“I’m created to make you feel comfortable. You must sense that?”
I nodded. “But if you didn’t feel the same way…”
“We don’t.” He went rigid. “We’re not made to fall in love.”
I glanced at his jeans. He followed my eyes.
“I have average parts,” he said quickly, and then his arrogant smile reappeared. “Although I wouldn’t actually call mine average, but yes, I have man parts. We can date each other—angels can date each other—but our jobs are too demanding for a serious commitment.”
It all sounded so logistical and practical, and honestly, quite comical.
I started feeling dizzy. “Is this really happening?”
He moved quickly and gracefully. “Lie down.” He pulled me on top of him. My head was on his shoulder, and he was stroking my hair. He lowered his voice to a warm rumble in his chest. “When you struggle, I come through people in your life. Sometimes when you’re alone, I’m here too. I’ve done this a million times, but I couldn’t let you feel my physical body.”
Shame. I felt warm and calm in his arms. “Do all angels look like you?”
His chuckle lightened the mood. “No, you just got lucky.”
“When do you date?” I asked.
“There’s an empty time slot every night based on your geographic location. It’s a couple of hours when we have to meet with our supervisor if nothing is happening.”
“So we all freeze at midnight or something?”
“For humans, it’s one minute, but for us, it’s about two hours. Basically your time is slowed down. You’re moving, but it’s barely detectable. So if there’re no real issues and I don’t have to meet with Mona, I date a little.” He shrugged one shoulder.
“How do you meet potential dates?”
“Tinder.”
I sat up quickly. “Stop it.”
“I swear. Angels can see other angels’ wings, so when a profile pops up, we always know whether to swipe left or right.”
When I laughed, he smiled, just before his eyes darted to the ceiling. “Oh shit,” he whispered, and then he was gone.
It was jarring. My face hit the couch as Brooklyn’s voice came from the front door. “Pinky, you here?”
I’d never told her, but I resented the nickname. After all, I had contracted pink eye after staying the night in her filthy childhood bedroom.
“I’m here,” I yelled to Brooklyn. Under my breath, I said, “Lucian, if you’re here, give me a sign.” There was nothing. No warm feelings, no floating vases, no thunder or lightning in the distance.
Brooklyn came into the living room and threw her coat and purse on the couch next to me. “I thought you’d be here with what’s his face?”
“Beckett? No. The date was horrible.”
She plopped down on the green velvet chair next to the fireplace. “I told you it would happen. Only a matter of time.”
I sat up and crossed my arms, still shaken up over what I had either hallucinated or experienced moments before. I wasn’t going to tell her about Lucian, but I wondered if people knew about angels and didn’t talk about it. “Do you believe in guardian angels?”
“No. If I had a guardian angel, do you really think I would have gotten that heinous sunburn last summer in Cabo?”
“How was your night?” I asked.
“Stupid.” That meant she hadn’t gotten the attention she wanted. “I’m going to bed.” She got up and left the room. “Night, Pinky.”
I looked around for any sign that Lucian had been there. I picked up the glass from the table. I had drunk all of the wine, but there was still a red ring lining the bottom of the glass. I held it up with triumph and said, “I’m not crazy.”
“No one said you were, weirdo!” Brooklyn yelled from her bedroom.
“Good night,” I called to her as I got up and headed to my room. Inside my room, I began to undress and then stiffened. “Lucian? If you’re here, you have to tell me.”
I remembered what he’d said about not spying on me. I slowly undressed, still on edge and shaking. I got into my bed, exhausted but terrified, then I began the prayer I had said every night since I was a child. It had never held any meaning until now. It was always just a habit, a soothing mechanism my mother had taught me.
“Angel of God, my Guardian dear…”
STANDING OUTSIDE HER building, I waited until she started the prayer. I could always hear Evey, even in my thoughts. Sometimes it was like static or white noise, and then she would say something out loud that would get my attention, especially when I wasn’t with her. When that happened, I would feel a pull, an energy or force bringing me back to her.
A moment later, I was in her room, standing next to her bed. She couldn’t see me or hear me, but I was chanting the prayer with her. She was dozing off. Right at the moment that she fell asleep, I put my hand on her shoulder and she smiled faintly.
What the fuck have I done?
I knew Zack would be waiting for me outside. He only had two souls—a husband and wife in their sixties, who lived across the street from Evey and rarely left their apartment. His assignment was so easy that he actually had time to start an online sports betting ring… lucky bastard. He had something to live for, something of his own. Brooklyn’s angel, Abigail, was currently sitting on the stoop, looking at her phone. She was probably on Tinder.
“Idiot,” she mumbled as I walked by. Abigail looked like Heidi Klum, but other than that, there was nothing angelic about her.
I ignored her and headed down the block. Angels were everywhere. Most of them had several souls in one area, and most of them spent this time of night minding their own business and waiting for the magic hours to begin, which happened right before sunrise. For sixty seconds before the sun pierced the horizon, angels had two hours of freedom. It was like trying to fit your entire social life into a lunch break. Half the time I’d spend it sitting with Mona, trying to talk my way out of some mess I had gotten into.
Zack appeared beside me. I didn’t look over.
