Friday Night Confessional

Maybe more nights than she should’ve done she’d stayed on campus late. Coffee, not the liquor she’d fished out of her drawer tonight. Fingers wrapped around the mug like somehow it would leach heat into flesh long ago gone marble cold. On and off over the centuries she’d sought out life wherever she’d been but eventually she would find herself tiring of it. It wasn’t her life, more like a role she was slipping on, an actress who thought she was slowly losing herself to who she was pretending to be.

How long had it been since she’d done that? It was too heavy a thought for a Friday but when Jo could already feel the weight of sudden life altering considerations on her chest it was hard to shove it away. That was what the liquor was for. A prepared woman’s plan B, or C. An out she hadn’t planned on sharing but would all the same.

No Friday night spent alone, ignoring the lesson plans she should’ve been tweaking for this year, not staring at her phone and wondering if maybe she shouldn’t wait until tomorrow night. Jo lifted her chin, pushed the lingering memory of Magnus’ warmer skin – it would have taken the truly dead to be colder than her that night – and the scent of him on the coat she’d wrapped around herself, different in a way but still him enough that she’d been almost reluctant to peel it away from her wet clothes once they’d reached his apartment, out of her mind. Letting it out would only tie her up into knots she’d never imagined to be plucking at with her fingers again.

Especially with Magnus – her husband’s closest friend.

Her thoughts still tumbled but as Roxxi swung towards her in her chair, body lax, but eyes on her as she turned Jo felt them click into some sort of space again, even if it was a slightly round peg in a definitely square hole. If it had been one of the others in their department who’d stumbled past she might’ve managed a few pleasant words but turning up at one of their doors with a bottle of whiskey was grist for a rumour mill that had chewed up more than one female academic and spat them out. It might’ve been the 21st century but there were still so many things men could get away with that women couldn’t.

The smile had that square hole softening at the edges. She wasn’t the only one feeling the Friday night. Jo’s grin was crooked, her head angling slightly. No shame riding high on her cheeks this time – as high as it could get when there wasn’t an ounce of your own blood in your veins anymore at least. ”Thank God for that,” Jo drawled lightly. ”It’s a lucky break for both of us I guess.” Well, for her at least.

History had to stay where it had been made, only allowed out in brief snatches in the confines of Magnus’ car, his apartment. Tiny little bubbles strung on the line of her life, isolated, the world they’d reminisced about a million miles away. As much as she’d like to have drawn someone else in to be able to open up about Magnus Jo knew that few would truly understand the fact that after six hundred years her life seemed to have come around in a circle.

Jo let out a quiet sound of contemplation, her chest rising and falling with a sigh. Perhaps that young girl who’d had the guts to ride away from all she had known to protect herself from all she hadn’t wanted was still in there somewhere, just a little wild under all that calm and stable. ”Better than dust I suppose. My reputation could probably do with it.” Whatever she was known as here would pass anyway, left behind like dead weight when she had to go.

She chuckled as she looked back at Roxxi, the sound tailed off in a little groan. Jo pinned her lower lip with her teeth and shook her head. ”My shindigging days are all left behind I think. I don’t think I would’ve managed to get much wilder than a bottle of wine and a Naked and Afraid marathon on TV.” There was a little pride in the jut of her jaw as she narrowed her eyes at Roxxi though. ”I used to be the last one off the floor.” Not that there had been one but there had always been some celebration at the castle, her feet finding the rhythm of the band of performers even as she rushed around to prepare for others’ enjoyment.

