Never Have I Ever

by Clearwing, August

  Well, yes and no.

  “Sort of. Weird question number two then, forgive me for it,” I trailed off, uncertain of whether I really wanted the answer to my next inquiry while she looked at me expectantly. Once I found myself, my ever-present desire to know the answer to every mystery I was presented with won out. “Do you know a man named Noah Wellington?”

  All of the light in her face drained into a frown. She didn’t respond, just looked down at the pencil in her hand and began twisting it between her fingers nervously. It was a terrible question to just dive into without talking to her longer than sixty seconds, but I had to know.

  “You do,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I haven’t heard that name in a long time,” she replied somberly. “I never imagined I would meet anyone here who knew it. Small world.”

  “You’re her, aren’t you?” It was hard to believe my own eagerness. I slipped my legs over the side of the reclining chair and sat forward. “You’re Noah’s Selene. How can you be here…”

  She sort of winced when I associated her with him. She took a deep breath and looked back up at me. “When I’m dead?”

  That confirmed it. My heart both soared and broke in the same instant. The meaning behind this encounter; the terrible moniker of fate or destiny or whatever I wanted to describe it as was gut-wrenching and wrong. Things like this never came to pass. This moment was an impossible thing stacked upon a mountain of impossible things.

  “For starters,” I said at length. “What happened to you? He really thinks you’re dead.”

  “No,” she corrected with a stern scowl. “He knows I’m dead. It needs to stay that way.”

  My face was a theme park of confusion. “Why? You being here, it—it could solve so many problems. You can answer so many questions. You can put his mind to rest.”

  Or, I thought, he could go back to her. After all we shared and all that training to belong to him, he could very well tire of me and rekindle the flame with the woman who, for all intents and purposes, was his first love.

  Selene’s face suddenly exploded into shock as she whipped her head around to check for anyone else in the area. “Wait. He’s not here is he? Noah. He’s not here.”

  “N-No—he’s back at the hotel. Why?”

  Selene started to gather up her art supplies and shoved them into a tan satchel at her side. “I’m sorry, I have to go. Please, don’t tell him. He can’t know. Not ever.”

  “Selene, wait. What happened?”

  She didn’t pause for an instant while dodging my questions. “What was your name?”

  “Piper,” I stammered it out. “My name’s Piper Minogue.”

  She stood and dusted the sand off her jeans. “Piper, you seem like a nice girl. Please, you can’t tell him I’m alive; for your sake and for his. Have a good day.” She nodded at me and adjusted the satchel hanging at her hip as she started off down the beach.

  “Hang on. Selene!” I shot to my feet. Not to chase her, I was far too much of a coward for that, but to try to persuade her. “Noah was a wreck when you died. He’s gotten night terrors because of you!”

  She didn’t slow down. “That’s his guilt. He tends to let it eat away at him. With people like you around I can imagine they’ll fade quickly.”

  I hadn’t thought about it up to that point but, since we left California, Noah had been terror-free.

  Still, I wanted answers. “He keeps your picture in his apartment, you know. Right on the mantle in a place of honor!”

  Selene spun around and walked backwards down the path. The wind cut between us, mussing our hair indiscriminately as she kept moving farther away. “Good to know!”

  Goddamn her for walking away. Goddamn me for not forcing my legs to move forward. Goddamn my brashness most of all!

  “You can’t just run away!”

  “You’d think that, but it’s what I’m best at, Piper!”

  “Why can’t I tell him you’re alive?”

  Curiosity was the only driving force behind my asking. Some base part of me recognized that she was my rival. I was insane to try to convince her to stay and talk. I was an idiot to want to tell Noah that his dead ex-girlfriend was alive and well in Australia. As much as her fake death had destroyed his psyche beforehand, it might shatter him completely to know the truth. And, if it didn’t do him in, he might want to look for her. If that were the case, I might lose him. But then, I’d always been honest with Noah in the past. I wondered if I could bring myself to lie to him about something as massive as this.

  “It was nice to meet you,” Selene called back with a smile. “Now forget me, Piper Minogue!”

  How was it possible, in all seven billion people occupying the world, I’d run into a dead woman? On top of that, a dead woman of whom I knew. As a human being, the exchange frightened me on a level I wasn’t aware I possessed. As a scientist, I should have realized there was no such thing as coincidence.

  Setting aside the probability and statistics for a second; how the fuck was I supposed to keep this from Noah? Better yet, how was I supposed to break it to him when he eventually discovered this that, not only did she fake her death, but that she didn’t want to be found by him?

  As I stood on the beach, brisk sea air lashing against me as if to warn me away from my pursuit, I watched her fade into the distance. The only thing that kept running through my head was:

  Selene’s alive?

  {CHAPTER FIFTEEN}

  Home. At last, I could sleep in my own bed again.

  Noah dropped me off at my apartment, giving me his word he’d call me later in the week once we both had some time to re-adjust to our respective schedules and come down off the high of one another. I flopped out on my bed, not even bothering to unpack the same night, and slept above the covers for twelve straight hours.