“Why are you sneaking up on me, shitbag?” I asked.
He was laughing. “You’re in so much trouble. Why are you always in trouble?”
“I haven’t done anything serious in fifty years,” I told him.
“Oh wow, nothing in fifty whole years? It’s been a century since I’ve even had a warning.”
I flew away and headed for Twenty-Fourth Street. During the magic hours, we had to check-in with our overseers before we could take off and have some fun. Zack, two other angels—Lauren and Bob—and I all had to meet with Mona. We met her at the St. Francis Fountain, a soda shop where Doug worked. Doug didn’t have any souls. He’d kept violating his probation, so they banished him to the St. Francis soda shop and hotel. The higher-ups liked to be ironic; it was part of their sick humor. During the day, Doug cleaned hotel rooms, and at night, he worked in the soda shop. He could never leave… ever! There were other angels like Doug who ran establishments during magic hours. I imagined that Mona would sentence me to some type of hell like Doug’s, but I was ready for it.
My hell was watching Evey date every guy in the city.
When the magic hours began, I was the first to walk through the jingling door. Doug greeted me. “Hey, Luc, the usual?” He had a secret stash of whiskey under the counter that he’d pour in my coffee.
“Lay off the bottle, you drunk!” came Mona’s voice from the corner booth. All I could see was the top of her head, the bright red and perfectly coifed bun popping up over the green vinyl booth back.
I looked at Doug and smiled. “Make it a double.”
“You got it.” Doug didn’t care about pissing off Mona.
I slid into the seat across from her as Doug set my coffee in front of me.
Mona shook her head in disgust. “You know, Lucian, I was thinking… a few of us are getting tired of meeting here. The music is terrible, and honestly, we’d enjoy a drink every now and then too. Doug doesn’t spike all of o
ur coffees.”
The door jingled. Zack walked in and took a seat at the bar while simultaneously flipping me off.
I put my focus back on Mona. She had the tiniest mouth, pursed red lips, and a pointy ski-slope nose. Impish would be an understatement. “You look nice tonight.” I arched my eyebrows and dropped my gaze to her mouth.
She sucked in a breath and held it.
I leaned forward over the table and whispered, “Wanna fuck?”
She swallowed. “Lucian,” she said in a warning tone.
“I know you want me. Why don’t you live a little?” I lowered my voice. “I want to taste you, Mona, you little tart.”
Her face flushed. “Don’t. Stop.”
“Oh, I don’t plan to. Not until you’re screaming my name.”
“I meant don’t say another word.”
Since angels didn’t age, we were all perpetually in our prime, which meant that even though Mona was centuries older than me, she had all the same feelings that I did. I was getting to her; she wanted me.
“I want to bite your perfect ass,” I said.
That did it. That put her over the edge.
She cleared her throat and held up a Wookiee costume from the bench. “How would you like to work at the Star Wars bar for eternity? You’d get to see Evey every weekend with one hipster after another, her heart getting more mangled each time. Maybe we’ll reassign her to Abigail.”
“No!” I said, banging my hand on the table. I could handle the Star Wars bar for eternity, but I could not handle knowing self-absorbed Abigail would be looking out for Evey. “You have to get her someone better.”
“I don’t have to do anything. I know what you’re doing, Lucian. You’re trying to get banished. You want to sabotage yourself because you’re some kind of masochist.”
“I’m not, Mona. That’s the thing.” I shrugged. “If I were, I’d enjoy watching Evey date these cretins she goes out with.”
“This is so out of the ordinary. It has to be all the drinking. You’re just not thinking clearly. I don’t want to have to go to my supervisor with this.”
I smacked my hand on the table again.
“Stop doing that!” she said.
I was getting so tired of the cryptic shit. “Who the fuck is your supervisor? Is it him?” I pointed up.
“No, no, of course not. It’s David.”
“Like as in the David?”
“No, a different one. He’s just my supervisor,” she said.
“Where is the big guy? Let me talk to him.”
“You know you can’t do that.”
I took a deep breath. I felt like I was going to throw up. Zack, Bob, and Lauren were all at the bar now, eavesdropping. I motioned for Mona to lean in over the table so I could whisper to her.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not falling for that one. You’re so arrogant.”
“Please, I’m serious,” I pleaded.
She huffed then finally leaned over the table toward me.
I cupped her ear. “I’m in love with her,” I whispered.
She yanked her head back and scowled. “With who?”
I mouthed, “Evey.”
“That’s impossible. She’s human. You don’t even have the chemicals in your body to be attracted to her.”
All three angels at the bar turned on their stools and stared at me with wide eyes.
I stood abruptly. “Oh, fuck all of you. You don’t understand.” I rushed out of the door and took off toward the sky.
We couldn’t actually breathe outside of the atmosphere, so as soon as I hit about ten thousand feet, I started gasping and choking—plus I was freezing my ass off. I just had to get away. Nothing made sense. We were living and breathing just like Evey. I had a heart that beat. I could smell and taste and touch just like Evey. I came barreling back toward the ground, landed in the same spot I’d taken off from, and stumbled to my left. Zack was sitting outside the soda shop, watching me.
