The past days rushed through my mind in fast forward: my turmoil, my decay, my apathy, and eventually, my inability to be social from fear of accidentally triggering my radar.
“As I said, first I tried to ban it from my life, but it cost me so much energy keeping it under control. When I started to ban it, I couldn’t sleep anymore, I couldn’t concentrate, and worst of all, I couldn’t think of you anymore like I had before… The memory of your face was growing darker and it hurt, physically, to let go of you that way.”
She listened, open-mouthed. No judgment. Not this time. Not yet.
“I’ve never been able to figure out where it came from, and since I can’t change it, I try to see it as a gift, like somebody else is gifted with music or art. If you take away a musician’s instrument, you take away the essence of his life, the reason for his existence. They will never rest again until they find something to fill the hole you have created by robbing them of their most precious gift.” There they were, the words I’d needed so desperately. But not to convince her to stay with me, but to convince myself to let her go. It would be wrong to try to talk her into accepting something she was afraid of. I could never do that to her. “Suppressing my gift is like taking away my instrument. I need to feel the people around me. It’s my way of sensing the world. If I don’t perceive what is screaming for my attention, I ignore my second eyesight. I cannot ban what I am, Claire. I’m sorry.” I truly was. How I wished it could be different. “I just wanted to let you know that I tried. I’ll leave you alone now.”
As I got to my feet, I took a long, last look at her fine features. How her hands were knitting into her hair as she rested her head in them, her blue-gray eyes which had a hint of turquoise in the warm light of the kitchen.
Antonio followed me closely as I headed for the front door a second later. I hadn’t expected her to say anything. It was for the best I hadn’t stayed and waited to hear the same response I’d heard before. That wasn’t something I wanted to experience again. I didn’t look back on my way down the stairs. Instead, I rushed directly into the next busier street, people around me blurring in a haze of emotions. Suddenly the world was loud and the feelings that hit me from everywhere were impossible to block out. It made me hungry.
“Here!” I called Antonio and stopped at a hot dog stand, starving. All the accumulated hunger from the past few days kicked in and I ordered four hot dogs, one of which I gave to Antonio, but the rest filled my empty stomach and dulled the hollow feeling of having lost Claire.
11
Rain
“I’ve seen you in better shape, brother,” Ben commented as he outran me for the fifth time in a row.
“I am letting you win,” I grinned as I felt his euphoria. Racing with him in the park took my mind off of things. Naturally, I had to dial down my enhanced strength and stamina in order to not tip him off something was going on with me. Letting him win was part of that new charade.
My decision to embrace my sixth sense and whatever was coming with it was the right one. Over time, reading people became natural, just as smelling coffee, or feeling grass or cotton. My repertoire of emotions grew by the day. I was faster at recognizing them and my guesses at why people felt the way they did got better and better. If it hadn’t been for the absence of Claire, I could say I was happy. Except, I wasn’t. It had been the right decision to leave, yet I couldn’t spend an hour without wondering if she would have said something, had I waited longer. Stupid Adam! If I kicked myself every time I regretted saying goodbye to Claire, I would have bruises all over my body. Luckily, I didn’t have masochistic tendencies.
“Wanna go again?” Ben pulled me out of my thoughts and started running without waiting for my reply. So much for giving someone a chance to respond.
With a strong kick of my feet, I caught up with him and fell into step beside him.
“Ben,” I asked, remembering our conversation from long ago when he had asked me about Maureen. “How do you know if someone is right for you?” I couldn’t even tell what it was that I was expecting from him. An answer, or absolution for throwing my future with Claire overboard.
Ben laughed. “Who are you talking about? You or me?”
I frowned at him.
“I know that I’ll know when I see her,” he said, fully convinced that was the way it was going to be for him.
“What if you’re convinced and she isn’t?”
Ben raised his eyebrows at me and sped up a bit.
“I’m serious, Ben.” It was easy for me to catch up again and give him a warning look.
When had I gone from being the older brother, with a life and career on track, to being the one asking my little brother for relationship advice?
“Are we talking about the girl from the library?”
I sighed and nodded. I hadn’t told my family too much about her for a good reason. To be precise, Ben was the only one who had figured out there was someone in my life.
“I didn’t know this was still going on?”
“It isn’t…technically.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re not together.”
He glanced at me with a look as if I had just given him a wrong answer.
“Never were.”
“What happened?”
There was honest concern in his voice and in his emotions. I could feel them envelop me.
“I’m not her type…” It wasn’t a lie, just an interpretation of what she had said. She didn’t want freaks. Freaks weren’t her type.
Ben chuckled.
“What’s funny?”
“You.” He slowed down and pulled me to a halt with him. “You love her?”
Did I have to answer this? If I did, Ben would know how much I was aching. If I didn’t, he wouldn’t take my questions seriously.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“She is beautiful, inside and out.”
Ben chuckled again.
“What’s funny now?”
