by Liam Livings
I hadn’t really thought about it like that before. “I know how I like it, and after Jenny left, I got used to living on my own. Did you have anything to do with that whole thing?”
“What, her leaving, and then you being accepted for the mortgage with almost no paperwork? That?”
I nodded.
He pursed his lips and looked away.“I could see how important this place was, how much trouble you took on buying the furniture, how you would spend time here alone after you were hurt.”
“You did all that, with a wave of your wand? All for me?”
Looking back at me he said, “No wand. That’s not how it works. I have tried to explain.” He smiled, and his pure white teeth sparkled back at me.
I leant towards him as if I were about to kiss him. I would have continued the lean if I hadn’t remembered I would just fall through him. Putting my hand to his face to cup it towards me showed me that quick enough. I sat back and shook my head.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, I know it’s something.” He stared into my eyes.
My stomach tensed, and my heart was beating a little bit faster. “All this stuff you’ve done for me, and I can’t even give you a hug or kiss to thank you. Seems pretty unfair to me.”
“Doesn’t say anything about fair or unfair in the handbook.”
“Right. The handbook. Yeah. I remember that.” I wished for his touch and closed my eyes. “If you want to, we could pretend we kissed. Do what I’m doing.” I leant forward to where I thought his lips would be and pursed mine. My eyes were still closed, and I felt a tingling on my lips. I held still there for a few moments, then pulled back, opening my eyes. I saw him do exactly the same thing just inches from me. We sat in that position for a minute, just staring at one another, smiling.
I looked away. “I’ll be back.” I got myself a drink from the kitchen, shouting did he want anything. I didn’t think so because he probably couldn’t eat.
“Right guess” came his shout from my bedroom.
I had felt something then, when I kissed him. I hadn’t imagined that, had I? Although he had said guardian angels didn’t feel emotions or love like humans, there had been something going on then. Something was still happening now, while we talked, wasn’t it? I leant against the kitchen work surface, sipped my drink, and took a deep breath. This was definitely happening; I was not dreaming. I pinched myself and left a small mark on my forearm.
“You coming back?” Sky shouted.
“In a minute.” I felt one side of my body tingling, and he appeared in the space in front of the fridge, where I’d left the door open. One of his wings disappeared into the fridge door in a slightly comic, slightly bizarre way.
“Sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “It’s just all a bit much to take in. I have to keep reminding myself it’s not a dream, and that I am here.” I felt a sense of dread, the fear, as it wrapped itself around me like a dark blanket.
“No need to panic.”
“Let’s go back to my room. What were we talking about?”
After some soothing, where he asked what had happened, and I eventually explained the feeling of dread and of being worried I was losing my mind with visions of guardian angels talking to me. He assured me he wasn’t a vision and I wasn’t going mad, so there was nothing to dread. “Nothing at all. Let us enjoy the now, with us two together.”
We talked about the two jobs I’d been offered, and he explained he’d do his best to make sure they went smoothly at first, but then it was up to me to use what gifts and skills I had.
There was one topic we hadn’t covered, which had been nagging at me to ask all night. Although I’d had such a perfect night—the kind of night I’d heard my friends talk about, when you first get to know someone and you stay up for the entire night, talking, laughing, sharing, until the sun rises, and you’re still not done—I knew I had to ask him something, before I fell asleep.
“So what happened when I ended up in hospital? Aren’t you guys normally around to prevent that sort of thing happening?”
“We are, yes.”
“Because I don’t really know where the depression came from. It’s all a bit hazy in my memory. I know I’d been going through a bad patch, a time where I wasn’t having much luck. And I remember thinking, Wouldn’t it be easier if I just weren’t here any longer? It would be so much simpler if I just went away. And because I had a headache, I thought, How perfect! I’ll take this tablet to get rid of my migraine.
