by S. K Munt
But now she wanted her memories back to wield like a shield. How could the suffering of these two music students compare to what she’d put Billie Holiday through? Or how she’d beckoned to a male dancer to step in front of a car and have his legs and dreams crushed so that he could be forced to sit still and wait for the music to come to him in the form of a symphony he needed to pen? Callie knew, thanks to Thespia, that she had done such things, and though the knowledge made her writhe in self-abasement- she did not have the physical memory of inflicting and having overcome and triumphed from causing such distress. So each of Ryan’s tears fell like acid on her shoulder and the sound of Hunter struggling to breathe caused her own to catch.
‘I’m sorry…’ Ryan hugged her so tightly that she was lifted from the ground, forcing her to feel how firm he was, how wonderful his scent was. ‘Callie I am so, so sorry.’
Callie nodded and whispered: ‘Me too,’ into his ear, and then kissed his cheek and disentangled herself. She glanced behind her to see that everyone but Gavin, Thespia and Nathan had made themselves scarce. The three who remained made no attempt to hide their curiosity, and Callie rolled her eyes. ‘Could you give us a minute guys?’
Gavin pushed off the bed set and wriggled his fingers in the air, backing his eyes comically. ‘Diva, diva, diva! Didn’t anyone tell you that I’m the star here? Those lovely looking fellas should be falling at my toe shoes.’ He winked at Ryan. ‘Hello there, my Tall Black Russian. Want me to sign your pec?’
Ryan blinked, dumbstruck, and Callie burst into a hysterical fit of giggles. ‘Back off, Gav! These two are straighter than your leg extensions.’
Gavin sighed melodramatically and turned away, sweeping across the floor before declaring: ‘Their loss!’
Hunter made a strange noise and Callie looked to see that he was gaping after Gavin as he leapt from the room. ‘Wait… the one who rocked out Metallica is gay?!’ He threw his hands heavenwards. ‘And he still did it better than me! What’s it gonna take?’
Callie laughed again and pulled Hunter back in for a hug before pulling away. ‘So… what did you think?’
Hunter’s eyebrows rose. ‘Of the part where you got licked onstage, or the part where my best friend returned from oblivion and ended up under a spotlight right in front of me?’ His words were clipped, stiff, and Callie could sense that they were the nicest words he could come up with.
‘I was actually referring to the whole production…’ she teased, but then ducked her face and stared up at Hunter from beneath her lashes, which were dotted with individual white diamontes, the reflection of light off them making him shimmer to her gaze. He’d become truly beautiful; broad and tanned and golden. ‘I hoped you guys would come. I intended to come and find you after tomorrow night’s show, if you didn’t.’ She glanced over at Nathan again, gave him a weak smile and moved closer to Hunter, keeping her voice low. ‘Look I know we have a lot to discuss but it’s the kind of discussion I’d like to keep private.’
Hunter did not flinch at her attempts to be bashful and apologetic, and Callie realized that getting him to fall in love with her was going to be harder work than Thespia had eluded to. She’d hurt him irrevocably. Callie could dance as gracefully, sing as sweetly, dress as seductively and smile as winningly as she was capable but she wouldn’t have any actual powers until she’d fulfilled her purpose, other than her general and very potent aura, so she was attempting to steal the heart of a man who had no reason to even give her a moment of his time. What was she going to do if he turned and stomped away?
‘Yeah well, it’s the kind of discussion I would have liked to have had seven years ago so why do you get to state the terms?’ He glanced at Ryan and muttered under his breath. ‘Maybe we should just go man…’
‘Honey?’ Nathan sounded perplexed as he stepped forward and cinched his arms around Callie’s waist in a very male demonstration of possession that was so over the top that Callie knew that Thespia had inspired that little move for fun. His king’s crown clinked against her queen one and almost knocked it off. ‘The others are going back to the hotel now and said we can jump in their maxi cab if we want.’
Callie’s eyes went to Hunter’s and she saw it; a spark of possession. Knowing that she might be able to melt Hunter’s icy shell with his own boiling blood - she turned and pressed her lips gently to Nathan’s smooth cheek and whispered huskily: ‘Go on baby. I’ll meet you backstage in a minute.’
