The Sure Thing

by Samantha Westlake

  "And he heard you?"

  "Oh yeah." I put down my fork and gripped the edge of the table with both hands, leaning forward and forcing my features into a thunderously angry expression. "He bellows, 'Who the hell is in my ex-wife's closet?', and I say the only thing I can think."

  Paxton leaned forward, her eyes wide and intent. "And what did you say?"

  "Plumber!" I answered, and we both dissolved into helpless giggles.

  "Oh my god," Paxton finally managed, wiping the little tears of laughter at the corners of her eyes away with her napkin. "You're crazy, you know that? Bona fide insane."

  Our waiter popped up before I could respond, glancing down at Paxton's plate. "Madam? Can I clear your plate?"

  I expected her to let the waiter take it – but Paxton immediately hunched forward, holding out one hand over the remaining half of her lasagna. "No way!" she exclaimed. "This is the best lasagna I've ever eaten, and I'm not letting it get away!"

  I laughed as she scooped up a heaping forkful and slipped it into her mouth. None of the girls that I took out on dates ever seemed to enjoy their food that much, I considered as I watched her. They ordered, but they rarely did more than pick at the meal, as if afraid that every single bite would shoot instantly to their waistlines.

  Of course, Paxton was a fair bit heavier than the typical supermodel I took out on a date – but she still looked great, almost distractingly sexy. I kept having to remind myself that this wasn't about getting laid. She looked like she'd be great in bed, however – and if her enthusiasm for eating was any indication of her level of commitment to other activities, she'd be wildly fun in a bed... or a tub, or a hot tub, or even in the backseat of my car...

  I forced myself to snap back to the present as Paxton looked at me. I realized belatedly that she'd asked me a question. "Sorry, what? I got distracted for a moment."

  "Get your mind out of the gutter, Sir Asshole," she said, although the name carried only gentle mockery. "I'm not putting out on the first date."

  "What? I – that's not what I was thinking about!" I sputtered, even as I felt my cheeks flushing and giving me away.

  She just laughed. "Oh, you're too easy. Besides, most of your stories tonight have been about sex, or linked to it, with other women. If I was really offended by it, I would have already thrown my glass of wine into your face and walked out on you by now."

  "Well, I'm glad that you haven't." I finished off the last of the wine in my glass, setting it back down. "This stuff is way too expensive to be wasted on a shirt."

  Oops. That brought her back to the fact that I was spending all this money to take her out, and her smile faded. "So," she said, affecting an air of fake casualness. "Are you going to tell me why you're bothering to drop all this money on me?"

  "We haven't ordered dessert yet," I tried to throw her off, but she wasn't going to be distracted so easily.

  "We can eat it as you explain just what you're after," she countered. "So come on, Alex, tell me the truth. Was it a dare or something – take out the fat girl, see how far you can get? Or is there something else going on here?"

  "The fat girl?" I echoed in surprise, totally confused now. "Paxton, I never called you fat!"

  The smile was totally gone from her face now. "Yeah, no one does. You don't need to say it out loud, though. I see the way you look at me for finishing my food."

  What? Was she crazy? "That's not it at all," I insisted. "I think it's great that you ate all your food! Most of the girls I take out, they just sort of pick at it and barely eat anything. It just feels like a waste." How could I make it clear to her that I found it strangely sexy to watch her eat, to see how much she savored the taste of each forkful, how she really enjoyed it instead of just seeing it as a formality to get through before going to puke in the restroom?

  "Yeah, whatever." She turned away, and I realized with a shock that she was blinking back tears. Crap. I needed to do something.

  "I have superpowers."

  What the fuck? Where did that come from? Paxton looked up, although I still saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. "What?" she asked, echoing my own internal thoughts.

  Totally uncontrolled by my brain, my mouth opened up again, spilling out secrets that I desperately wanted to keep to myself. "Remember earlier, when I asked you what superpower you'd choose to have, if you could have one? And I said that I'd take the ability to write what would happen next? Well, that's what I can actually do."