“I remember thinking how it felt like I’d had a migraine and been walking around removed from everything, like I was behind a pane of glass and everyone else was on the other side. They all carried on with their lives, but I was removed from that, sometimes barely hearing people or remaining silent. And it was only, sitting in the bath, that I realised I’d been feeling like that for quite a while. It had slowly been getting worse. So I took the tablets, lay back in the bath, and felt myself floating away. I remember thinking how warm the water felt, while the tablets made me feel a bit cold, a bit removed, but together they gave me a floaty feeling. Two different floaty feelings at the same time. Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital. I don’t remember the in-between bit.”
“When you woke in hospital, what did you think?”
“I thought… because it was bright and clean, I thought—and you’re going to laugh at this, I bet—”
“I won’t, I promise.” He leant towards me and put his hand on top of mine.
I didn’t feel his hand, but I saw where it was resting. “I thought I was dead and in some kind of waiting room—between.”
“What about when you realised you were in hospital and Amy was there?”
“I started to cry.”
“Why?”
“Because I realised if she was there, then so was I. I knew she wouldn’t be dead too. And then I realised how stupid I was, I felt embarrassed for trying to—” I looked away. “—and for putting my friends through it.”
“They told your mum, didn’t they?” Sky asked.
I nodded, then looked away from him. “I asked Amy to talk to them. I couldn’t face it. The questions, the answers expected. The explanations. Everything. I just didn’t want to—couldn’t talk about it.”
“But you can now.”
“It’s been a while. I’ve had time to think about how I felt. And you’re easy to talk to—about everything, really.” I smiled, turning to look at him. “And this isn’t any different.” I brushed a tear from my eye. Sky hadn’t really answered my question. “So, what happened your end? We’ve talked about my end, what about yours?”
“I don’t know what to say. I have no idea where to start. I’m sorry, I just….” He looked at the ground and stared into the distance.
“No tears?”
“What?”
“When we’re sad, we cry. Water comes from here.” I pointed to my eyes.
He shook his head, then sat up straight on the bed and began. “It was all so new to me. I’d only just been assigned you as my first human. I told them it was too much, but they said I’d be fine. And at first, I was. They said it was okay if you had some bad luck. We’re meant to make sure it doesn’t look obvious that we’re intervening, you see, or people get suspicious. So the bad luck you had was okay. They explained to me it was normal and other humans have patches like that. What I didn’t realise, because this was all new to me, was how you were feeling at the receiving end of all this bad luck. I didn’t know you would feel any different about it than I did.”
“You didn’t think a run of bad luck in all parts of my life would make me feel any differently from a run of good luck? Is that what you’re saying?”
He put his hands up in a defensive gesture. “I know it sounds mad now. To me, it did too. But then, like I said, I wasn’t too au fait with human emotions. I didn’t realise how much it would affect you. Sorry.”
“And this isn’t in your handbook thin
gy? There’s not a section on how humans respond to bad and good luck, particularly for a prolonged period of time?”
Sky shook his head.
“Were you actually watching when I got in the bath?”
“No, I had looked away. I thought it would be good practice to give you some privacy. I’d done the same when you were intimate with other humans, or when you were intimate with yourself.”
I blushed. “So you have an inbuilt ‘fade to black’ guide?”
“I suppose you could call it that, yeah.” “What were you doing when you looked away and I was in the bath? Did you go and get your hair done? Do you meet in bars, and chat to your guardian angel friends about your humans? How does it work? What do you do for leisure?”
“I was reading a brochure about the sabbaticals I could go on, later on.”
“Sabbaticals? Still trying to get me to believe you go on those, are you?” Although he had mentioned this to me before, only I’d not really believed it then.
“How do you think we learn about human emotions, how to be less obvious, how to mix a bit of good luck with the bad, to give the overall impression of a ‘normal’ life, with no flukes or intervention? All that takes time, experience, working with other guardian angels. It doesn’t just come to us.”
“So they can make you look like humans—I assume there are female versions of you, too?”
“Of course,” he replied, like it was the most unremarkable thing in the world.
“But they don’t bother with hair-growing, and they rotate you between different humans, and to help you get more experience and get better at your jobs, they send you on sabbaticals?”
“About right.”
“We could do with your lot down here, helping with the economy and job situation.”
“Don’t you think we have been helping already?”
“Have you?” I was intrigued.
