“I thought I did,” my voice was full of venom. That comment stung. I knew it did, but I wasn’t sorry I had said it. Not even a little.
“It was a long time ago, Dietrich,” Lottie said. She was lying on her back now, staring at the ceiling. Maybe wishing some portal or ice pick hole would open up and let her escape off of this planet. Immediately.
“Not for me.”
She just nodded. “True.” She kept her focus on the popcorn ceiling above her.
“Dietrich,” Eric started but I wouldn’t let him speak.
“Just shut up.” He didn’t argue.
I uncurled my fingers and studied my hands. The room was heavy and silent except for the humming of the air conditioner. After a few minutes of no one speaking, Lottie finally propped herself up on her elbows and watched me again. That doubt and uncertainty were back. She was Lottie and not-Lottie again. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. “You aren’t going to hurt him, are you?” she asked.
I glanced over at Eric. He hadn’t moved. I shook my head, “No, but …”
“Stop there,” Lottie interrupted. “No buts. Look, we all know why he brought it up in the first place. He wanted to prove something and he did, right? Can’t you just …”
Just, what? Forget my best friend had tried to make out with my fiancée? No, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing a person forgets. And forgive him? There was no fucking way I could forgive him for it either. Lottie wasn’t just my world in that clichéd I’m-so-in-love kind of way; she was the only part of my world that gave my life any meaning. I had no friends when I met her, I’d never had any family. I went to LSU and then applied to graduate schools because I didn’t know what else to do. I was still a lost child, a discarded pitiful creature, when she met me, and for the first time in my life, someone had wanted me. She had wanted me; she had loved me, and God, had I loved her.
Lottie never tried to finish whatever she thought might have helped me to realize I couldn’t keep losing the only people in my life. At this point, wasn’t I really down to one? Maybe none, now? So instead she sat up, dangling her legs over the edge of the bed and faced me. “Do you want some time alone? We can go meet Lydia. She may have slept off her hangover by now.”
Actually, the last thing I wanted was for Lottie to leave with him. I never wanted them to be alone together ever again. Or maybe even together ever again, period. But looking at Lottie, I could tell she was hoping I would say yes. She was eager to get out of this stressful situation, with this ominous silence just hanging around us like a shroud. And in all the years I had known Lottie, I had never been able to disappoint her. So I told her yes. I needed some time alone.
Eric didn’t protest, although I could tell he didn’t want to leave without me. Or maybe he just wanted Lottie to leave so he could talk to me. If that were true, then, I thought that was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid of him. But he followed her silently out of my room, and as soon as the door closed, I collapsed back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling just as Lottie had, waiting for that same hole to appear to swallow me.
I didn’t want to travel universes, just time. I wanted to go back a little over two years, to a beautiful spring day in Houston when a rare seasonal cold front had moved cool, dry air into the city. The meteorologist on the radio that morning had promised me a high of no more than 68 degrees. This weather was too exceptional, too perfect to waste. I wanted to make a better decision. I wanted to turn around, go back home, crawl back into bed with Lottie and tell her that when she was ready to get up, we would drive down to Galveston and walk along the beach. It would be too cold to get in the water but we would walk in the sand, look for seashells or just try to avoid dead jellyfish, spread out a blanket and umbrella and read or fall asleep with the waves and seagulls providing the kind of ambient sounds that quieted even my overactive mind.
She would still be alive then. If I had only turned around. And I had thought about it. But I had gone to work, and she had gotten up, answered Jamie’s call and decided to go somewhere with her. I still didn’t know where they had been going. What had been so important at my desk that day? What had kept me from turning around? What had made me think that I could waste this day, this too-good-to-be-true day that in hindsight, was foreshadowing something incomprehensibly sinister, perhaps trying to warn me, Go get her, Dietrich. This day isn’t right. No, it’s too right, and that’s the problem. I hadn’t listened. I hadn’t listened, and she had paid with her life and mine. I had been living in this Hell of an afterlife ever since.