  Finally, by lifting up my hand and covering my mouth, I managed to silence the flow of words. I looked across at Paxton – and saw her blinking, frowning as she tried to figure out what this new set of lies was intended to accomplish.

  "You're sounding pretty crazy right now, Alex," she said, although she didn't get up and try to run away.

  "I'm not crazy." I looked around the restaurant. "Okay, how about this. What dessert sounds best to you?"

  She gave me another skeptical look, but shifted her gaze over to the half-page dessert menu. "The cheesecake sounds pretty tasty."

  I quickly wrote the words inside my head, this time speaking them aloud as I did so. "The waiter was so enchanted with the couple on their first date that he decided to bring them a slice of cheesecake, on the house."

  "First date?" Paxton echoed, but she looked up as the waiter reappeared a second later at our table.

  "For being such good customers, and clearly having so much fun together," he smiled, as he set down a slice of cheesecake in the middle of the table, along with two forks. "On the house."

  Paxton blinked down at it, and then looked back at me. "This is some sort of trick," she said. "You're trying to fool me. I don't know why, but there's got to be some sort of reason."

  "I'm not." I spread my hands out. "Go on, think of something else. Anything else that could possibly happen. Just tell me."

  She bit her lower lip, and even amid my shock at telling this near-stranger about my deepest secret, my power, I couldn't help but notice how the expression made her look adorably focused. "Anything?"

  I nodded. "Anything at all."

  "Okay then, Sir Asshole. Try this one." She paused for a second, assembling her thoughts. "When I was a little girl, I had a stuffed octopus."

  "An octopus? Really?"

  "Shut up." Strangely, the tears were back in her eyes. "His name was Binky. He was a gift from... from my parents. Before they passed away."

  Oh shit. I hadn't asked why she lived with her uncle, but I suddenly guessed that there was a darker secret than I'd suspected. "Paxton, you don't have to-"

  "Shut up." Yes, the tears were there, now flowing down her cheeks. "When I was nine, I lost that octopus. I don't know where, and I cried for a month afterward. It was my favorite possession, and I lost it."

  I really didn't want to open up this can of worms. "Paxton, maybe we should get out of here," I said softly. "Step outside, get some fresh air."

  She didn't move. Despite the shimmer of tears, her eyes bored into me. "I'm going to walk out of here, and never talk to you again, and if I see you ever again in my life, I'm going to scream and kick you in the balls as hard as possible, over and over..."

  I tried to think of any other way out of here, but I came up empty. I couldn't tell Paxton to drop it, since my powers didn't work on her. Why had I thought that this was a good idea? What was wrong with me? I could get us out of here, turn on the fire alarm or something like that, but I somehow guessed that this wouldn't be enough to distract her.

  It only took one sentence. I felt a soft, plush weight settle into my hands beneath the table. I looked back at Paxton, gazed into her warm brown eyes, didn't blink or look away.

  The waiter had already cleared my plate, leaving a blank spot on the table in front of me. I set the stuffed little plush octopus on the table in front of me. It looked a bit ragged, with some of the fuzz worn away from its head. Almost like it had been hugged for many years by a little girl.

  Her eyes dropped down to it, and I heard her b
reath stop. She reached out with one hand, fingers trembling so badly that I thought she might fumble the stuffed animal and drop it into the cheesecake. She didn't, however, and lifted it up to turn it over in front of her face.

  For an instant, she looked back at me – and then she was up from her seat, moving faster than I could believe possible, sprinting out of the restaurant.

  "Shit." I dropped a couple hundred-dollar bills on the table – and then added a third, just to thank the waiter for his time. I dashed out after her.

  I found her in the parking lot, just a dozen steps or so from the entrance, bent over with the little stuffed octopus locked in a two-armed hug. Her whole body shook with sobs, and I placed one hand gently on her back. She jerked abruptly for a second, but then leaned in against me, accepting my offer of support.

  I held her, wordlessly, for several minutes. Finally, her tears and sobbing ceased, and she straightened up. I loosened my hold on her, taking a step back and resisting the urge to cover my nuts against any incoming attacks.

