Elijah woke up early Monday, having gotten to sleep earlier than usual even though he’d tossed and turned for an hour after he went to bed. He started his morning routine and didn’t remember that Monica had broken off the engagement until he was already in the shower. By the time he had cleaned up and gotten dressed, he wasn’t feeling very hungry.
Before starting his day’s work, he found a big envelope lined with bubble wrap and packed Monica’s phone into it, then drove to the post office in Boone to mail it to her. Returning to the house, he threw himself into work, cataloguing dozens of books and managing to avoid thinking about Monica – much. After a couple of hours of cataloguing and reshelving, he was starting to feel hungry and went to heat up his plate from the night before.
Casey got up when Elijah was almost done eating. He came into the kitchen, said good morning, and fixed a plate of leftovers to heat up.
“Hey,” Elijah said when Casey sat down across from him, looking up from his Bible. “Thanks again for listening to me last night. I don’t know how much it actually helped, but I appreciate it.”
“No problem,” Casey said. “Like I said, I know what a bad breakup is like. Someone you care about not being able to accept you when you change in ways they don’t like.”
Elijah thought about that while he chewed a mouthful of potatoes. That was one way to look at what had happened. “Do you want to talk about it? I mean, it’d be fair after I sat there talking your ear off last night.”
“Maybe not now,” Casey said. “This is all new and raw for you, but mine was well over a year ago, and I’m pretty much over her. But if you think it’d help you to get a fresh perspective…” He hesitated, looking at Elijah with an expression Elijah couldn’t interpret. “Then maybe so.”
“I’ll think about it,” Elijah said. He couldn’t tell whether listening to Casey talk about breaking up with his girlfriend or fiancee would make his pain over losing Monica worse, or better. And he was about done eating; it was time to get back to work. “Maybe after supper? I have a feeling it’s going to be a long story.”
Casey laughed. “Yeah. Quite possibly.”
Elijah rinsed his plate and put it in the dishwasher, then got back to cataloguing until he was hungry again. During lunch, he used his phone to check social media and email. He finally posted his too long delayed vague explanation of what was going on, and regretted it almost immediately when he switched over to check email. There was an email from Monica.
There’s nothing to talk about. You broke your promise almost immediately and when you called my mom yesterday, you were nothing but excuses. Don’t try to contact me or my family again. I’ll keep praying for you, but I won’t risk my happiness trying to fix you.
Casey looked up in alarm from his bowl of chicken and rice soup when Elijah burst into tears. Elijah wiped away the tears, feeling ashamed of breaking down like this again. But it was as bad as the note and engagement ring Sunday morning, which he’d partly recovered from by the time Casey got up – no, worse. There was no coming back from this. Trying to win her back at this point would be creepy and stalkery.
The haze of tears was blinding him despite his attempts to wipe them away, so he didn’t notice Casey getting up from his chair until he came around and put an arm around his shoulder. Elijah felt ashamed again for pushing his personal problems onto his employer, but he couldn’t help leaning into the hug as he sobbed for another couple of minutes, finally tapering off into hiccups.
He still couldn’t speak. He wordlessly unlocked his phone screen and slid it over where Casey could read it.
“Oh,” Casey said. “I’m so sorry. I know that doesn’t help, but…”
Elijah wiped at his tears again and nodded.
“Look,” Casey said, “how about take the rest of the day off from cataloguing? I could hang out with you quietly, or try to distract you, or leave you alone…”
Elijah finally found his voice. “Hang out,” he mumbled.
“All right. You want to move to the living room?”
Elijah nodded. They got up and went to the living room, sitting down on the sofa. Elijah numbly tried to process what it meant, what had changed. Realistically, nothing had truly changed since Sunday morning; her note had been pretty definitive. But he’d fooled himself with false hope until now.
He should be picking up his phone again, deleting that foolishly hopeful post about him and Monica having some difficulties and trying to work them out, and post something closer to the truth. And change his relationship status. But he couldn’t work up the energy.