Nathan caught her lips with hers in a kiss that managed to be both brief and slow. When he pulled back, his eyes were heavy lidded. ‘Don’t take too long,’ he teased, winking at her. ‘We need to rehearse that part where I tear your clothes off again… I think I need to pull off more.’ Hunter inhaled sharply and for a moment, Callie wanted to shoot Thespia a: ‘Dial down the Romeo look,’ before Nathan actually pissed on her leg, but she didn’t know how effective that would be on a naturally dramatic and infatuated Thespian anyway.
She turned to Hunter and said: ‘Look, I’m going tomorrow night to finish this tour, but I’ll be moving back here in a few week’s time and signing on at AVPAC. Remember that place?’
Hunter and Ryan exchanged shocked looks and then turned to her. ‘Remember it?’ Ryan repeated. ‘Callie we’re doing our degrees there. You’re seriously enrolling?’
Callie had known that of course but she feigned a surprised smile of excitement. ‘That’s awesome! But I’m not enrolling, guys, I got my degree a few years ago at LISPA.’ She smiled shyly as she name-dropped the exclusive London school of performing arts. Callie hadn’t attended there of course, but she had the papers to say that she had. ‘I’ll be assisting in some winter workshops with the orchestra and a few dance classes until I decide what I’d like to do from there.’
‘You’re going to be a teacher?’ Ryan repeated, looking shocked.
‘Our teacher.’ Hunter didn’t try to hide his resentment.
‘Um... If that’s one of your courses than yeah I am.’ Callie smiled and retreated a step. ‘Anyway I’ll come to you then okay? We can get together if that’s all right, maybe have dinner or something and I can- well I can explain. And apologize.’ She smiled tightly. She didn’t have to fake her nerves now. ‘If that’s okay with you of course? I mean, I can understand if you never want to see me again, again...’
Hunter’s features tightened and for one horrible moment, Callie wondered if he was going to tell her to sod off. But then Ryan stepped forward, took her hand again and kissed it so lightly that her heart fluttered. ‘I’m all for the catch up Callie, but if you want to see me, you have to agree to go to dinner with me first…’ Ryan pulled her closer. ‘And only me. Come see us your first night back to clear the air, but the second has to be mine, okay?’
Callie blinked. ‘Don’t you need to hear what I have to say before we go setting dates? What if I need to confess that I’ve been in prison?’
‘Then the next time you get locked up, I’ll be your accomplice.’ Ryan grinned. ‘Sorry Cal but nothing you have to say is going to change the fact that I’m still in love with you.’
‘Ryan!’ Hunter snapped, sounding as shocked as Callie felt.
Behind her Nathan demanded: ‘Did you just ask Callie out right in front of me?’
‘I did.’ Electricity was flowing from Ryan’s hand into Callie’s everything. His demand was bold, his usually blue eyes a passionate teal as he stared her down, willing her to answer in his favor, uncaring what anyone thought. Callie trembled with the need to kiss him there and then, but she couldn’t fall into those eyes without holding tightly to her wits; It was Hunter she was, well, hunting- Ryan was the bullet she was going to pierce Hunter’s heart with, and this was the perfect opportunity to take aim. She needed a steady hand, not trembling knees.
‘Man it’s not the time.’ Hunter said, yanking Ryan back. And then he turned to Callie, looking cross. ‘Fine. We’ll do dinner. And you can answer Ryan then, if Ryan still wants an answer once we know exactly how insane you
are.’
‘No.’ Ryan said shortly, his gaze not leaving hers. ‘Answer me now Cal. Give me something to hold onto before you walk away this time.’
Callie returned Ryan’s heated stare with her own. ‘It’s a date.’
Ryan’s face broke into the most brilliant smile she’d even seen, on earth or in what she still loosely thought of as heaven. She turned away from it and walked towards Thespia and Nathan, not wanting to see Thespia’s grin of triumph, or Nathan and Hunter’s scowls.
She had Ryan’s smile to cling to. And she would not let it go.
*
Four weeks later Callie repeated the almost completely fabricated recount of what had happened to her the night of Cyclone Addison, where she had been since and why she hadn’t sent word to them until now.