There was a soft rapping noise from somewhere far away. I tried to place it but it was distant, metallic and hollow. Gradually, sounds came with greater clarity and I slowly opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep. The popcorn ceiling of the hotel room came into focus, that hollow metallic rapping sound identifying itself as knocking at my door. How long had I been asleep? I glanced over at the clock. Over an hour. I rolled off the bed and looked through the peephole, surprised to see Lottie’s spritely figure waiting on the other side. She was looking down the walkway, perhaps wondering if I had left and I quickly opened the door before she had a chance to decide to leave, too. I didn’t have time to wonder where Eric was. Part of me didn’t care. A big part of me, actually.
“Hey,” I said. God, I could be so pathetic.
She just smiled at me and said hey back. And then walked into my room and sat down on the same bed she had claimed before. “I left Eric with Lydia. They were … actually getting along. It was getting too weird.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. I knew Lydia wasn’t Jamie. She wasn’t anything like Jamie. But I could understand why that made Lottie feel so uncomfortable. Jamie and Eric had hated each other. Part of it may have had something to do with Eric’s feeble attempt to ask her out when he first met her and Jamie’s not-so-feeble attempt at making it perfectly clear that was never going to happen. Eric was – apparently – a good looking guy. He wasn’t used to getting shot down, and I don’t think he ever forgave Jamie for that, anymore than she ever forgave him for hitting on her in the first place.
“I’m not sure you should have left her alone with him,” I said. My nap had obviously not cured my incensed mood.
Lottie just shrugged. “I still trust him. Believe me, I would never have left Lydia alone with him if I didn’t.”
“Why is Lydia even ok being left alone with him? She treated me like I was the Jabberwocky last night.”
Lottie raised one eyebrow at me, that half-smile curling at her lips. “C’mon, Dietrich. She’s human.”
I stared stupidly back at Lottie. She obviously expected me to catch on to her innuendo, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge it. It was my turn to cross my arms defensively. There was no way Eric and Lydia were going to hook up. No fucking way.
“Anyway,” Lottie exaggerated the word, fully understanding I was being stubborn and petulant and she had probably half-expected it, “Let’s go do something. Hey, do you have a DVD player in here? We can go down to F.Y.E. I bet they have a copy of Men in Black.”
“You know I don’t watch movies.” As much as I didn’t want to think about Eric and Lydia, I couldn’t not think about them. “They’re not going to … you know.”
Lottie smirked. “Doubt it, but it’s none of our business. And besides, he’s no longer here to tempt you into committing homicide. So let’s go do something.”
She was virtually bouncing on the edge of the bed now. Even if I had wanted to say no, she was so goddamned adorable, how could I resist her? So we drove down to a Greek and Lebanese restaurant we had always loved and had lunch then went over to the LSU lakes. It was late June in south Louisiana. Hot and humid, uncomfortable even in the shade. But it was an old pastime of ours, to walk around this particular lake, and so we parked on campus and she let me hold her hand as we made our way back toward Dalrymple Drive. Part of it was the heat, and part of it was just that Lottie and I had never felt the need to fill silence between us, and so we walked qu
ietly, occasionally moving to the side as a cyclist or jogger edged past us.
By mid-afternoon, we had stopped to rest in the shade of a huge oak tree, passing a bottle of water between us, breathing heavily not so much from physical exertion but from the hot, sticky air around us. “Now what?” Lottie finally asked.
I glanced down the rest of the path. We still had about a ¼ of a mile to go before we were back to Dalrymple Drive. “Well, when we get back to my car, I’m turning on the air conditioner. And going back to the Circle K for another bottle of water.”
Lottie laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”
I looked down at her. She was staring out over the lake but not really seeing it. “Oh.”