  "Okay," she whispered, almost too softly for me to hear. "I believe you."

  Just like that.

  And then, delayed, it sank in what I'd just done.

  With anyone else, I could always make them forget. Even Tommy – if he ever tried to go public with my secret, I could just tell him to forget about me ever revealing my powers to him, and he would do it. I'd always been in control, had it all in check.

  Until now. Until Paxton. Now, she knew my secret, and I could never take it back.

  Well, tonight certainly hadn't gone how I had expected.

  Chapter Twelve

  PAXTON

  *

  Once the shock of the initial realization wore off, I found myself filled to bursting with a million questions. Fortunately, Alex seemed to know what I really needed.

  "There," he said, watching as I quickly twisted the ice cream cone in my hands to catch an errant drip before it dribbled down to my fingers. "At least now you can't talk all the time, or else you'll get yourself dirty."

  He'd driven me just down the block, over to an upscale little ice cream shop tucked away between a drug store and a tall apartment building. On the drive over, he refused to answer a single one of my questions, just telling me that he'd talk once we'd arrived at the destination.

  Now, with us both holding ice cream cones, we sat down at a little table outside the shop. I tried to lick down the ice cream cone as quickly as possible, so that I could let out some of the dozens of questions burning in my head.

  "Easy – don't choke on that," Alex commented, watching with mild concern as I demolished the dessert.

  "You ought to know better, trying to keep me distracted with something sweet." I got the cone licked down to the point where it wasn't likely to drip – and then suddenly looked up at him, feeling a blush suffuse my cheeks. In the startling aftermath of his reveal, I'd completely forgotten the fact that he'd asked me out, that we were on a date. Slurping at an ice cream cone like a dog with a bone probably wasn't the sexiest choice I could have made.

  To cover that burst of embarrassment, I quickly asked my first question. "Okay, so have you had these powers forever?"

  He shook his head. "Nope. And that's probably a good thing – I couldn't imagine what I'd wish for as a kid." He paused for a second, his eyes drifting out of focus. "Scratch that – I can imagine what I'd wish for as a kid, and trust me, it's good that I didn't have this ability back then."

  "So when did you first get it?"

  "College." The smile faded from his face, replaced briefly by a frown before that cleared. I guessed that there was more to that story of how he got these powers, something that he didn't feel willing to share.

  That was alright – I had a million other questions. "So what sort of things can you do? Or what can't you do?"

  "Pretty much anything I can imagine." He shrugged, looking disturbingly nonchalant for a man who'd just confessed to possessing godlike power. "I've got a door in my bathroom that leads right out onto a beach, a couple thousand miles away. I once gave myself the power to read minds, although it gave me a hell of a fierce headache. I don't need to work at a job, since money just appears in my hands whenever I need it – and I haven't even gotten a call from the IRS."

  "Man, that sounds like a fantasy," I said, and then stopped as another question came to me. "Which, by the way... do your powers work on people?"

  "Remember the waiter at the restaurant?" he asked, but it wasn't the kind of answer I wanted.

  "No, not like that. Like, can you make people do what you want?" Could he control me, turn me into his puppet? Suddenly, a chill swept through me, one totally unrelated to the ice cream filling my stomach.

  He winced. "Yes."

  That was it? Just a blanket yes? I hadn't previously believed it possible, but I suddenly wasn't interested quite so much in my ice cream cone any longer as I stared at him. "So have you used it on me?"

  "No, I haven't!" This answer came right away, at least, and he sounded earnest – but how could I know for sure? "And that's why you're so interesting to me."

  "What, you want to see how far you can get before you have to cheat and use your powers to make me do what you want?" Bile rose up in my throat, disgust making me physically sick at the thought of how horrible this man might truly be.

  He reached up and ran a hand through his thick, curly hair, and I tried to block out how the gesture left his hair adorably mussed. "No, not like that at all. In fact, you're the strange one, here."

  I wanted to cross my arms, but the ice cream cone got in the way. I settled for trying to stab him with the flattest, sharpest glare I could manage. "What?"