‘My parents didn’t know...’ she stammered. ‘It was congenital. And really-’ she rushed on in hope that she might wipe the terrified expressions off their faces, ‘it’s not supposed to be life threatening. It’s just a small hole in one of the valves in my heart, and the main risk it poses if I get overly stressed or freaked out or whatever, the blood can sort of leak out and- ’
‘Kill you?’ Hunter’s face was ashen.
Callie shrugged. ‘The odds are like, fifteen in one thousand or something. I’m supposed to avoid excessive stress and I have to be careful about pregnancy, thrill rides… you know...’
Ryan shuffled forward on the edge of the couch. His hair and black button-up shirt was still sprinkled with rain from when he’d met her at their gate with an umbrella. ‘Are you saying that you could have died because of what we…?’
A snort escaped Callie and she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But in addition to the heart murmur, I also have high blood pressure. And because of the phobia with storms, well… my panic attacks are probably worse than most. I don’t just get scared- I lose my grip on reality. I hyperventilate and that makes me feel sick, and when I feel sick it gets harder to breathe and so I’m basically on the cusp of passing out the moment lightning strikes hard enough.’ She paused, collecting herself. She needed to get this story straight. It was the key to getting Hunter to forgive her and let her into his heart. ‘So because what we were doing was already, erm… intense, I flipped out and ran. When I came to, I was in a hospital in Rockhampton… ’ The rest of the fabricated story tumbled out of Callie’s lips. How she’d spent two weeks in hospital, and then hitched a ride with a truck-driver to Brisbane to stay with an old dance teacher. Then how she’d sent her parents a letter telling them that she was alive and would send for them when she had recovered from a psychological episode, but that it might be months if not years away. That she was too mortified to look them in the eye.
And it had taken years- Imogen had sent that letter while Callie had been passed out in shock on Helicon- keeping Callie’s human existence on life-support just so Callie could return to it in time to hopefully die again. But at least her parents had only feared her dead for a week, not years.
The lies were endless. Well, the stuff about her parents was mostly true; her mother had begged her to make contact with ‘poor Ryan and Hunter’ again, but her father had snarled at the mention of their names. They’d been as furious with Callie, but by the time they’d reunited in L. A., they’d had a few years to come to terms with it and her mother’s career was skyrocketing thanks to Imogen constantly popping up to spy on them so at least she’d had her writing to keep her occupied.
Callie had told her parents about the heart thing as well as a way to slowly ease her way out of their lives. It was crushing to do and horrible to see them break down but everyone who cared for her needed to believe that lie, so that when she ‘disappeared’ after she’d fulfilled her obligations to Hunter, one of her sisters would be able to send word of her death that would seem legitimate even though her ‘body’ would have to vanish, rather than be buried when she returned to Helicon. Then she would return to her divine body while she contemplated her future; but whether that was going to be as the Muse of music, or Ardos’s wife she still didn’t know. She and Ardos had a big talk coming when she saw him next; she still resented the way he had delayed her in Helicon, knowing her human life was slipping away. He’d broken her trust, but that didn’t change the fact that he was her designated soul mate, and Callie fully intended to explore him as an avenue if only to make up for the fact that Calliope had dismissed him so cruelly.
It was all so complicated. But Callie was grateful that she’d granted one of her mother’s fondest wishes; seeing Callie make something of herself. She had flown them to Sydney from L. A the very first weekend of The Princess And The Pea, and they had been beyond proud.
‘You should have contacted us Cal!’ Hunter looked green. ‘Do you have any idea what my senior year was like after those accusations were made?! You just left! And you left us as pariahs!’ He nodded to Ryan. ‘He was disowned. Had to get a job instead of graduating so Marnie was basically my only friend in all of HSH!’
‘Hunter, you can’t blame Cal for the fact that I had shitty parents,’ Ryan had moved with them, still watching Callie anxiously. ‘They disowned me after my name was cleared Cal. In fact, mum only just started speaking to me again last year when dad died.’
Callie hadn’t known about Ryan’s father, and her tummy rolled. ‘Oh no! What happened to him?’
Ryan sighed and looked away. ‘Stroke. Too much stress and work…’ his brows knitted together but he seemed to shake the gloominess off before looking back to Callie with a weak smile. ‘Hasn’t made my mother work less though so….’ He took Callie’s hand and squeezed it. ‘All that matters to me is that you’re back now. I said good-bye to them both a long time ago.’
