Chapter 46
Jesse’s Progressed Neptune Conjunct Natal Vertex
I stand in the middle of the fish camp and listen to the smooth rush of my own breath. Everything around me is alive and vibrating with energy. The rocks. Bugs. The dirt under my feet. The air in my nostrils. Everything has a life force, including all the situations swirling around me.
The hole in my heart from Jesse. The pulsation of power in my fingertips from beating Bianca’s magick tricks. The woods bearing witness.
Even this season of my life is a living thing. My late summer and early autumn. A time for abundance and harvest and the culmination of everything I’ve worked for and everything I’ve learned. This is my time to remember my power, my knowledge, and my experience, and to honor them all. I am more me now than in any season that has preceded this one.
Bianca is gone, and I know deep in my soul that I will never see her again and that I will never suffer her foolishness again. While I am disappointed in myself for letting my defenses waver and for initially underestimating Bianca’s strength, I am also a bit proud of myself. I met a rival as strong as Dragon or any of the elders, though not as knowledgeable. She is someone who follows a different magickal path, but still an equal of mine. While I am not averse to invoking dark forces to assist me, I defeated the chaos witch using her own magickal tools against her.
I should feel exhausted, but maybe it’s the adrenaline: I am positively euphoric!
Jan stands in the distance, picking her path along an adjacent route from the healing center. I can’t hear what she’s saying from this far away—something about “quite a light show”—but she beams with pride in me. I make my way to meet her.
A twig snaps somewhere behind me. I spin around, ready to take on anything I might face, ready to destroy any threat with the snap of my fingers.
Jesse stands in front of me, a silhouette against the rippling star-shine of the water behind him. I can’t tell for certain because his face is in shadow, but he seems to stare at me.
Can it be? Now that I’ve broken Bianca’s spell and freed myself of her dirty tricks, is the spell broken on Jesse, too? Is he once again the man I married? The compassionate heart, the charming smile, the sweet kisses, the service before self, mentally stimulating conversationalist, the cerebral surfer dude personality? With the spell broken, was this my Jesse?
I exhale his name. “Jesse? Jesse, is it you?”
The man steps forward from the shadows of a low hanging branch. The campfire nearby illuminates his face. Solid. Real. But haggard. His hair unkept. Several days’ growth of beard. Stinking of sweat and mud. Smiling, though, just the way my Jesse always did. Slightly lopsided. Happy to see me.
“Hey, Wifey-licious.” He extends one index finger towards my face and touches my lips. His voice drops to a whisper. “Hey, I know you.”
The euphoria inside me rises another notch that I didn’t think was possible. “You do?”
If he can be whole again, even after everything he has been through, and after everything he has put me through in these last few months, I would thank the Gods for returning him to me. No more than an hour ago, I ritually forgave and released him and all the decay in his etheric body. I probably shouldn’t expect the physical damage to be repaired so quickly, but if body, mind, and spirit can all be healed, then maybe there is a future for us after all. Maybe this is just the worst part of for better or worse. It’s not too late to withdraw the divorce papers I told Tom to file earlier today, but can I trust Jesse not to hurt me again?
No. No, I can’t. But I can’t walk away. I need closure, and though I know full well that oftentimes closure never comes, this is my one chance to get it.
He looks confused. “I know you.” He pulls his fingertip away from my lips and extends his gently curving palm to touch my cheek. “You were important to me, weren’t you?”
Hot tears roll down my cheeks. I nod emphatically. There’s something of my Jesse still inside him.
“You left me, didn’t you? Or did I leave you? You loved me.”
“I still do.” I stop nodding like an idiot and sniff instead.
He caresses my cheek as I lean my head into his palm. I smile up at him.
“You visit me in my dreams.”
I nod again.
His lopsided smile turns into a full-fledged grin. For a split second, I see the anchor that he is holding onto—some dreamlike memory of me telling him how much I loved him.
And then he loses that anchor.
He pulls his hand from my cheek and instead flicks the tip of my nose with one finger. “Boop!” He flicks my nose again and tries a third time before I step back, stunned, shaking my head.
I hold up both hands as a shield between us. Not my Jesse. This is the Jesse who tried to drown his pain with the mind-numbing potion Bianca brewed up. She meant to make him feel better, but it had the unintended consequences of snatching all reality from his brain. It was meant to disconnect him from reality for only a few hours, not for eternity.
“Hey!” He grabs my left hand and holds it up in front of my face as he wiggles the wedding band on my fourth finger. “I’ve got one just like that!” He holds up his left hand to show me the partner to this matched set of rings that we bought together five years ago.
Jesse clinks our rings together. “They should be together. Don’t you think?” He frowns at the two gold bands on our fingers and nods as if this is some new revelation to him. Determined, he concludes, “They should be together.”
I start to say something, but the words hitch in my throat. Finally, I murmur, “They should be together.”
Not so carefully, he pulls the band from my finger and then yanks the larger one from his. He bounces them in his palm in front of me and then begins to laugh. Before I can fathom the hysterical peals of laughter hiccupping out of his mouth, he twists in the opposite direction and flings both rings into the lake.
He glances over his shoulder at me but doesn’t seem to recognize me at all. I know I don’t recognize him.
“There! Now they can be together for forever!” He stumbles to the water’s edge and flips off his sandals. This time he doesn’t bother to disrobe. He leaps into the lake and swims away.
Staring after him in the darkness, I know I will never see him again.
“I’m so sorry, doodlebug.” Jan wraps her arms around me and draws me close. “Remember when we had that awful fight? This was why I told you that you shouldn’t be with him. I didn’t see all the good things between then and now. But this and these last few weeks—that’s what I saw. I knew he would really hurt you one day, and I was willing to do anything in the world to stop it. Even ruin our friendship.”
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I’m still pulsing with euphoria and, at the same time, trying to reconcile that Jesse won’t be back. Such an odd sense of giddiness and grief at once. I’m connected with everything around me, yet my emotions have disconnected from reality.
“I thought you were going to stay in the car like I asked you to, Jan. Or hang out in the parking lot at the healing center.”
“Nah. I tried talking to those two girls with the Ouija board, but they didn’t appreciate it much. I kept trying to tell them how Jesus doesn’t want them messing with that kind of thing, but they got upset and packed up and left.”
I turn to Jan and bury my face in her shoulder. The feelings are coming back, throbbing and unbelievably painful. Like removing my submerged arm from freezing waters and the sensation crawling from numbness to torture. “What do I do now?”
“Well, hear the sirens? The police are on their way, so I suggest we get you out of here before they arrive. Miss Priss is going to have some explaining to do, and her Jesse isn’t going to be able to help her out. Regardless, there’s nothing more for you to do here. They’ve both made their bed, and now they’ve got to… okay, bad analogy, but you know what I mean.”
“Jan? You should go home. Have a good evening with Steve, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“You sure? I don’t want to leave you in this state.”
“Don’t worry about my state. I’ll be fine. But I’d like to be alone tonight to process what’s happened.”
“Are you absolutely, positively certain you’re not going to hurt yourself or—”
“No.” I smile at Jan and give her one more hug. “I promise. I have too much left to do in this incarnation to give up now. But there is one last thing I have to do tomorrow before I can move on, and I have to have your help for it.”
Jan takes my hands in hers and squeezes them. For a moment, she rubs the indention on my finger where I wore a wedding band for five years. “Anything for you, doodlebug.”
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