There had been music at her wedding to Kaegan, the two of them caught in each other’s orbit with barely a brush of hands, let alone the entwinement that happened now. Breathless in the end she had done the same with Magnus, laughing at how the knight was light on his feet. There was that tug again in the pit of her stomach, there had been that orbit again in the car, with less laughter now. Jo swallowed it back, stepped back into her office after Roxxi. ”What happened to giving your liver the weekend off?” she drawled, a hint of teasing to her voice. ”Glenmorangie. It was a thank you from my grad student last year. Straight do you?” There wasn’t anything in her mini-fridge to mix it with. Not even an O-negative chaser from her purloined stock. She nodded to the worn couch against the opposite wall of her office to her desk. Scattered with research papers, upholstered with what felt like wire wool but a step above the orange plastic visitor’s chair. Jo bent, opened the bottom draw of her desk to retrieve two glasses. Neat or not it wouldn’t matter, she wouldn’t be staggering out of here tonight.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 982

The smile Jo aimed at her fellow professor was soft and nostalgic. There had been some after Kaegan, of course, she hadn’t spent more than six centuries as a nun. She hadn’t excused the way other widows she met had done – he would have wanted me to carry on living, to love again. If she’d had a choice in the matter she wouldn’t have done then but any choice she’d once had was lost to Philippa. Drifting from place to place, and occasionally man to man wasn’t what Kaegan would’ve wished for her. That had come six centuries later.

Thinking of Magnus and the full circle the two of them had come to, Jo’s smile sharpened. She dipped her head slightly, those storm cloud eyes looking at Roxxi from under her lashes, chuckling at the wriggle. ”Maybe half a dozen from time to time. You though…” She made a small sound, tilting her head as she looked at Roxxi head to toe. The professor was a heart breaker, although the fact that they were both here on a Friday evening had her feeling a little like perhaps Roxxi was the one taking a few dings. You didn’t hole yourself up in your office if you were unburdened, you went out there, you had your fun while you were young and you tried not to worry a moment about it all.

Once. The word rang through her head. It had been part of the reason she had escaped Cambaluc. If she had stayed her stepmother’s shackles would have closed around her wrists, all to wring her father’s business from her.

Her gaze ticked to the seal that still sat on her desk – a relic used to hold down papers, not the one thing that had given her free passage across Asia and Europe, all the way to her new life. ”But there’s a little swerve to your words?” she asked lightly. Like there had once been to her own, you never told the whole truth, especially not on the Road. ”Punch of salt taken,” she promised, bending to get the glasses she kept hidden away just like the bottle of whiskey. A little thing to get her through the days feeling like part of her was still human, still who she’d been until…

As though Roxxi was psychic, and perhaps she was – you never knew in this town – she went straight for the topic. Like she’d reached right into her brain and plucked the single name out. Magnus. Jo made a low sound, holding the glasses out for Roxxi to feel, a grimace working its way behind the sound. ”Most.” The groan rolled out in its wake. She lifted a hand, pushed that fall of dark, silky hair back from her face as she trailed to the other end of the couch.

Teeth pressed nipping at the inside of her upper lip, Jo fixed her gaze on Roxxi. Shitty stuff? How was I wrecked my car the other night and probably only avoided the hospital because I’m a creature of the night. She peeled a finger from her glass, aimed at her instead. ”No shitty stuff on my part. Although, same goes. If you ever need to get anything off your chest, I’m your woman … and I come with free booze for the confessional.” Taking a sip of hers now she hesitated a moment before she slipped down on the couch and rested her head against its back. Grey eyes stared up at the ceiling before her mouth twitched. ”I found an old friend in town,” she admitted. ”Have you seen the shop on the square? The one owned by the English man?”” She hadn’t ventured that far herself of course, although maybe that should be her reason to stay away from campus tomorrow. Get out, go to see him.

Jo gripped her glass hard, frowned into it for a second before she took a belt of the whiskey. When she looked up, her lips dimpled at the corner for a moment. ”No sympathy needed here but … I was married before. Widowed. He was my husband’s best friend … mine too, before we were married. We hadn’t seen each other in years, turns out he’s been here for a while. Ships in the night I suppose.” Another belt of the whiskey and she was rolling her head to look at Roxxi. ”You’ve got to have something far more exciting going on. What about you? I saw someone heading into your lecture hall the other day. Tall, dark, definitely excitement there.” Her eyes narrowed over the rim of her glass. He’d certainly stood out among the students.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 777