Now what? Hadn’t this always been her call? From the moment I first saw her in the coffeehouse in Houston, I had wanted her with me, no matter who she was. If she had asked me right then to run away with her to Morocco, I would have pulled out my phone and bought the tickets. Lottie looked up at me. I guess she had expected a more thoughtful response.
“You’re fucking gorgeous, you know that?” she asked.
I laughed, both startled and amused. It had been a long time since I’d really laughed. I shrugged, “You’ve told me.”
“Jamie always thought so too.”
“That you never told me.”
Lottie smiled back at me. “Well, I didn’t want it going to your head or anything.”
“Whatever. I’ve never cared about anyone’s opinion except yours.”
“I know.” Lottie looked away again, nervous maybe, awkward. The not-Lottie part suddenly remembering this wasn’t a conversation she was comfortable having. I left her alone for a couple of minutes before reminding her, “So … now what?”
She plucked a few strands of grass from the ground beside her and let the breeze, as little as there was, take them from her hand. “Now? I dunno. I guess we hope Eric doesn’t knock up Lydia?” she joked.
I groaned. The thought of Eric having sex with anyone, let alone Lydia, was the last thing I wanted to think about. “Alright, sorry,” she laughed. She turned contemplative again and pulled a few more blades from the ground. “How long can you stay?”
“As long as you’ll let me,” I answered quickly.
“Well,” she said, looking back up at me, those shimmering hazel eyes both scared and excited, “I guess we just start there.”
Chapter 6
Eric had insisted on coming into my room that evening. He sat in the same chair, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, as he told the same story from the party, at least what he could remember of it. The rational part of my brain tried to acknowledge it did seem like he had meant the kiss innocently enough, but perhaps because he was drunk or because he was lonely or because it was just Lottie looking as beautiful as ever in her dark blue sweater dress with black filigree designs that he made a stupid mistake. A very stupid mistake. One that I at least wanted to hit him for. Eric told me I could. Somehow, when someone gives you permission to hit him, it takes the satisfaction out of it. I passed on the chance.
For now, I told him the best I could do was treat him as Eric my coworker, not Eric my friend. I think part of him had suspected I would say that and there was nothing he could say at this point to change my mind. He unclasped his hands, leaned back in his chair, folded one leg over his other knee and asked, “So, do you want to hear what I learned from Lydia?”
“What happened between you and Lydia? Don’t fuck this up for me and Lottie.”
“What do you …? Oh, Christ, Dietrich, you’ve met her. She’s sweet and all. I mean, really sweet. That’s the problem. It took all of about five minutes to feel like I was talking to my little sister. I’m not trying to fuck her.”
“Your sister’s not that sweet.”
“No. But point remains. Do you want to hear this or not?”
I nodded. I still wanted to hit him … sort of … but I also really wanted to hear what he had learned from Lydia. And I was secretly exceedingly glad he wasn’t going to try to sleep with her. Something told me if Lydia’s heart got broken, I would get at least partly blamed. After all, I had told him about Lottie. I had brought him here.
“She told me how it works, kinda. It was actually fascinating. I mean, like Lottie, she’s not a scientist or whatever so the mechanics and all are a mystery even to them … but they’re just girls who wanted different choices than they had at home. It’s crazy, you think of a society that’s capable of doing something like this, you’d think they at least have equal rights and shit, but apparently girls there are just … I don’t know. They don’t have a lot of freedoms, I guess. There’s a lot of classism too. Lottie’s family had money so she was well educated and then she taught Lydia whatever she could, but that’s why they don’t understand how any of this happens. That’s why even working at a bookstore is liberating for them. Lottie’d never had a job before.”
“Why would they even let women come here then?” I hadn’t wanted to interrupt him, but Eric’s stories often had a tendency to start somewhere in the middle, loop around to the beginning and then jump to the end, all while leaving out details I thought might be important. Given his job and training, he was incredibly observant, so why he still held onto this relic of his past, this annoying habit of his to tell stories in such an upside down and inside out kind of way, often irritated me more than it confused me.