Callie hugged him again, inhaling his scent. Ryan was the living embodiment of ‘the poor little rich boy,’ and she thanked the stars above that his life had led him to music, not behind some desk where he might have grown as cold and remote as his father had been. ‘I wish I’d been there for you,’ she whispered.
A hand stroked her hair. ‘Be here for me now.’ He pulled back. ‘You are staying, right?’
‘I don’t know.’ Callie turned out of his arms and away from Hunter. When she addressed them again, it was from the kitchen bench, where the scent of leftover spaghetti muted theirs and allowed her to think straight. ‘I don’t know why I’m here, or how long I intend to stay. All I know is that I’ve missed you both so much...’
‘Wouldn’t have known it from our end Callie!’ Hunter kicked the coffee table so hard that Callie flinched. It skated across the tiles before slamming into the T. V unit. His jaw was tight, his face beet-red as he turned back to her, the tendons winding around his muscles straining against his tawny flesh. ‘How could you have done this to us? After what we had?’
Callie the human girl was shaken by Hunter’s rage, her heart spasming and leaking bitterness. ‘You mean after what we shared?!’ She demanded. ‘Or tried to share? Oh yeah, you and Ry had a connection all right! Until, of course, you had to decide who took the lead, and then look out!’ Ryan blanched. Hunter’s face contorted. They looked at each other, both seeming lost. Callie cackled. ‘And you’re doing it again! Having one of those silent eye discussion that best friends share- except I was supposed to be in on it, guys! Not haggled over! Not then and not now!’ She knew she was losing her wits and so she paused to draw in a breath, placing a hand over her heart and squeezing her eyes shut. She felt the shift in atmosphere immediately. ‘You shouldn’t have tried to steamroll me like that.’
‘Callie! Crap are you okay?’ Hunter’s voice was hoarse.
‘Callie we acted like jerks!’ That was Ryan of course. ‘And we can never say how sorry we are. That might be literal for Hunter because he can be a stubborn ass, but I’ll never stop trying to make it up to you. To make you see how precious you are to me! Always have been!’
‘Precious?’ Callie’s eyes opened. ‘You both acted like I was a hot potato, tossing me back and forth. In
a love triangle between high school kids, that’s to be expected, maybe. But for a supposed trio of best friends? It was disgusting.’ She treated them each to a hard look but let it linger on Hunter. ‘You gave me shit about what happened to you after I left but have you for one second thought about what my senior year would have been like if I’d stayed? Callie Clay the girl who got double-teamed during a cyclone by the boyfriend of the most popular girl in school?’ She snorted. ‘I would have been tarred and feathered! Not to mention how I would have felt about myself! So I’m sorry if the twelfth grade sucked for you Hunter, I really am; that one part of your golden existence wasn’t perfect! But I haven’t been able to forgive myself for getting into that situation, and now you’re saying I should have risked the straws of mental health I’d managed to grasp onto, to haul ass back here and absolve you even though neither of you actually gave a fuck about me? No freaking way!’
Hunter looked taken aback. ‘How could you think we didn’t care?’
‘Because hooking up with two guys at once is disgusting! It’s cheap! As my best friends, you never would have encouraged me to do that with two other guys, would you? Like Reece and Sean?’
Hunter looked green. ‘You couldn’t have trusted them!’
‘I shouldn’t have trusted you either! I was so fragile Hunter, and I was trying to hang onto you, terrified that if I didn’t change with you, that I’d be left behind. That was why I kissed you back- because for the first time in over a month, I finally felt like I mattered to you again.’ Hunter winced and she went on. ‘I loved you guys as mates and I could have stayed like that forever. I get that you were confused about the changes in dynamics between us all too- but if you think for one second, that trying to share me behind Meredith’s back while I was hysterical was okay, then- ’ Callie was interrupted as a massive clap of thunder sounded overhead. The guys both flinched, both reached for her, but Callie remained motionless, unfazed before going on: ‘-then you really didn’t care about me, or know me at all. And you definitely don’t know who I am now.’ Lightning streaked the room neon blue, like Ryan’s eyes. ‘Things have changed.’