  He sighed, looked down at his own ice cream. He'd gone for a smaller size than me – understandable, since he wasn't the one dealing with this huge revelation – and he only had a bite or two left. He popped it into his mouth, chewed and swallowed as if he didn't even taste the sweetness or the cold.

  "Look, I try to be a good person," he said, slipping back a little lower in his chair across the rickety little table from me. "But I use this power that I have to make things easier. And the night that I met you, I was pretty drunk, and so I used my power to push a bit of suggestion at you." He looked up from beneath lowered brows at me. "Remember?"

  It took a second before it clicked in my mind. "When you asked me to flash you?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows climb. "But I didn't do it!"

  "That's right."

  I didn't understand his point. "So?"

  "So..." he said, drawing out the word. "So, out of everyone I've met in my life, everyone I've ever encountered, you're the only one who doesn't seem affected at all by my power."

  He stopped, and I tried to wrap my hand around this new revelation.

  "Your power doesn't work on me."

  "No."

  "But it works on everyone else in the world."

  "Everyone and everything." He glanced up at the tree that spread its branches over us, growing up from the narrow strip of land between the sidewalk and the street. "Bloom," he commanded, and white blossoms of flowers erupted along every branch. A second later, the sweet smell of their pollen filled my nostrils.

  I looked up at the hundreds of little flowers, and then back down at Alex. "Oh my god," I said faintly.

  "See?" He narrowed his eyes at me. "You're suddenly feeling insanely happy, huge waves of pleasure flooding through you and making it impossible to focus on anything else besides how sexy I am."

  I braced for the waves of pleasure.

  They didn't come.

  "Anything?" he asked after a second, sounding almost hopeful. "Even just a little bit?"

  "Irritation," I answered. "And a growing urge to smack you."

  "Yeah, figures." He slumped back again, held up his hands helplessly. "See? You're the only one like this that I've met. I didn't understand it in the club, and I don't understand it now. That's why I was so obsessed with you, why I had to find out more."


  I paused for a moment to consider this. On one hand, this meant that my suspicions had been correct all along! Alex wasn't after me because he strangely found me attractive, because he'd fallen head over heels for me and we were meant to be together in the true proof that opposites do attract.

  No, he'd chosen to pursue me because I was the only one that he couldn't have. His powers didn't work on me, and he just wanted to find out.

  "The questions," I suddenly exclaimed. "At dinner, you were asking me all those probing questions – you were trying to figure out why your powers don't work on me! You weren't interested in me at all!"

  "Not true!" he immediately fired back, once again sitting up as light flared in his eyes. "I was interested, and I also wanted to figure out why my powers don't work – I can have more than one motivation at a time!"

  I didn't know exactly how to counter that argument, and Alex capitalized on my momentary pause. "And now, you need to promise me that you'll keep this a secret," he went on, fixing me in place with the intensity of his gaze. "Promise, on your heart, on everything in your life."

  I stared back at him for a second. "Who am I going to tell?" I finally got out. "Who's going to believe me, when I tell them that some thirty-year-old-"

  "Twenty-eight," he murmured. "And I don't look old for my age, I would know."

  "Some twenty-eight-year-old," I corrected, glaring, "secretly has the power to... to alter reality!? No one will believe that!"

  "Doesn't matter. If the military finds out, or someone else, they might try and lock me up, do experiments, take me apart. They'll kill me, just to figure out how I work."

  "So what? Just use your power to get out of it!" I tried to figure out why he might be at all bothered by this. "I mean, it sounds to me like you're basically God! Why does it matter who knows about your power? Heck, can't you just make them forget?"

  "I could," he agreed softly, "but I don't want to do it."

  And just like that, the fire left Alex's eyes. His body slumped back once again, losing the energy that had lit up his limbs. He suddenly looked half a decade older, tired and sad. "Sometimes, I hate it," he whispered, almost too softly for me to hear. "I hate having it all on me. I wish that it would just go away and leave me alone."