and she took a few steps toward me.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. People usually don’t notice when I think about them.”

“I’m sorry too. I’m just familiar with that feeling. Um.” I stumbled over my words, gripped the pew in front of me. “Of . . . a telepath thinking about me.”

“Remember that the gods are here for us all, and want to help with any hurt you have. Or is there anything I can guide you with?”

I didn’t believe. Not completely. But . . . Mom had.

“I don’t know what to do.”

The priestess clasped her hands in her lap as she sat on the edge of the pew ahead of me, a few steps down. Her expression became clear and gentle as she waited for me to continue.

With a shaking breath, I did. I told her about Scott, and about learning from him and teaching him too, about our relationship being at the brink of abandonment. I told her about my mom, and about the dumplings and not knowing what to do about my family that I didn’t really feel a part of, but didn’t want to leave behind. All the while the priestess nodded and listened. And as I talked, the threads of my life started to weave together, the parts that drove me and the parts that I fought against somehow clicking into focus, making sense.

The things Mom and Dad had pressed me to achieve, college and a good job and such, had felt forced upon me. And I had never dared express that to Mom, with the faith she’d put into me and everything she had done to help me succeed, so why did I fight so hard against Dad? Were his desires for me not the same? Just like Mom, he had done what he could to put me on the right path. To find passion in my future. But I didn’t know how to do that. Not without Mom. So my passion had gone to my collection instead.

“You don’t have to pick one thing to be passionate about,” the priestess said. “The passion to collect is a very human one. But you can build from that. You can get that same joy from passing a class, from getting a diploma, but only if that aligns with what you want out of your life. You need to ask yourself: What do you want? What makes you happy? How do you achieve that?”

“How do I work toward what makes me happy when it seems so hard?” I asked. She was right though; I could be passionate about many things at once. I could be passionate about school, and about my family, and about Scott, too.

“What’s most important to you right now?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I should probably say school, but I want to say Scott. Except he seems like a lost cause after everything that’s happened. I don’t know if there’s anything else I can do for us.”

“We contain the strength of the gods, Nick. I see the intersection of specific gods in your life,” she said. “And Scott’s life too, with his entry into the eccentric world. Vogel and Gnomon for you, Natalis and Laesth for him. They are two unusual pairs, but they build upon each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Combine telepathy with a natural intuition, and you get someone who might, in their compassion, adopt another’s fears as their own. And combine telekinesis with a fierce curiosity? Well, there’s someone who might, in their search for the truth, not see what grace they have always possessed.”

“So what do I do?”

She refocused behind me. “You talk to him.”

I felt it the moment she said it, the natural slipping of his personality into a pocket of my mind. And with it came a burst of shock.

I twisted around, and Scott was clutching the church door. He was wide-eyed and soaked from the rain.

Nick?

I twiddled my fingers at him, and his mind popped with bursts of surprise, joy, and confusion as he shut the door to the rain, and peeled off his wet jacket and backpack. But I couldn’t hear his thoughts, besides those directly spoken to me. Just his emotions. How much of me was visible to him? Could he see the hurt I had put myself through? Could he see how much I wanted to be with him?

After giving me another surprised once-over, Scott turned his gaze to the priestess. “I don’t mean to intrude if you two are talking.”

The priestess stood, bowing toward him as she stepped back. “We were just wrapping up. Together we love.”

“Together we love,” he replied, before focusing again on me. “I didn’t expect you to go to church.”

“Neither did I.” I sat back in the pew, my elbows on my knees. “My feet sort of led me here.”

A surge of affection flashed from him to me, to be replaced by leveled reservation.

I shifted in my seat. “What brought you here?”

“I can’t think. I can’t ever think.” He collapsed next to me.

“Because of everyone’s thoughts? My thoughts?”

He nodded. His hair glistened with rainwater, spiked and wild, and I resisted the urge to run my fingers through it. “Everyone’s thoughts. And my parents separating. And everything. I hoped coming here would help. I didn’t expect . . .” you to be here.

