Elegy

SIX Breathless

It was still strange, waking up in a house without Harper. The laundry wasn’t magically folded in the basket, and the dishes didn’t miraculously do themselves. Gemma didn’t mind stepping up and filling the hole her sister had left at home, but it still felt very weird.

The freedom was nice, not that Harper wasn’t still texting and calling her all the time. Gemma wasn’t completely sure how Harper managed to get schoolwork done, but knowing her, she was probably finishing it all, along with extra credit assignments.

The biggest thing Harper’s absence had left her with was time to think. Gemma no longer had somebody across the hall to discuss things with. She had told her dad everything now, but it wasn’t the same as talking to Harper.

As Gemma scrubbed the dishes from last night’s supper, her mind wandered to all the things that worried her. Like if she would ever really be able to break the curse, and what was taking Lydia so long with the scroll translations.

And why had Thea skipped play practice the night before? Thea claimed she had to babysit Liv while Penn ran an errand, but she refused to explain beyond that.

Daniel had shown up late for rehearsal last night, and he’d seemed out of sorts. Gemma tried to talk to him about it, but he’d just brushed her off. She couldn’t help but fear that Thea’s absence and Daniel’s uneasiness were tied together.

After Gemma rinsed off the last dish and put it in the drainer, she leaned against the sink. She stared out the window at Alex’s house next door, and her worries were replaced by a familiar longing pulling at her heart.

It had been over a week since she’d last spoken to Alex, and that conversation had been tumultuous. He’d yelled at her until she finally explained to him that she’d gotten him to break up with her using her siren song. He was hurt and furious, but then he’d kissed her.

It was the first time she’d kissed him in over a month, and sometimes at night, she’d replay it over in her mind. He’d been angry, so his lips had pressed against hers with urgency and passion, but the tenderness hidden beneath had been unmistakable. The very thought of it made her heart ache.

Gemma decided that she wasn’t going to live this way. He was right next door, and if she missed him, then she should go see him. She didn’t want to waste what little time she had left on this earth missing someone who lived right next door.

She dried off her hands, smoothed out her hair, and walked over to Alex’s house. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on his front door. But all of her confidence completely disappeared when he opened the door, and she saw him standing in front of her.

His T-shirt pulled taut against his chest and arms, and Gemma’d almost forgotten how much more muscular he’d gotten since he started working at the docks. He’d gotten his chestnut hair cut since she’d seen him last, but it was still a little longer than he usually wore it, so it landed just above his eyebrows.

Alex looked older, and she hadn’t gotten used to it. There was still some of his innocence, some of the boy next door hidden in his features, but he had a new maturity and strength to his face—a hardness in his jaw and brow that wasn’t there before.

But it was his eyes that struck her momentarily mute. For the first time in a while, she could actually see him in them. Lately, his mahogany eyes had been a mask revealing nothing, but now there he was, the boy she’d fallen desperately in love with, and it was enough to take her breath away.

“Hello?” Alex asked, sounding bemused as she stared dumbly up at him.

“Hey,” Gemma said with a dopey smile. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind that I stopped by.”

“No, of course not.” He grinned, his whole face lighting up, and he stepped aside. “Come on in.”

“Are you sure?” Gemma hesitated before entering, but he gestured widely to his house.

“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said.

“You have?” Gemma asked uncertainly as she slid past him.

“Yeah.” Alex walked toward the living room, so she followed him, and he looked back over his shoulder as he talked to her. “I mean, I talked to Harper when she was still in town, and she kinda updated me on everything that’s going on with you.”

“Did she?” Gemma asked. “That’s good. I think.”

Daniel had borrowed Alex’s car last week, then used it in an attempt to rescue Gemma, and he’d gotten it bogged down with mud. Harper and Daniel had returned the car to Alex and helped clean it up.

Gemma had wanted to help, but she was afraid that things would still be weird, so she’d focused on trying to translate the scroll while Harper had filled Alex in on all the goings-on with the sirens.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Gemma asked.

Alex motioned for her to sit down, and she sat tentatively on the couch. He remained standing for a few more seconds, then sat down at the other end.

“I didn’t like the way we left things last week,” he said finally. “But I didn’t want to bother you with stupid drama.”

“You’re not bothering me,” Gemma said quickly.

He smiled crookedly and stared off at the brick fireplace in the corner. His mother had decorated the living room in shabby chic, and the couch was covered in a weird, flowery pink fabric. Grade-school pictures of Alex hung in frames made of reclaimed wood.

Gemma let her eyes linger on a picture of him when he was twelve. His cowlick had been atrocious, but even then, there’d been something cute about him. He’d walked her home from school in the rain once, when Harper had been sick.

He’d been in middle school at the time, but he walked over to the grade school to get her because he had an umbrella, and he didn’t think that Gemma would. That might have been the very early beginnings of her crush on him.

“I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do, anymore.” Alex ran a hand through his hair and looked over at Gemma.

“What do you mean?”

