No, this was a different redhead.
One I was happy to see.
September 19, age 26
The distant memory of Eve shattered along with my illusion of the morning. I jolted up, scurrying to the corner of the bed as Fauna stretched out beside me. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d taken so long to arrive that I now scrambled through my new reality, trying to figure out if this was a dream.
She yawned, scrunching her eyes and balling her fists as she uncurled like a cat. She sat up slowly, stacking the pillows behind her before lounging on them.
“You called,” she said, a small, hopeful smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.
I blinked at her, sleep evaporating as I struggled to orient myself. “Fauna, I—”
“You called me,” she said again. There was an unmistakable desperation to her echo.
It wasn’t just pride keeping me from the reunion I craved.
She’d made a fool of me, when all I’d done was love her.
I didn’t know how to tell her how scared I was that I’d give my heart—my avoidant, cautious, prickly heart—to someone who would betray me not once, but twice.
I pressed the heel of my hand into my temple, squeezed my eyes shut against the confusion, and sucked in a breath. “Listen, I don’t know what you think this is, but you’re not forgiven. I don’t have words for what you did to me. I’m furious. But—”
“But you called me,” she repeated softly.
My mouth snapped shut.
Her posture straightened. She used her fingertips to comb through her loose, mussed curls while she waited for me. When I said nothing, she said, “You shouldn’t fall asleep with your candle burning. It isn’t safe.”
I looked to the vanity to see it had been blown out.
“When did you get here?”
Her hair spilled over her shoulder as she tilted her head to the side. She tucked her feet beneath herself and eyed me. “Is that what you want to ask?”
I wondered if my swallow was as audible to her as it was to me. It was absurd to see her here. I missed her. I hated her. I wanted her gone. I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to live a different life, one in which I’d never met gods and monsters, one in which she’d never hurt me. I wanted everything to be all right again. But it wasn’t.
Most of all, I just wanted to love her and be loved by her.
My palms had grown clammy, nerves tingling down my spine, though I couldn’t name the emotion. I shook my head but couldn’t bring my tongue to work.
“Good, because I want coffee. What’s your sugar situation?” she asked, rising from the bed and padding down the hall. A new rage burned through me at her familiarity. This was the sort of thing shared by friends, by family, by people who loved one another. She didn’t get to come back into my life, sleep in my bed, hold me, and raid my kitchen as if nothing had ever happened.
“Your whole house smells like angel. Like, babe, itreeksof Silas. What were you two up to?”
My feet hit the heated marble, and I was at the counterin a flash. She looked up from where she’d begun filling the kettle. “Fauna, stop what you’re doing.”
A slender brow arched with slow caution.
“I didn’t call you here to drink my coffee or be my friend.”
The high-pitched whir of running water continued. Once the kettle was full, she turned off the faucet and replaced it on the hot pad, but she did not begin boiling. Her hip sank into the counter’s edge, the cascading fabric of her oversized pants gathered and pinched where she rested. Half of a lunar moth adorned her shirt. The bottom half had presumably been discarded when she’d taken a pair of scissors to it. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen her in a full-length top. It was the sort of relaxed, hippie attire I’d found confusing and charming and quirky before. Now it offended me. She should have come dressed for a funeral.
She watched me expectantly.
“I loved you. I trusted you. And you weren’t just lying to me; you were using me.” My heart sank with each word as if remembering each betrayal as a fresh wound.
Her hand rested lightly on the countertop, but her eyes didn’t leave mine. There was no trace of her irreverent, bubbly self as she remained as still as the deer for which she was named.