I grimaced at the wavering frustration he felt. That probably wasn’t supposed to get through. “I can go if you want.”

No. Scott blinked, sucked in a breath. “We . . . probably . . .”

An image of us talking.

“We need to talk?” I tried. He nodded, so I tapped the bench beside me. “Want to sit down here?”

Scott did, then folded his hands together in his lap.

“I don’t know if I want to open up to you,” he said quietly.

I sighed and scanned the church. The woman in heels was still kneeling in front of Claudia; an older couple sat near Tulio; the priestess was now speaking to a mother and child sitting in the pews on the other side of the church. The light was on in the side hall where Scott and I had hidden during the sermon.

Scott huffed, his emotions flickering with amusement then sternness.

“I’d do that again in a heartbeat,” I said.

“Nick.” He sounded like he was scolding me.

“What? Why do we have to act like three weeks of getting close didn’t happen?”

“I’m not arguing with you.”

I can’t stand having it end like this, I thought to him.

We both stared ahead, side by side, several inches of pew between us. Heartache radiated off of him.

“My parents are going through with the separation. My mom’s moving into an apartment, and my sister’s staying with Dad.”

I gritted my teeth. I didn’t know what it was like. My parents had had love until . . .

Scott flinched, wrapped his arms around himself.

What was that? he asked.

“What was what?”

You’re hurting. It hit me all at once.

I lowered my head. “You’re hurting too. What I’m feeling doesn’t really matter when—”

“Of course it does.” Our eyes met, and Scott grimaced. “What happened?”

I glanced over his shoulders and floated a dumpling to him. “Eat this.”

He plucked it out of the air and complied, and I watched his furrowed brow, his jaw with patchy stubble.

“That’s good.”

“I’ve been eating stuff like this my whole life. My mom and aunt would make these, and other Chinese foods. My dad tried to make some dishes after Mom . . .” I still couldn’t get myself to say it. I sighed. “But, he never got them to taste quite like hers.”

“What you’re feeling matters,” Scott whispered, gripping the pew between us. “And I’ve been kind of ignoring it.”

“You have a lot of shit going on,” I said, the ache now mixed with spikes of anxiety over where our conversation was headed.

“That’s no excuse.”

“It’s not like I’ve been perfect to you or anything.” Gods, why were words so hard when emotions gripped me so tight? “I messed up with your telepathy,” I said, resisting the urge to reach out to him. “Made assumptions I shouldn’t have. And then the whole comic thing.”

“I was an asshole.”

“You were right.”

“I was still an asshole. That’s not what you do when someone gives you something.”

Scott sucked in a breath, and I could feel the thoughts in his head bouncing around, repeating his words, thinking about the gods. Especially his gift from the gods. He’d been so caught up in what it meant for his family and his life, he’d hardly felt truly thankful for it.

It was at about this point that I realized I had been privy to Scott’s whole chain of thought. And it had felt so good, his mind nestled next to mine, sharing words faster than lips could move.

“Scott . . .” I started, trying to articulate everything that was tumbling around in my head. I love this, stay with me, oh gods, I am being too intense for you, huh?

And he broke eye contact, his feelings and thoughts vanishing in an instant, leaving a gaping hole in me where they had been.

My heart rattled erratically around my ribs. He was still sitting next to me, but we were both alone.

He was gone.

“I’m sorry. Can . . . um. Would you mind if I talked to Natalis?”

“No,” I said, pulling my backpack open and lifting out my book for literature. “Go for it.”

Given that’s what he had come here for, I couldn’t really argue. But all the better if he could sense the frustration I felt. Maybe he’d figure himself out. Maybe he wouldn’t. I’d have to convince myself that the time wouldn’t be wasted if I got some reading done.

I needed to trust him to follow through and return to me. It was awful knowing what his heart felt and being able to see in real time how his mind was pushing that away. I was helpless, and in a place like this, that was such an unfair feeling. Where was the confidence and guidance the gods were supposed to give me?

Would they at least give those things to Scott?