“There’s your answer.”
“What?”
“You know she is right for you.”
“But she doesn’t think the same way about me. So, I guess even though she’s right for me, we are not right for each other.”
“Makes sense.”
“It does.”
“Does to me.” His grin disappeared. “To her?”
“I would need to ask her that.”
“Have you told her?”
“What?”
“You love her.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not her type.”
“I don’t think that’s the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“You love her, but you’re hiding behind something she might not like about you.” He nudged my arm and started running. “You don’t need to like everything about someone to be able to love them. Tell her and see what happens.”
He left me standing there with something to think about. Even though he didn’t know the first thing about the meaning of my questions, he was right. I had told Claire a lot about how I felt things others felt, how I felt I knew her from my vision. It had been presumptuous of me to assume. Vision or not. She was a person, someone who had secrets and a history only she could choose to share. Someone who needed to be conquered. Despite everything I had said to her, had I truly told her how I felt about her? That she was important to me and desirable. The pattern in my heart burned a little and I couldn’t help wondering if seeing Claire would ease the ache. Only from a distance. I wouldn’t intrude on her life again.
As I jogged back to the house, satisfaction settled in. Not about how things were still in the same place with Claire, but that I might have misjudged a situation based on my rational deduction. I was still so new at this emotional path. Getting better, but still new.
Ben didn’t bring the topic up again, and I was grateful.
“Good morning , Mom,” I gave h
er a smile. The first honest one in days.
“Good morning, Adam.” She was on her way out when I came down the stairs.
“Do you have a moment?”
She stopped on the threshold. “Sure. What do you need?”
Concern and love shone in her face and in her aura. I could tell she was fearing I would have bad news. I didn’t. I wanted to ask her how she had known Dad was the right choice for her. Suddenly everybody’s love life seemed relevant. It was almost scary the way my mind kept looking for answers in other people’s stories. My situation was unique. Claire was unique. As unique as everyone, and still unique in a different way. We were connected.
“Nothing,” I decided now wasn’t the time. I already knew how they had met. A funny, sappy story about fate and true love and it had been possible solely because my biological mother had died giving birth to me. “I look forward to your concert.”
“Thank you, Adam,” she rushed back to the stairs and gave me a hug. “I look forward to spending a wonderful evening with my family. But it’s a couple of days until then.”
“Have a great day, Mom.”
“Thanks, Adam.”
I watched her hurry back to the door and continued looking when she had long gone. Somehow the rectangle hole in the wall seemed attractive to walk through. If I stepped outside now, I could make it to Claire’s house in time see her walk to school. It would be just one peek to see she was alright.
“Breakfast, Sir?” Geoffrey surprised me and my conscience kicked in. I couldn’t keep obsessing about Claire if I truly wanted to let her go.
“Just coffee, thanks.”
“It’s ready in the kitchen, Sir. I’ll get a cup ready and deliver it to the dining area.”
That moment I made a decision. “Make it to go, please.” I pulled my jacket from the hook on the wall. “I have plans before class.”
Geoffrey didn’t ask what it was that was keeping me busy at this time of the day. He never intruded on my family’s privacy. It was one of the many qualities the middle-aged butler had. He was kind, polite, and discrete. Given my family’s wealth and status, this was an absolute necessity and he would never betray our trust.
“Here you go,” he held out a travel mug with Italian roast as I was slipping into my sneakers, mind already plotting how to stay hidden when I would look for Claire.
“Smells wonderful.” I took the mug and picked up my car keys.
“Have a good day, Sir.”
“Thank you, Geoffrey.”
With a small bow, he closed the door behind me and I was in my car and cursing Aurora’s morning traffic in no time. Claire had already left the house when I rolled past. It was almost time for classes to start and her car was gone. I spotted it in the school parking lot a couple of minutes later as I parked at the far end near a small coffee shop.
A group of students caught my attention, especially one person. Sporty was there with Amber and Lydia. They seemed to be waiting for someone. As I kept watching them, their moods were changing as they switched conversational topics. Sporty’s emotions went from annoyed to delighted within a fraction of a second and there was only one reason I could guess would swing him around like that—Claire. My gaze followed the direction Sporty’s head was turning and there she was, dancing between the parked cars near the shop, heading straight for them. Her dark cloud was hanging over her more heavily than I had ever noticed before.
“I am sorry,” I said out loud, feeling worse and worse as I watched her walking up to her peers. A part of me wanted to jump out of the car and go hug her. Tell her that it had been a big misunderstanding. But it wasn’t the right time. Not yet. Patience. A morning crammed with classes was waiting for me at school and I couldn’t afford to skip them, not after all the bad days I’d had in the past few weeks. Maybe also because I was concerned she might not want to see me ever again.