  I was too tired and too shocked with the events in Sydney to process them completely at the time, which was fine considering the excuse of exhaustion fit in well with the constant far-away look I kept slipping into on the plane home. If I decided to reveal Selene’s secret, the last place I wanted to do it was in the confines of a metal tube thousands of feet in the air at six hundred miles an hour.

  So, I bottled it up, torn between honoring the wishes of a supposed-to-be-dead woman I didn’t know, and helping the man I entrusted my very life to on a nightly basis. I turned over in my bed the next day, flipped the pillow over to the cool side and snuggled up with the comforter while the sounds of Sunday afternoon slipped like a dream through the crack in my window. The air conditioner kicked on overhead. It felt like an attempt to lull me back into another nap. With no place to be I’d have let it had it not been for my phone buzzing to life on my night stand.

  I wanted to ignore it. Whoever it was could leave a message. And they did. The phone gave its two token short bursts of vibration to let me know the voicemail had been left. Except, then it went off again.

  I groaned and rolled over to slide it off my night stand and take a look at who needed me so desperately.

  Declan, the caller ID read.

  I answered. “Someone better be dying or dead.”

  “I could fake a stroke if it’ll make you feel better,” he replied.

  “Those are long odds at twenty seven.”

  “Long, yes, impossible, no.”

  “What’s up?” I asked as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

  “You got a plan for today?”

  I nodded liberally even though no one was there to watch me. “Yes, sleep.”

  “Great. So, coffee.”

  Only Declan could equate sleep to coffee.

  “Is your Babel fish broken again?”

  I could picture his ‘aw, shucks,’ hand gesture as he said, “No, but dammit; I did forget my towel.”

  “Nerd.”

  He laughed. “You plus me plus coffee in half an hour. I want details and pictures from your sabbatical. And I need to vent.”

  “Why not cal
l Anya then?” And all I received was silence, which meant the venting included the illustrious Anya. “Crap,” I exhaled. “Yeah. Okay. Café downtown?”

  He gave me the affirmative. I should have been thankful for the distraction. Anything to get my mind off the final day of my vacation was a welcome diversion, even if it meant Declan’s problems.

  I met him outside the same café the three of us last talked alone at, where I first discovered the secret of Noah’s night terrors. A lot of coffee shops in town, and across America for that matter, tended toward the hipster college crowd. Our group always liked this particular café because of its lack of a hippy vibe. Not that I had anything against hippies, but I preferred a low-key conversation with close friends over a reminder of Burning Man more often than not.

  In the middle of August, it was far too hot to sit outside, so we snagged a booth at the front of the shop with our respective beverage choices. Instead of coffee, I decided on an iced Chai to chase away the heat. Declan was content with a medium-dark caramel roast coffee. I took in the quaint atmosphere and soft voices scattered around the place. Coffee shops were so intimate to me. I prepared to settle in for an afternoon of chat with Declan when I noticed someone who looked rather out of place.

  There, across the room at a small table in the open, sat Ethan. His attention was buried in a tablet in front of him, but I could just imagine the look on his face if he saw me, with his judging words and judging façade and beady little judging eyes behind trendy reading glasses and a business suit.

  “Oh fuck,” I hissed. I tried to cover my face as best I could with a small menu on the table. I slid down in my seat, praying the height of the booth would provide enough cover.

  Declan leaned up to peer over the unfolded laminated paper. “Piper? Whatchya doin’?”

  “What the hell is Ethan doing here?”

  Declan looked over his shoulder and quickly spotted him. “Ah, don’t worry about him. He ignores everyone when he’s here, including me, even when I make the effort to say hello.”

  Reluctantly, I lowered the menu from my face and tried to back against the wall to be less visible. “Let’s hope he stays on his side then.”

  “Anyway,” Declan reached over to tap my hand. He was putting on a smile, but somehow I felt the uncertainty in him. “You need to tell me all the wonderful details about your trip around the world!”

  “You don’t really want to hear about my vacation, do you?”

  “Sure I do!”

  I glared at him. “Declan.”

  He huffed out a sigh and let his head drop against the cool wood of the table between us. “Dammit, Piper, how do you do that?”

  “I know you, Dec. What did you and Anya fight about?”

  He ran his hands across his shaved head and brought them to rest at the back of his neck, his elbows on the table. It was an awkward posture, hunched over the table, but it almost looked comfortable.

  “I broke it off with Sarah,” he said.

  While I was surprised they lasted so long, I raised an eyebrow. “And Anya’s mad about that?”

  “No, not exactly; she’s mad that I’ve been avoiding her,” he replied. I moved my hand in a circular motion towards him as a cue to keep talking. After a few beats, he finally did. “She drives me crazy, Piper. I can’t see her; I can’t even talk to her. If I do I’m going to say something I’ll regret, or she’ll shove me out of her life forever.”

  “How come?”

  He locked his eyes with mine; torn and reserved and anything but confident about what he wanted to say. That look clarified it all.

  I released a sympathetic sigh. “Oh, sweetheart. How long?”

  “Practically the entire time I’ve known her. What do I do?”

