Joel’s smile was wide and seemingly sincere as he hurried over to where I stood, frozen just outside the automatic doors to the hotel. Before I could react, he scooped me into an enormous hug, squeezing me tightly as my hands fell limp by my sides. Despite years of thinking about exactly what I’d do if and when I saw Joel again, I couldn’t think to actually do anything. It was like the shock of it really happening had short-circuited my brain. So instead of finding the nearest blunt instrument and beating him with it, I stood there foolishly while the rest of me caught up with what was happening.

“You look gorgeous!” Joel exclaimed, letting go of me and holding me out at arm’s length.

He looked pretty much the same as he always had, but there was something sleeker about him now. His teeth gleamed a little brighter, his eyes were deeper and more expressive. And his hair was slicked back so carefully that it must have taken hours of work to get it to stay like that. He was a good-looking man, always had been. And my heart was pounding too hard in my ears to catch anything that was coming out of that charming mouth.

But then, it was like I was back in my body again. And all the fury settled into place the way it was supposed to. “Leave me alone,” I muttered, then spun around on the sidewalk and started to walk away from him.

Joel hurried after me, dodging the tourist family that was walking toward the hotel entrance as I was walking away, keeping my pace brisk without running. I wasn’t running away from him, I was just refusing to see him.

“Dar, wait!” he exclaimed, hopping over a raised flower bed to keep up as I turned the corner onto Essex Street.

It was crowded with tour groups and people shopping in the beautiful spring air. I didn’t answer Joel’s call, just continued to walk, the cobblestones solid and reassuring under my feet. I swerved and put a tour group between me and him, hoping I was hidden behind the group of college students asking questions of the young man waxing poetic in a top hat. Another group of tourists were just beyond this one, so I swerved again, ducking down a side street where two old men were drinking coffee on a bench. I didn’t dare to look back to see if Joel was still there. I couldn’t hear him, so maybe it was enough to give me a head start.

I just needed to get home. It was easy enough from here. Cross Washington Street, pass the creepy Bewitched statue, and get a few blocks down away from the ocean until I was back in my neighborhood. Then I could lock myself in my apartment and scream into a pillow.

“Dar.”

I walked straight into him, my face making contact with his firm chest. I fell back with a grunt of shock and Joel reached out a hand to snatch my wrist before I could hit the ground.

There was no way he could get in front of me that quickly. Now without shoving people around and nobody seemed to be upset. So how…

Oh.

“You teleport now?” I snapped, wrenching my wrist out of his hand. “Congratulations. Go away.”

“Come on, Dar, can’t we talk?”

“We did plenty of talking,” I said, returning to my quick pace as Joel easily kept up this time. “Or, at least, you did. It’s fucking all you ever do. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Look, I’m sorry I left,” Joel said, following me down a wide flight of stairs surrounded by tall buildings. “But I had to.”

“Not like that, you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Joel grabbed my wrist again, and I spun to face him as I pulled out of his grip. “Touch me one more time and you’ll know exactly what hurt feels like,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible. “And I won’t need magic to do it.”

Joel held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, with what was clearly supposed to be a calming smile. “Look, Dar, I missed you, okay? I just wanted to talk to you.”

“After four years without so much as a text, now you miss me?”

Joel groaned. “Has it really been four years?”

“Does time pass differently in Narnia?”

“I wasn’t… Dar, please.”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

Sensing the opening, Joel brightened, and I immediately regretted saying anything. “I was just in town,” he said. “You know how magical Salem is.”

“Yes, even a poor magicless fool like me is aware.”

The confidence evaporated from Joel’s face and I knew I’d finally hit a nerve. “Shit,” he said, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “Do you really think that’s how I feel?”

“I know it is,” I said, the long-buried pain threatening to seep out if I thought too hard about how inadequate I’d felt for all those years.

“Of course I don’t think that,” Joel said. “You’re way smarter than me.”

I snorted and kept walking, turning onto a narrow one-way street where an SUV was attempting to go the wrong way. While I’d hoped Joel would take the hint and leave, it was far too late for that now that the conversation had begun. “I swear, I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said.

“Fine,” I replied. “I’m fine. You’ve seen that I’m fine. Now go away.”

“Can I buy you a coffee?” Joel asked.

We were outside of Arise Coffee, a hip coffee place a few blocks away from Essex Street. He looked hopefully at me. “Just one coffee,” he said. “I promise. I’m buying.”

If I didn’t agree to it, I’d never get to go home. “Fine,” I said. “One coffee and you’re buying.”

“Terrific!”

We stepped inside and immediately, my ears were bombarded with the sound of customers’ voices, the espresso machines, and distorted guitars over the speakers. I probably wouldn’t be able to hear a word Joel had to say anyway, so I could do this quickly and get it over with.

We got in line behind a couple of college-aged girls who were holding hands. “I’m just in town for a few days,” Joel said. “Just a little business and then I’ll be gone. So I thought I’d see if you were still around.”

“Sure am,” I muttered, looking up at the menu board to find the most expensive option.

“I figured out you were at the hotel, so I stopped by a couple times. But no luck until we ran into each other.”

“Who told you I worked there?” I asked, mentally debating between a twelve-dollar smoothie and a twelve-dollar premium latte.

“I didn’t need anybody to do that,” Joel said easily.

“Great, so you’re tracking me. Fantastic.”

“What? No, I-”

His defense was interrupted as we got to the register. The barista, a man a little younger than me with olive skin, blue hair, and a cute smile, greeted us. “Welcome to Arise,” he said. “What can we get you today?”

“What’s your most expensive drink?” I asked.