After a while, Casey picked up one of the books on the coffee table and started reading. Elijah told himself he should do the same. Maybe even (ugh) get up and go get the novel he’d been reading. But it took him a while to reach out his arm and grab the nearest book – The Life of Phineas T. Barnum by Joel Benton. But he couldn’t focus his eyes on the first page of chapter one for long enough to finish it. He skipped ahead, looking at the chapter headings and managing to parse at least that much, and tried again on the chapter where Barnum joined a circus. Nope, that didn’t work either. He set the book down beside him, leaned back and closed his eyes.
He woke up, eyes blurry with tears, leaning against Casey. As soon as he was awake enough to realize his situation, he sat up straight, scooted away to the other end of the sofa, and apologized profusely and incoherently.
“It’s okay,” Casey said. “I don’t mind. You need a shoulder to cry on right now, like I needed a couple of years ago and didn’t get, and if that’s literal, then hey.” He laughed softly. “Did you get a good nap, at least?”
“Um…” Elijah evaluated himself. He did feel better than before his nap, or at least less bad. “Kind of.”
“Happy to be of service, then.” Elijah giggled nervously as Casey mimed taking off a hat and doing a sweeping bow, somewhat hindered by his seated position. “Want to sit quietly a while longer, or do something else?”
“I should…”
“No should. What do you want to do?”
“Honestly, it’s hard to want anything very hard right now.”
Casey nodded. “Mood. How about I suggest a few things, then?” Elijah gave a barely perceptible nod. “Want to watch a movie? Something mindless, probably, full of spectacle with only the most perfunctory romance. Unless you can think of a movie with no romance at all – I’m going blank. Or I could read to you. I noticed you were reading the same page over and over, earlier.”
Elijah was about to say yes to being read to when he remembered something Casey had said earlier. “Do you want to talk about your breakup? You don’t have to, but… You offered earlier, but that doesn’t mean –”
"All right. Story time. Gather round, children.
"I first met Amber in high school. We were both in the technology club. I was the best coder in the club, she was the queen of hardware. Early in our senior year, when we’d been casual friends for a couple of years, I asked her on a date one day as the meeting was breaking up. I was so nervous it took me a minute to process that she’d said yes.
"After graduation, we went to Duke and UNC Chapel Hill, just a few miles apart. We spent almost every weekend visiting each other our first semester, and didn’t study nearly enough, but still managed to scrape by. We were more sensible about allowing each other time for studying after that, but we still hung out a lot.
"We got more and more serious; by sophomore year, we were planning to get married after we graduated and start having kids about five years later, once we’d gotten well established with jobs and a house, and had time to do some traveling.
"But there were other things going on besides dating and school. I’d been gradually realizing things about myself; I think I had the first inklings of it back before I met Amber, but I’d suppressed it, not wanting to admit it or even think about it. At college, I met new friends, including some who were unlike anyone I’d known in high school, and they gradually helped me realize things. But I still resisted admitting them to myself for over a year. I was scared of how my family would react, especially my grandparents, but particularly about Amber. Would she still love me? It would seem like I’d changed a lot, although really, those things I’d been hiding from myself and everyone else had always been there. I was still the same person. I just wasn’t sure anyone else would see it that way.
"Finally, I couldn’t deny it any longer. I decided Amber deserved to be the first to know what I’d realized, or rather finally admitted, although I considered talking to some of my new friends about it first – well, newer than Amber; I’d known them for a couple of years by then.
"The following weekend I drove down to Chapel Hill to hang out with Amber. When we went back to her dorm after dinner, I told her. And she reacted about as badly as I could have feared. She said some very hurtful things and I reacted about like you did when you got Monica’s email, breaking down and crying, which – well, she didn’t react well to that, either. I couldn’t see through my tears to drive home. I walked a little way from Amber’s dorm and sat down on a bench to call one of my friends from Duke and tell her. I was terrified of telling anyone else after how Amber had reacted, but I knew my friend would handle it better, and she did.
“I tried to patch it up with Amber a couple of times over the next few days, like you did with Monica, but it didn’t go anywhere, and I had to admit it was over. I was just beginning to figure out what I was going to do about the things I’d realized, and I decided, after that fiasco with Amber, that I’d put off telling my family until I’d settled on that. And – well, I’m still putting it off. Right after Uncle Eugene got sick didn’t seem like the right time, and then he died and I didn’t want to break it to them when we were still grieving.”
