“I don’t know, but I was on my way to see the fabled Witch of the woods to rid myself of this curse,” said the Prince.

“Is that what this is? A curse?” asked the Knight.

“If it isn’t, then what explanation is there?” asked the Prince.

“If it’s a witch you seek, a witch you’ll find,” said the Witch, appearing suddenly before them. “I can help you, but you’ll pay a price.”

“How much?” asked the Prince. “To break this curse?”

“A small sacrifice, one gold coin cannot buy.” The Witch grinned, manifesting a knife in her hands. Running the blade across the Prince’s chest, she said, “You must each carve out a morsel of your own hearts.”

Chapter 11

11

I always thought that after my first kiss, the clouds would part and the sun would shine down on us, and the world would become this wondrous Technicolor cartoon landscape where little forest critters and birds would break out into a thumping song about how lovely love is, and we’d dance off into the sunset. Or something.

For a second, it kind of was like that.

Then Jack disa-fucking-ppeared, and the cheesy song came to a screeching halt.

Yet I can’t stop thinking about it. The kiss. His lips, the stubble on his cheeks, the way his heart beat so erratically until I kissed him back and then slowed to a steady rhythm in time with mine.

I think about it on the walk back to my dorm that night, alone. I think about it when I text Jack in the days that follow, and he leaves me on read every time. When I call him, but it goes to voice mail. I think about that kiss when I wake up and trudge to class, hoping I’ll run into him because I memorized his schedule. When I wait outside our favorite dining hall, expecting him to show up for dinner.

He never shows.

It’s almost as if he never existed at all.

A few days after, I stop by his dorm, but when Rhett opens the door, he says Jack has hardly been around and that he only shows up to shower and sleep. Benny assures me that Rhett has no idea about Jack and me, but the way Rhett looks at me with pity swelling in his eyes makes me feel like he knows something.

I loop the night of the kiss and every minute I’ve spent with Jack over and over again in my head. The thing I keep coming back to is that he admitted, out loud, to himself and to me that he was gay for the very first time. Then he kissed me. And then he evaporated into the night sky.