Life was what you didn’t talk about when you were trying to keep what you were from everybody around you. Admissions came small, conversations sticking to the trivial. It became tiring after so many years of travelling with men and women who would talk until the fire burned itself out – of everything. Her father would always be at the heart of their camps, his voice low, melodic, lulling their caravan into contemplation. Then it had been her and Ananda, talking their way out of Cambaluc, all the way to England and the news of her grandfather’s death. Still …

The image of Kaegan and Magnus together by the fire, talking until her own jaw had ached with it, sent a warmth rolling through Jo that echoed what the alcohol would do. Life had been good then, no part of her hidden from either one of them, but in the end Phillipa’s demand for secrecy and her foolish pushing of it had cut her off from all she’d known once again.

It was not a caravan that had brought her here but a lone traveller’s drift back across a world she had known – untethered until the rain that was as torrential as those that fell rarely back home hit. Now there were two of them.

The smile that had curled her lips just a touch grew, cheeks going faintly pink – as much as they could considering her heart barely beat to drive the heat to her face. Jo chuckled lightly as she lifted her head again. ”The town does seem to have its fill of them. I guess it’s their curse … to be shopkeepers, hoarders of the dusty and old.” And God, didn’t that describe her these days. Jo let her eyes flare wide as she took a gulp of the whiskey. It stirred that heat inside of her, as alcohol always did – the vampire’s crutch towards humanity. ”The antique shop, not the pawn shop – although I guess they’re almost one and the same.” She could hardly describe it as the one run by the vampire, not the witch, when she didn’t know how far Roxxi’s eyes had been opened in this town.

Jo watched her fellow professor watching her from the corner of her eye. Strange how her closest confidents were one of her oldest friends and a woman who had seemed to forge her own bright – and secretive – trail into the humanities department. Dark brows furrowed, her mouth pursing as she turned more towards Roxxi at the nudge. ”Bingo hall?” she echoed, before realisation struck and she chuckled. ”No, the old people’s home.” Not that far from the truth, although the King had been even younger than herself and Magnus – Magnus had after all been his mentor, and his cuckold.

Another deep draft of her drink, enough to empty the glass as Roxxi tried to wrangle her past from her. Jo reached for the bottle, pouring heavily into her own glass again as she hesitated. ”I left England after my husband died. Magnus was still there as far as I knew.” Half truths, all she ever allowed. One corner of her mouth lifted, a quick dart of grey eyes to meet Roxxi’s dark. ”You’ve got a good ear – I’m … not English. My family came from all over, we travelled when I was a kid. Europe, the Far East. I guess you travel that much, you develop a love for it right?” For the road that she had ended up running out of. Now it shook lightly beneath her feet, enough that she desperately changed the subject.

Fingers curled around her glass, he legs coming up to curl under her as she eyed Roxxi. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who had a tall, handsome – perhaps more a stranger on her part – coming into her life. Jo watched the emotion drift over Roxxi’s own face, grinning as she realised she’d been spot on with the accusation of excitement there. ”Trouble’s always got its appeal.” She nudged Roxxi with the back of her hand, her own far too cool against the heat of Roxxi’s skin. Roxxi had looked away, up to the ceiling, so Jo continued to watch the heat, the telling shift of muscle under skin. ”I’d say you continuing to run into him means he likes you too. Men are quick enough to scarper when they don’t.” The drama seemed to be drawing Roxxi into something darker though, the frown gripping. ”Hey, it’s not selfish if you want no part of that drama. You’re both adults. You can leave all of that behind, can’t you? If he wants to?” That, she supposed, was the real question.

Bouncing up on her knees, Jo grabbed the bottle again and refilled Roxxi’s glass. She nudged the woman beside her with it and then set it down between them on the couch. There were solutions, at least for everybody else’s problems. She would muddle over hers a little longer. ”Do you like him enough to tell him? Coming clean’s going to be the only way to lift that stress and if he does like you as much as you seem to like him … he’ll look past it.” Her throat went tight at the thought though. For his own sake she hadn’t given Kaegan the same choice. It had been better that her husband and children think her dead than make a devastating choice to live as she did – or worse.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 911