By this point, Elijah was extremely curious about what realization Casey was being so deliberately vague about. He guessed that either it was something too private to talk about with someone he didn’t know any better than Elijah, or that Casey was withholding it for a dramatic reveal at the end.
“And, well, I didn’t want to start dating anyone else anytime soon after that, and then Uncle Eugene got sick and died, and I was just starting to recover from that when I met you. But I hope I’ll find someone else in the next few years, and I’m sure you will. You’re too kind and decent to be alone your whole life.”
Elijah would have liked to believe that, but his getting together with Monica had seemed such a fluke at the time, with her taking most of the initiative, that he couldn’t be as confident as Casey. He nodded abstractly. “Thanks. That… sort of puts things in perspective. For now, at least. I’ll probably be a sobbing mess again several times in the next week, but I’ll try to keep it quiet.” They fell silent for a few moments, and Elijah’s eyes glanced around the room… falling on the spellbook, which was now on top of the stack of books previously topped by The Life of Phineas T. Barnum.
“Oh,” he said, reaching over and picking it up. “I guess, since I can’t hope to get back together with Monica, I can at least keep working on magic and maybe use it to help you with the problems you were talking about.” It now occurred to him that those vaguely alluded-to problems might be related to the vaguely alluded-to realization about himself he’d carefully talked around. A connection nagged at him, but he couldn’t quite put it together.
He opened the book and turned to chapter four. “This chapter – it was unlocked when I looked at it after it teleported to my bedside when I’d left it on your desk. Must have unlocked while I was practicing Friday, before Monica got here. I meant to mention it earlier, but so much was going on…”
“No problem.”
“Well, it’s got techniques for modifying spells. To make self-targeted spells target someone else, or vice versa.”
“Oh!” Casey’s eyebrows rose and he leaned forward eagerly. “Have you tried it yet?”
“No… I was trying to stay away from it when I thought Monica might be willing to reconcile. But now I guess there’s no point. Anyway, I haven’t tried to modify any spells, or tried out the other new spells – there’s a cool information spell that works like a search engine for a whole library, not just one book like the one in chapter one. And there’s a weird spell for moving fat or muscle around your body – or someone else’s, I guess, if I modify it. I’m not sure what the point would be – getting rid of fat or building up muscle would be good, I guess, but why just move it around? I guess it’s just a necessary step in building up skill with flesh magic, but… well, I’m not sure why it keeps giving me so many flesh magic spells anyway.”
“Hmm,” Casey mused. “I don’t know either, and my guesses are pretty vague and tentative. Maybe it’s just building up your skill until you can cast a flesh magic spell you’ll really like?”
“Maybe. I mean, I’m sure my body could be improved on, it’s not much to write home about, but I’m not sure exactly what I could change about it without drawing too much attention. Even just improving my complexion drew enough attention from people at church and Monica that I’m not sure I should do anything more obvious like, I don’t know, spreading out my belly fat all over my body so it doesn’t show as much? I could tell my family and friends back home that I’ve been hiking a lot and got in better shape, I guess, which is kind of true, but people at church would notice right away.”
“Yeah, maybe you could spread it out gradually over the rest of the summer?”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Anyway, once I’ve studied this technique and I’m ready to try it, are there any spells you want me to cast on you?”
“Yeah,” Casey said. “Let’s start with the hair removal. I’d really like not to have to shave.”
Something about the way Casey said that, looking away from Elijah as he said the last sentence, made Elijah wonder if he already knew what else he wanted, but wasn’t sure how Elijah would react.
One Stealth trans girl and her egg "employee" 🥚
I'm glad they have each other
If Monica is mad now, wonder how that will play out a little ~later~ in the summer.
(If she ends up making a reappearance, that is)
Anyone looking for a very different take on the Iliad should look at Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane. Trans woman Achilles.
Wrath Goddess Sing is brilliant, can't recommend it enough.
I like where this is going.
God I'm enjoying this story so far
it looks like it might be headed for a t4t ending? 👀
This is so good.