As I drove away, sneaking out of the lot, Sporty put his arm around Claire’s shoulder and laughed about something. An instinct, stronger than any emotion I had felt before, kicked in. He had no right to touch her. Not like that. Not with the emotions it was stirring up inside of him. It should be my hand on her shoulder comforting her, protecting her. I almost hit the brakes in an outburst of jealousy, then thought better of it and drove away in a civilized manner, focusing on the future rather than the present. Sporty was waiting in the wings until Claire would be ready to move on. It left me with no options. I couldn’t wait. It had to be sooner rather than later that I told Claire the truth. A truth I had thought had been obvious to her. I had to put my feelings in words and say it. I loved her. My last chance to gain her trust and win her heart.
I didn’t even listen to what the professors had to say on the human nervous system. It was irrelevant at the moment. My head had moved on to the afternoon when I would be waiting for Claire after school, to surprise her again, but with my positive self. Not the brooding one I had been around my family lately. The game plan was to be transparent, open. Let her explore who I was instead of holding my secrets. Show her how my sixth sense was actually something positive, not creepy. Tell her how I felt about her.
As I plotted a conversation in my mind, the day sped by without greater frustration. I was back to anticipating seeing Claire and that was a good thing. So, when Professor Bennet closed the last lecture of the day, I gratefully jogged across the campus and drove back to pick Claire up from school.
It would be about fifteen minutes until she came around the corner of the wall I chose to lean against, so I pulled Bennet’s book from my bag to catch up on what I had missed. It was easy to focus on reading now that my mind was made up about Claire.
As the parking lot was filling with people, I peered over the pages and found Claire frozen between Amber and Lydia, eyes fixated on me. Knowing they hadn’t noticed my peek, I looked down and observed them from my peripheral vision, giving Claire time to decide how she wanted to react.
Lydia was talking to her, oblivious to my presence, until she realized her audience’s attention had been diverted. A mixture of emotions was raging through Claire’s climate, one of them stronger than all the others: hope. From the corner of my eye, I saw Amber nudging Claire in the side with her elbow.
“Are you waiting for somebody?” Claire unfroze.
Encouraged by her emotional reaction, I lowered the book and looked up and waited for her to decide if she was going to come to me.
“You!” Honesty. She should know how important she was to me.
The hope she had felt initially radiated from her more strongly now that she was walking toward me, eyes wide with curiosity. The dark cloud from this morning was little more than a haze of worry now.
I took a step toward her, anxious to close the distance between us.
“Good luck,” Amber’s whisper followed Claire as she approached me.
Claire was studying me with every cautious step she was taking toward me, and shoved her hand in her pocket. Had she been upset with me earlier, it wasn’t there in her emotions now. There was a girlish nervousness growing there as she came closer.
“Hi,” she said.
“Can I borrow you for a while?”
“Sure,” she nodded eagerly, though her eyes narrowed a bit, suspicious of if she could trust the situation.
I looked up, ignoring the mixed feelings from her side. Clouds were towering up in the east.
“It looks like rain. Maybe we should go somewhere inside.”
Claire followed my gaze, then glanced at the other end of the parking lot.
“The coffee shop on the other side of the street, Noel’s.” Her voice was rough. Was she that nervous? I could feel it radiate from her, but the line where her nervousness ended and mine started had become blurry. Her fingers seemed to be moving in the pocket of her jacket, toying something I couldn’t possibly imagine. It reminded me that however much I did perceive from her, there were still secrets I could never resolve without her. And I felt clearly that I wanted to know ever
ything. Every little detail, no matter how insignificant it may seem to her was important to me as it was part of who she was. She cleared her throat as I kept gazing at her.
“No need to be nervous.” Honesty, I had promised myself. I put on a smile, hoping to make my abilities seem less scary to her, and she trembled just enough to make it clear she understood my statement for what it was, a reminder of how I was reading her every second of our conversation.
“Shall we—” I started walking toward the coffee shop, giving her a moment to recover, and took a breath of relief when she followed my lead and walked by my side, obviously intrigued enough to give it a try.
We escaped the rain by seconds as we rushed into Noel’s. Cozy armchairs invited us to sit and watch the wet from inside rather than experience it firsthand on the other side of the windows.
I nodded at the old man behind the counter as he greeted us with a smile. I led the way between empty sofas until I found a nook at one of the large windows. Claire sat down in a green armchair and looked up at me with expectant eyes, waiting for me to settle down. The nervousness grew in her climate the same way it did in mine, and I looked up from the crimson velvet under my legs.
“Everything alright?” The question was more rhetorical than anything else. I could as easily have asked myself the same thing.
Claire’s head moved in an indeterminate manner indicating I was right about everything I was perceiving. There was embarrassment, a hint of doubt—self-doubt maybe—a streak of happiness between all the other feelings, and then there was something I hadn’t felt from her since that last wonderful kiss we’d shared. It was a longing for exactly what her lips had triggered in me, the same kind of desire. I had to suppress a smile which would have given away just how pleased I was she was still thinking of me that way.
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