Mellie Rose's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Raven made tea neither of them would drink. Mellie sat at the kitchen table and watched her girlfriend measure loose leaves with steady hands. Sixty years of hiding, and Raven had answered with a kettle. Mellie's throat felt tight in a way it hadn't since she was mortal. She had one question left to ask, and it was the one that could undo everything the last hour had built. "Ask what you're sitting on," Raven said. She set a cup down. Her lipstick was still smudged from before. "You've been chewing your tongue since I poured the water." "I can't ask it yet." "Then drink the tea while you decide." Mellie didn't drink. She stood up instead and said she needed air. Raven nodded once and let her go. Mellie walked until the street ended at a friend's place, a narrow rocker's house with guitar-shaped windows cut into the gables. Avril opened the door in socks, a bass string wrapped around one wrist like a bracelet. She looked at Mellie's face and stepped aside without a word. Avril was the bandmate who had lost her best friend inside a condemned building two years ago. She did not talk about it. She also did not flinch at hard things. "Raven knows," Mellie said. "Good." "I want to ask her to let me turn her." Avril sat down on the arm of a chair. She looked at the floor for a long moment. Then she looked up. "Don't." "She said she wants to talk. She didn't run." "Not talk. Ask. You're asking her to die for you before she's finished her tea." Avril's voice stayed flat. "I watched someone I loved get taken by a building. He didn't choose it. Don't be the building." Mellie's hands went cold. She had been about to walk back and ask tonight. She had almost done it in the kitchen. "What do I do instead." "Let her ask first. If she never asks, you have your answer." Mellie left without agreeing. She walked back through a yard where black roses grew in a raw patch of dirt, their red centers wet under the porch light. She stopped at the gate. She thought of a man who had known what she wanted and had taken her life anyway. She thought of the word he had never asked her. She went back inside. Raven was still at the table. The tea had gone cold. "I'm not going to ask you the thing I came back to ask," Mellie said. "Not tonight. Not for a long time. If you ever want to know what it costs to be what I am, you tell me. I'll answer anything. But I won't offer." Raven watched her a long moment. Then she pushed the second cup across the table. "Sit," Raven said. "Start with the small questions." Mellie sat.