“With you. I’m not your boyfriend, and I don’t even…” He shook his head. “I just wanted to tell you that I worry about you, and if you need me—for anything—I’ll be there in a second. I want to help you.”

She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“Sorry, I’ve been talking, and you came over here to say something. Sorry. Go ahead.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I wanted to check up on you.”

“On me?” He was taken aback. “Why?”

“Because of how things went the last time we talked.”

His face paled for a moment. “I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

“No, you had every right to,” Gemma said.

“No, I didn’t.” He shook his head. “I was angry, and I was hurt, but I know that whatever you did, you did it because you cared about me. You were doing what you thought was best to protect me.”

“I really did, Alex.” She met his eyes when she said it, hoping to convey her sincerity. “I really hope you understand that. Everything I did, I did because I—I cared about you.”

“I know that. And even then, I think I knew that. I was just in such a fog of confusion and misery and just … bleakness. But I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. It was uncalled for, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I understand,” she said. “You’ve been going through something terrible, and it’s my fault. You should be mad at me. I did something major to you without even asking.”

“Gemma, it’s okay. I’m okay,” he reassured her.

“You do seem to be doing so much better than the last time I saw you.”

It wasn’t just the look in his eyes, the way he looked more like himself—although that was a big part of it. Alex just seemed relaxed and calmer. Before, he’d been so brooding and angsty, but now, there was a lightness about him again.

“I’m feeling so much better,” Alex said with a relieved smile. “It’s like this fog has been lifted, you know?”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, and she meant it.

But what she didn’t dare ask was why? Not because she didn’t want to know but because she was afraid of what the answer might be.

When she’d used the siren song on Alex, it had been to make him stop loving her. And he had. Or at least it appeared that way, but it had also caused him to spiral into despair and anger.

Now he was better. He should still be trapped under the spell, and though she was very happy that he wasn’t, Gemma didn’t know how to explain it. The siren curse hadn’t been broken, so the song should still have an effect on him.

Unless he didn’t love her anymore. Maybe it wasn’t the song itself that hurt him but the fact that it conflicted with his own feelings for her. And if he stopped loving her, the conflict would disappear.

“I’m not like happy happy, but I’m closer than I’ve been in a while,” Alex went on with the same broad smile.

“I will find a way to get you all the way back to normal,” she promised him, forcing back the lump in her throat. “I’m going to find a way to undo the curse, then that will set you free, too.”

Or at least that was her plan. From what Lydia had told her, and from Thea’s story about Asterion and the minotaurs, once the curse was broken, it was like it had never existed. With Asterion, that meant that the immortality the curse had given him along with his bullhead had been taken away, and since he was centuries old, he’d turned into dust.

Although no one had explicitly stated it, Gemma hoped that if the siren curse was broken, any enchantments of their siren song would be lifted as well. She didn’t know for sure if breaking the curse would only affect the cursed themselves—so Thea and Penn would turn to dust, but all of the siren spells would still live on—but she hoped it would erase everything, including the spell she put on Alex.

Until then, she could only hope the spell would continue to weaken until any lingering enchantment eventually disappeared.

Not that it would make that much of a difference anymore, not if Alex had set himself free by falling out of love with her.

She was surprised to feel the ache in her chest growing, her heart tearing in half all over again. This is what she’d wanted. Setting Alex free and away from her to keep him safe. It was best for him, and she knew that.

But it felt like losing him all over again. After their kiss last week, she’d been rather stupidly and selfishly hoping that they would be able to be together again once this was all over—or sooner than that, if she was being completely honest.

“Is this about the scroll that Harper was telling me about?” Alex asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

He sat at the other end of the couch, his dark eyes resting on her, and the distance between them had never felt so great. All she wanted to do was reach out and touch him, to have him pull her into his arms one last time and taste his lips as they pressed against hers.

But she couldn’t, so she forced a smile and nodded. “Yeah. We’re still working on it, but we’ll find a way.”

“You do what you need to do for yourself, but you don’t need to worry about me.”

“How can I not worry about you? I broke you.”

“That’s the thing.” He licked his lips. “I don’t really feel broken anymore.”

“I noticed,” she said, hoping her words didn’t sound as pained as they felt.

“And I think…” A slight blush broke out on his tanned cheeks, and he lowered his eyes. “I think it was because we kissed.”

Her heart skipped a beat, and she stared at him in surprise. “Really?”

“Really.” He lifted his head, evenly meeting her gaze. “Every day I’ve felt more and more like myself since then.”

Gemma didn’t know if that was true, or why kissing would alter the effect the siren song had on him, but at that moment, she didn’t care. She’d been certain that she’d never be able to be with Alex again, and now she had a chance, and nothing else mattered.

“Well … we could try kissing again,” Gemma suggested with bated breath. Her blood pounded in her ears, and her cheeks flushed.

At first he only stared at her, his expression blank and his eyes unreadable, and she was afraid she’d gone too far. It probably lasted just a few moments, but to her, it felt like an eternity, where she couldn’t breathe, and her heart pounded madly in her chest.

