caffeine challenge 23

His heart is still beating when you decide you’ve spent enough time with his blood on your hands. Some things even time cannot wash away, some crimes even magic cannot wish away. There are costs to everything, but sometimes it feels as though that’s a lie we tell ourselves to make every day seem better. We paid the cost, we move on.

He stares at me without an expression I’m familiar with, the page in his hand. “This is the start of a story?” he asks, unable to see himself on a page. I don’t leave the start of stories out anymore, not after he made the crack about Twilight fanfic. But this one left itself, almost.

The sneer in his voice at ‘story’ says everything, and too much of that. You can’t be with people who don’t support your dreams, not really. He never did anything except insist that I supported mine.

We met in a too-expensive coffee shop, both on trips with other people – he with his girlfriend of the time, I with my little brother. Taking pictures of famous landmarks, and then of each other. We had a caffeine challenge, matching each other with shots of espresso. We hit it off, but perhaps only after the coffee was replaced by wine at a wine bar. It should have been a warning, but it wasn’t. He left his girlfriend for me. Gabriel sneered at that as only a younger brother can, said he’d leave me to. That false once could only be false again.

He hasn’t left me though. I’m the one who has my bags packed and ready to go in the bedroom. I wish I’d caught him with another woman. I have a gun locked away for a kiss and bang. But it’s nothing that simple.

“It was therapy.”

“Therapy.” He snorts. “You’ve wasted enough of our money on that. Those quacks get paid by the hour: their job wasn’t to save you. It was to string you along and get as much money from you as they could.”

“You cancelled it without telling me.”

“Pretty therapeutic, I say.” He laughs at his jokes. No one else does.

Magic runs in my family. I could do it. Remove his heart, hold it out, talk to him. But we only have so much magic in us for our entire lives. He’s not worth it. He was never worth my magic. Gabriel said that to me, and I never disagreed. But if he wasn’t worth my magic, how was he ever worth me? Sometimes things get so simple it’s a wonder they were ever complicated at all.

I take the paper, rip it apart, walk to the bedroom and come out with my bags.

“Hey,” he says, confused. “What is this?”

There is menace in his tone; I hope I am just imagining it. “I’m leaving. I can’t do this anymore.”

“You can’t just –.” He stands, confusion giving way to anger.

“I am.”

“Is this about that joke at the party about you being fat? I never met to hurt nobody!”

“It’s not that. It’s everything. Please move.”

He stares at me. Takes a step forward.

“Don’t.” I’ve never used magic on him. Never wasted, never spent, but I let a hint of other creep into my tone. I have Gabriel on speed dial in my pocket; if I don’t want to waste any of my magic on him, Gabriel will happily do so.

He steps aside. Slowly, not understanding. I left no note for him. I walk outside, call a call, start down the street toward the intersection.

He doesn’t follow.

I ignore the small part of me that wishes he would.