“Oh, I asked her that,” of course he had, “and she said it’s not like when women are treated like second-class citizens here. It’s still about power, but they’re not really trying to control women as much as they are trying to exclude them from certain things.”
“That’s the same damn thing, Eric.”
He brushed it off. “She didn’t seem to think so, but maybe she just hasn’t been here long enough. This is one of those things, actually. It’s not easy to get approved to come here if you’re a woman. There are other places, places she didn’t know much about but this is where Lottie had wanted to come. She still doesn’t know how Lottie got it all worked out. She made it seem like she knew somebody. Kyrieana did, I mean. Lydia was nice and all, but there were some things she wouldn’t tell me, and sometimes, she pretended not to know something, but she obviously did. I think she knew how Kyrieana got this worked out so they could both come together.”
“Holy shit, so it is mostly men here?” I asked. I didn’t like the sound of this.
“Yeah. You ask me, I think they don’t like letting their women out of their control, no matter what Lydia says. So it’s mostly men, but I don’t know how many. She wouldn’t say; she claimed she didn’t know. How can you not know how many people from your planet have traveled across the universe to live on another planet?”
I shrugged. “And why? Why are they coming here?”
“Well, I asked her that too,” I rolled my eyes now. He was a fucking intelligence agent. He didn’t need to keep telling me he knew how to ask questions. But he ignored me and kept on, “and she insisted we had nothing to worry about. They’re not aggressive. They don’t even have armies. I’m not buying that. But she said for some, it’s scientific curiosity, just like Lottie had told you, and for others, it’s wanting an adventure, or opportunities, or whatever. And they’ve been doing this for a very long time.”
I waited. He was actually going to make me ask him. I sighed heavily. “How long?”
“She guessed it must be hundreds of years.”
“Holy shit,” I said again.
“Oh, and I got a name for her too, even though it doesn’t seem as important since there’s no … confusion … I mean, Lydia’s just Lydia but I was curious. So I told her Lottie had translated her name as Kyrieana, and she thought about it for a while then said her name would probably be something like Lyr-he-ana.” He emphasized each syllable in case I was having another slow-English-day. “All girls have that same ending sound to their names, which I think is kind of cool, and she chose the name Lydia because i
t reminded her of at least part of her name.”
“That may be the most useless information you’ve ever told me.”
Eric just shrugged again. He was clearly enjoying this. “Anyway, Kyrieana got it worked out in some magical way that apparently Lyr-he-ana…”
“Stop doing that,” I interrupted. Eric ignored me.
“has no idea how, and there’s just this room. That’s it. No tunnel, or bright light, or swirling portal. Nothing movie worthy at all. She said their bodies on their planet aren’t like ours, they’re not as … tangible … I don’t know, I didn’t really get that part because she didn’t know how to explain it, but they just waited inside this room for a while. It never moved or anything. It was attached to a fucking building, for Christ’s sake, but when the door opened again, they were here. And she could feel the loss of her energy almost immediately. It wasn’t huge, but they could both feel it. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were in Houston. They had been given instructions on exactly what to do and they were told they would have about one week – one Earth week, obviously - to find a body or they wouldn’t have enough energy left to revive it. Wait,” Eric held up a hand.
He knew I had a long list of questions, and attempted to answer them before I could interrupt him again. “No, I don’t know what all of her instructions were. I know some of them had something to do with getting to the morgue. They were very close to the hospital that Lottie and Jamie had been brought to, so that’s how they were able to find them so quickly. Hell, for all I know, that room they came out in or … whatever … may be in the hospital. It would make sense. And if they couldn’t find a suitable one there, it’s the fucking medical district. It’s easy enough to find a young female body somewhere. Anyway, once they saw Lottie and Jamie’s bodies, they stayed with them. They watched everything. We obviously can’t see them without a body. I mean, they could see each other, but we can’t see them. This is a fucking trip, isn’t it?”
Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) Page 8