Then, finally, he leaned in to her and kissed her gently on the mouth. There was the tenderness that she’d come to know and love, the almost innocent way he kissed her.

But that was quickly replaced by the sense of desperation. It had been so long since they’d really kissed, and that added a fervor that made her skin flutter. The way Alex was touching her whetted the appetite of the siren inside her, but she silenced it. She refused to stop kissing him.

He pushed her back down on the couch, so he was on top of her. He held himself up with his arms, but she felt the slight weight of his body against her, the firmness of his chest and stomach against the softness of hers.

As he kissed her deeply, she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer to her. He felt so much different than he had before. Through his shirt, she felt his muscles, warm and solid under her fingertips. His back and shoulders were broader than she’d remembered, and his kisses more demanding.

When she tried to pull him to her, Alex didn’t move. She’d have to use her siren strength to get him to budge, and she didn’t want to let the monster out. Alex was still kissing her. He had one hand on her side, gently squeezing her.

He seemed to want to take things slower than she did. The hunger inside was flaring up, and the flutter was running across her skin. Not to mention the heat in her belly, spreading like a flame down her legs.

Putting her hand on his chest, she pushed him up so she could catch her breath, and she felt his heart hammering against the palm of her hand.

“Is something wrong?” Alex asked, his eyes searching hers.

“No.” She smiled up at him. “You’re stronger than you were before.”

“Sorry.”

“No.” Gemma laughed. “It’s just … strange. I got used to the way you felt in my arms, and I’ve been kinda clinging to that memory. And now you’re different.”

“You’re different, too.” He brushed back a hair from her forehead. “You feel the same, but your eyes…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. They look older somehow. You’ve been through a lot this summer.”

“We both have,” she said.

He took a deep breath and in a low voice, he said, “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

When Alex kissed her again, Gemma decided that she didn’t care about the monster. In that moment, all she wanted was to feel Alex and be as close to him as she could be. She’d missed him so much, and she wanted to feel him, holding her, touching her, encompassing her.

With her lips still pressed to his, she reached down and started pulling up his T-shirt. Alex tried to mumble some kind of protest, but her mouth on his silenced him. They separated long enough for her to pull his shirt up over his head, then they were kissing again, his bare flesh pressed against her.

Alex had slid his hands up her shirt, preparing to do the same thing, when a loud clearing of the throat interrupted them.

They both looked up to see Alex’s dad standing in the living room. His expression was unreadable behind his glasses and graying beard, but both Alex and Gemma hastily proceeded to sit up and scramble to straighten out their clothes.

“Dad, I didn’t think you’d be home until later,” Alex said as he pulled on his shirt, muffling some of his words. He’d moved to the other end of the couch, putting as much distance between himself and Gemma as he could. “I thought you were at the school all day.”

“And I thought you got your job back, Alex,” Mr. Lane said in the same emotionless voice that Gemma had heard him giving lectures in at the high school.

“Uh, yeah, I did, I don’t start at the dock again until tomorrow.” Alex smoothed out his hair as Gemma combed a hand through her own.

“I haven’t seen you around in a while, Gemma.” Mr. Lane took off his glasses and began to clean them with his shirt.

Gemma laughed nervously. “Things have been crazy lately, Mr. Lane.”

“Are you looking forward to being a junior in a couple weeks?”

“Yeah, I guess.” She smiled at him because she wasn’t sure how else to respond.

“Alex could’ve been enjoying college, too, if he hadn’t gotten all turned around,” Mr. Lane remarked once he put his glasses back on. That was the first time his tone had taken on anything really disapproving.

“I’m getting myself back on track, Dad,” Alex said with a heavy sigh.

“I should probably get going,” Gemma interrupted, since the situation only seemed to be getting more awkward and tense by the minute.

“Yeah, I’ll walk you out,” Alex said, getting to his feet before Gemma even had a chance to.

He ushered her out to the door and held it open for her. She stepped out on the front step and turned back to face him.

“Sorry about my dad,” he said.

“No problem.” She chewed her lip and stared up at him, waiting for him to say something or kiss her good-bye. When he didn’t, she said, “So … I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Definitely.”

Alex gave her a small wave, then shut the door. Gemma turned around and walked back to her house, wondering what had just happened.

The brief makeout session had been nice, but she had no idea what it meant. Especially with the brush-off he’d given her at the door. Admittedly, they were both flustered, but everything felt more confusing than ever.

She still cared about Alex so much, and she wanted to believe that he still cared for her. But maybe Alex was just trying to get back to normal, and he thought kissing her would help.

Which brought up another concern. Why was Alex back to normal? Was it the kissing, and if it was, why would that even work?

Or was it as she feared? When she used the siren song on him, she’d broken his heart. He didn’t love her anymore, so the negative effects of the song were fading.

Maybe things were really over between them forever, and what they just shared had been nothing more than an extended good-bye kiss.