  Since meeting Declan, he’d always boasted the fiery spirit of a playboy that you just couldn’t deny, with a new girl—sometimes two—on his arm at every party. He encouraged the extreme in everything he got his hands on and, as long as he was confident nobody would get hurt, insisted upon the most boisterous fun to be had. Now, all his reasons for personifying a man-whore became clear. It hadn’t been to impress anybody, but to try to take his mind off of what he couldn’t have for so long.

  “You tell her, Dec, that’s what you do.”

  He slapped his hands down on the table and sat up straight, laughing nervously. “Right! ‘Cause that’ll solve all my problems. Do you know how many men have come out of the woodwork since Lucas? Do you know how many of them she’s turned down because she can’t fathom the idea of ever trusting someone again?”

  “Maybe she’s waiting on you.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “Ah, no,” I chuckled. “No, Anya has never really been interested in getting relationship advice from a Physicist.”

  “Just as well. Her parents hate me, anyway.”

  My gaze jumped across the room to Ethan. It appeared Declan and I were in the same boat as far as that particular detail was concerned, substituting brother for parents in my case.

  “Try getting to know them,” I suggested. “Make them give you a second chance. Besides, it’s not her parents’ choice. It’s Anya’s. If you want to be with her then you should be with her. Damn the rest.”

  Declan perked up at that. Suddenly my attention was off the other side of the room and back to him. I smiled in encouragement.

  “When did you get so bold?” he asked.

  “It’s a recent development. Now, are you going to call her or should I?”

  “I will,” agreed Declan. “Right after you split a massive slice of cheesecake with me and tell me all about your summer.”

  My smile widened. “Deal.”

  We munched on a rather sizable slice of cheesecake while jumping back and forth in good-natured banter between my trip and how Declan was going to follow through with his promise of calling Anya and divulging the full scope of his feelings for her to her. I made a point to avoid the sexy details in favor of the grander stories of the experience. The sexy bits were reserved for me and Noah. They were our secret and he was the only one I felt comfortable sharing those memories with. If I gave them away in gossip it would cheapen them.

  For once, it was refreshing to see Declan open up and let the truth slide to the surface. He did a pretty amazing job of hiding himself away. Was I in his position, I wasn’t sure if I could maintain a friendship for so long without breaking. Declan was a strong man with a deeper heart than I originally thought. I was genuinely happy he finally figured that out, too.

  While we wound down the afternoon and tore through another round of coffee and Chai, I thought about the advice I imparted unto him; about how I should listen to it myself.

  People always say not to rock the boat, especially when you are in it. Today, however, may have been the only opportunity to do so without tipping it over completely and drowning. Rocking the boat was on my terms today. I gathered the upper hand in a building discourse and decided resolutely to squelch the flames of a possible feud before they took to the kindling and set a massive blaze nobody would walk away from unscathed.

  I said my goodbyes to Declan some time later, leaving him to occupy the booth alone and stare at the black mirror of his phone, contemplating his words to Anya. Instead of leaving, I shouldered my purse and made the trek across the café to Ethan. He was still alone, wrapped up in some form of work or other with a fresh iced drink of some kind sitting off to one side of the table.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Ethan looked up from his tablet and over the top of his glasses at me, but said nothing.

  I motioned to the empty chair across from him. “May I join you?”

  No reply.

  “Please?”

  The tablet in his hands went dark. He set it on the table and gestured to the seat in grudging invitation. As I sat down, he crossed his legs and knitted his fingers together to rest them on his knee and stare at me wordlessly.

  “Look, Ethan, I think we got off on the wrong foot.
It’s clear you don’t like me.”

  He remained silent, stoic, his face unreadable.

  “Let’s back up and start again, yeah? I’d like to invite you to my place for dinner next week. I’ll make something nice for both you and Noah. Get to know me before you decide I’m after something I’m not.”

  “Why?”

  It speaks!

  “‘Why’? What do you mean ‘why’?”

  “What if I told you I have no interest in getting to know you?”

  “That would be a shame.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not a monster, and want to show you as much.”

  “Why?”

  “Because! Fuck, I don’t know, because I’m in your brother’s life and I don’t want there to be a rift. Isn’t that enough?”

  “For a submissive little slut you sure are mouthy.”

  My eyes widened in offense. “Excuse me?”

  He glanced down at the two-inch-wide cuffs on my wrists. “Inference is a hell of a thing. As well-off as you are, those are way beyond even your tax bracket. And why would you need two of them? And why do they require a lock? Don’t take me for a simpleton, Miss Minogue, it’s unbecoming.”

  “What else have you been able to infer?”

  “You’ve captured my brother’s attention all too well, I know that much. We’ve had the same taste in women in the past, so I know your type. The difference is that I’ve learned to throw away my toys once I’ve finished playing with them. Noah has apparently forgotten that. At this specific juncture I don’t know or care what your motives behind doing so are, but you’ve dug your claws in hard. It’s affected his productivity, his focus, and it needs to stop.”

  “I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t,” I took a long breath to collect my thoughts. “Haven’t you ever felt an unstoppable driving force urging you toward somebody? To get into their head and their heart and share your deepest hopes and fears with them?” It wasn’t rhetorical, though it may as well have been because he only stared at me. I sighed. “No, I don’t expect you have, have you?”