“What happened to you? You used to be so good at that,” he said.
“Everything is turning to shit.” I sat down next to him at the curb. “What did Mona say after I left?”
“She thinks it’s the drinking.”
I looked at Zack; he had strawberry-blond hair, freckles, and a boyish face. He was my best friend, and half the time I knew he was looking out for me. The other half of the time, he was heckling me. We were like brothers. He was the closest thing, besides Evey, that I had to family.
“What’s eating you, man? And why’d you tell Evey? You know what you’re gonna have to do now, right?”
“I know.”
I had to erase Evey’s memory of me. We didn’t like to do that often because occasionally it caused forgetfulness—a response to the energy we forced into the brain. We did it by pressing a thumb to the forehead and funneling the electrical currents in our body out through the fingers. If you did it right, you could go on unseen, and your soul would just pick up where they’d left off.
“You should do it soon—before she starts talking. They’ll have her committed.”
“I will, first thing after we go back.”
Angels had gifts. Obviously we could use other physical bodies, we had invisible wings, and we were generally more efficient beings. Our hearts were faster, we could eat and drink more, and though we were ageless, we weren’t immortal. We weren’t susceptible to diseases or age-related illnesses, but we could still die by getting hit by a truck. At the instant of our death, we’d just disintegrate into nothing and immediately be forgotten. What a legacy.
One thing about my job that had been bugging me for a century at least was that we were kept in the dark from all the higher-ups. We had been created and predisposed to protect our souls, but the rules, especially Zack’s long list of rules, came from hearsay. Mona acted as a lawyer in a way. She would interpret information from the higher-ups then try to apply it to our situations, but I didn’t think she could prove that me being in love with Evey was impossible.
I didn’t know what was happening to me. I had heard stories of angels falling in love with their souls, but I’d never heard about what had eventually happened to them.
“Remember Connie? That one that fell in love with the musician?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said.
“It wasn’t that long ago,” Zack added.
We had all heard this story about an angel in Memphis who had fallen in love with her assigned soul, but the guy died. That was the end of it.
“He’s one of us now.”
“What?”
“Yeah, in New York. Connie took him out herself.”
“What? Why? How?”
“So they could be together.”
“I’m confused.”
He turned his body toward me. “I know how to fix your situation with Evey. If I tell you, will you teach me that trick?”
Zack had been hassling me about the same stupid trick for a hundred years. Literally… a hundred years.
“I’ll try, but it takes a pretty strong set to pull it off.” I glanced at his pathetic wings, all dry, brownish-red, and sparse-feathered.
“I can do it,” he said.
“Fine.” I stood. “Let’s get a bottle first.”
He rolled his eyes. We headed back to Evey’s street while we downed a bottle of Glenfiddich. We still had about an hour left.
“Okay, show me the trick now,” Zack said once we were in front of Evey’s building.
He wanted to know how to do a three-sixty loop. You fly fast up and flip back around, but it’s really only cool if you have grace. Zack could barely fly straight. But I’d said I would teach him.
“Tell me your secret first.” We flew up to sit outside of Evey’s window and finish the bottle. I was sauced again for the third time in less than twenty-four hours.
“You have to kill her.”
“Excuse me, what?”
“That’s what happened to Connie and Jeff. She drowned him in the Mississippi, and
he happily went along with it just to be with her. Now that is a love story, man. I guess they’re angels in New York City on the same block.”
I shook my head. “It’s a myth. It has to be.”
“No, seriously, that’s how we’re made. We were all human once, then we got killed. Some of us come here, some go to other places, but we all get jobs in a way. They got lucky that they ended up in the same place. But it’s true—we were all human and we all definitely got axed before our time. I know that for sure.” He made a slicing motion across his neck.
“I don’t believe you. I think I have to kill myself to be with her.”
“Nah… you got that from a movie. You can’t be with Evey now, the way you are. You’ll start dying, really slow and painful. Like each time you get with her, you’ll die a little, and then all of the sudden, lights out. When we die, that’s it, man. Poof! We’re gone. You’ve seen it?”
I had seen it. I once saw an angel get shot. It’s as if we disintegrate into a powdery dust and that’s it. Any humans who witness it, instantly forget that we even existed. It’s really depressing.
“Why would I die from being with Evey? Wouldn’t I just get banished?”
He looked thoughtful for once. He pitied me. “I don’t know. It’s just what I heard, okay? I’m not totally sure. You should talk to Mona.” He shrugged. “I could be wrong.”
I was staring through the window, wondering how I would ever be able to kill Evey. Even if what Zack said was true, how would Evey know she truly wanted to be with me when I was basically made for her comfort? It wouldn’t be fair to her.
“Isn’t it kind of weird that you want her when you’ve been watching over her since she was a baby?”
“What are you saying, dick?”
“You know what I’m saying,” he said.
“Fuck you. It’s not like that. She’s beautiful and amazing and kind. I trust her implicitly.” I drank the rest of the bottle in three large gulps. “There’s no one like her. And she’s an adult.”
“You’re like, two thousand years older than her. You’re taking ‘robbing the cradle’ to a whole new level, man.”
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