Joel’s expression fell as the barista – Ezra, according to his name tag – glanced at me, then at him. Amusement crossed his face. “Well, the most expensive one on the menu is our premium blend on the day,” he said. “We get small batches of it ground for us each morning. Today’s is called Kingdom Come, which is a delicate blend with hints of vanilla and-”

“I’ll take it in the largest size you have,” I interrupted. “Iced and with three pumps of white chocolate.”

Joel’s jaw dropped and I could see Ezra struggling not to laugh. “Premium blend on ice, three pumps of white chocolate,” he repeated as he wrote the order down on the cup. “Anything else?”

I gestured to Joel. “And the gentleman.”

“Medium iced black,” Joel muttered.

He held out his debit card to Ezra, who took it with a professionalism I could only envy in this situation. As the screen glowed with tip options, I nudged Joel out of the way and marked down a fifty percent tip. “For excellent service,” I said with a wide smile.

Joel looked like he was about to protest, then swallowed it back down as Ezra tried desperately to keep that same professionally neutral expression on his face. “That’s very kind of you,” he said. “Your order will be up shortly.”

We stepped aside, and he motioned for the next person in line to come up. “Was that completely necessary?” Joel asked.

“Surely it’s nothing for someone as powerful as you,” I said, browsing through Arise’s selection of coffee mugs and t-shirts.

Joel waved a hand and a snow globe decoration from the top shelf of the display floated down into his waiting palm. The casual magic made my stomach clench, but I kept focusing on the shirts in front of me, willing my discomfort back down. I got my petty revenge, now we could have whatever inane conversation he wanted to have. Then I could move on with my life and never see Joel again.

“I’m not made of money,” he muttered, shaking the snow globe, then letting the fake snowflakes settle down over the pirate ship inside.

“Isn’t that why you left in the first place?” I asked. “After I spent four months covering all of our bills, you told me this was your path toward ridiculous amounts of money. Whatever happened there?”

He looked like he was about to actually answer me, then realized I didn’t actually give a fuck. So instead, I put more focus on the coffee mugs I was never actually going to buy as he gazed into the snow globe.

“Oh,” he said after a moment of silence.

“Oh, what?”

“Who’s Gretel?”

I turned and snatched the snow globe out of his hand. “What are you playing at?” I demanded.

A teenage girl at a nearby table glanced up curiously, then turned back to her phone. Joel was wide-eyed, but just long enough to glimpse before his face went back to that overconfident expression.

“I just saw the name in the snow globe, that’s all,” he said. “Friend of yours?”

“My girlfriend, if you have to know.”

Joel looked surprised at this. It couldn’t have been the fact she was a woman though. We’d both been completely open with each other about our bisexuality when we’d been dating. Was he really so surprised that someone would want to be with me?

“I didn’t just sit around waiting for you,” I said as Ezra walked back up to the counter.

“Two coffees,” he said with a pleasant smile, holding out the plastic cups. “Enjoy.”

“I will,” I said sweetly, taking the taller cup. “Thank you.”

Joel nodded a sullen thanks as he took his own drink. I walked toward the table closest to the entrance and sat down. He took the seat across from me.

“I didn’t think you waited around for me,” Joel said. “I wanted you to have a good life. You deserved better than-”

“Don’t even start that,” I snapped, jabbing a finger in his direction. “You didn’t do any of it for me. It was all for you. And fine, whatever. It’s your life. But don’t pretend like you were sacrificing something so that I could be happy.”

“No, of course,” he said softly.

I took a sip of the coffee. It tasted like Dunkin Donuts, nowhere near worth the extravagant price tag it had before I’d wrecked it. But it was good enough, so I kept drinking. “Why are you here?” I asked again.

“I already told you,” Joel said. “I had business in Salem and I thought it would be nice to catch up.”

“So you tracked me down for a coffee and a chat?”

“Is that so wrong?”

“It’s creepy,” I said. “It’s invasive. You’re not entitled to know where I work. Or who I’m dating.”

“I don’t control what scrying shows me,” Joel said. “All I can do is accept the information.”

“Or not scry in the middle of a fucking coffee shop at all.”

“Or that,” he admitted.

“So no underlying motive?” I asked. “No real reason you deigned to talk to me again after all these years?”

“Dar, I’m hurt you think I’m such an asshole,” Joel said.

His tone put out some of the flames that were licking at my chest. Not all of them, but enough that I felt a little bad about my hostility. “Sorry,” I muttered. “You’re really only here for work?”

“Just for a couple days,” he said. “And then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“What kind of work?” I asked.

“I can’t get into it.”

“Of course, all-powerful wizard shit.”

He looked uncomfortable, and I couldn’t help the satisfaction I felt. I’d spent enough time feeling like I was less than him because I couldn’t make fires with my hand or cause objects to float across the room. And now that I was happy and confident in my life without him, he strolled right back in, expecting me to greet him with a smile.

“I missed you,” Joel said.

He reached over for my hand and, despite everything, I let him. His hand was warm and familiar in mine and for a second, it was like every Saturday of our early twenties. The two of us in a nice coffee shop together, chatting over drinks.

“I am sorry I left,” he said. “We had a good thing, and I didn’t want it to end like that.”

I hadn’t even realized it was going to end, but maybe the signs had been there and I’d missed them. Joel looked at me with big, sad eyes. “Can’t we just spend some time together, like we used to?” he asked. “Come on, I’ll buy us dinner.”

“I’m having dinner with Gretel,” I said.

It wasn’t quite a lie, I had dinner with Gretel most nights. But Joel’s face lit up. “Oh, can I join you?” he asked. “I want to meet her!”

No. No, I didn’t want Joel in my house or anywhere near my girlfriend. But we were also on the precipice of an understanding just a moment earlier, right? So maybe showing him I had a life that I was very happy with would be exactly what I needed in order to let it all go. So instead of refusing, I nodded.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess that would be fine.”

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Continue to Chapter 4