“Of course we have, but I can’t give you any details, as you know.”
“Let me get this straight, when I was in the bath, you weren’t looking after me?”
“I was. It was a fade to black moment.”
“So you’re basically saying you stopped looking and that’s when I tried to kill myself? A bit like baking cakes, and going to the shops, only to return and the cakes are burned.”
“If that analogy helps, yes.”
“But if you actually go on a sabbatical, what happens then?”
“We use temps.”
I laughed. “You mentioned that before. I thought you were joking. Ha! Very funny. Seriously what happens?”
“We use temps, like I said.” He shrugged. “I have told you this before.”
“Okay, you use temps.” I yawned and stretched, lying back on my bed. We were lying top to tail on the bed. I could see partly up his man skirt. “Move your legs a bit, would you?”
He did.
“Perfect, that’s just right.” I laid my head on the bed and enjoyed the view I now had. It wasn’t creepy or odd—it was actually pretty splendid. A perfect specimen of manhood, really. And although I knew this was very much lust, it fitted perfectly with the way I felt overall about Sky.
“You’re sleeping, I’ll go,” he said.
“One last question.” I kept one eye on what was under his skirt and one on his face. “What about relationships between human and guardian angel—is that allowed?”
“Too close relationships are prohibited. It normally doesn’t happen, hence why they allocate a male guardian angel to a male human. But sometimes that doesn’t work, because some humans are attracted to others of the same gender.”
“High five to that.” I lifted my hand for him to high-five it.
He shrugged.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“I don’t have those emotions. I don’t feel sexual attraction like humans do.”
“What’s this, then? This thing between us?”
“The handbook says too close relationships are prohibited, but it’s very unlikely to even get that far because it’s normally same-sex, and also we don’t feel love. It’s not within us to feel it.” He looked away from me.
“Right, but friendliness is okay, right?”
“Doesn’t say anything about that in the handbook, no. But normally we don’t get to meet our humans like this. We’re strictly behind the scenes. In fact, that was the whole point of us when we were set up. It’s not a glamorous job. You don’t get any thanks for the work. Your human doesn’t even know you at all, so this is a rarity. A rare treat.”
I lay back on the bed, letting my dressing gown fall open to my waist. I peered through the bottom of my closed eyelids and saw Sky turning back to face me, staying still. Enjoying the feeling of the sleep gently taking me, I adjusted my position so the dressing gown fell open completely at the front, and opened a couple of inches below my waist. Sky’s face didn’t move; he continued to look in my direction. I held my eyelids closed, but peered through them before they became too heavy and I fell asleep.
Chapter 10
The next four weeks passed so quickly, I barely had time to buy myself another suit for the new job before my first Monday with the bank as a graduate trainee. The Friendly HR Lady had posted my name badge and a welcome pack, which I’d pored over for a few nights running.
I told Amy I had a man in my life. It was a big risk because normally she’d have been all over him like a rash—wanting to work out his aura’s colour and what star sign he was. But instead she was more interested in my job at the bank and how hard it was compared to her job, which, she admitted freely, didn’t really stretch her.
One lunchtime in my first week at the bank, I’d told her what we’d been asked to do, before casually mentioning that I’d had “the night” with a man I’d met. And we hadn’t had sex.
“You didn’t shag him, and he was that gorgeous. What’s happening to you, Richard? Who killed my friend and replaced him with you?”
I shrugged, then said, “I just wanted to do it differently this time, you know?”
She agreed, and I told her about the things Sky and I had talked about that night—with obvious exceptions. I explained there were some issues with us being together, while glossing over the details.
“He sounds like a bit of a tortured soul. A bit more of a challenge than your usual type?”
“You could say that, I suppose.”
Although I was on the constant lookout for white feathers, I didn’t notice any for a while after that night together. I did, however, find an unusual sort of exhibitionist pleasure when showering, bathing, or generally when I was naked. It added a certain interesting frisson that I knew Sky could be watching me, or he could have just looked away and faded to black. Intellectually I knew he said they didn’t feel sexual attraction, but what else could explain him staring at me on the bed and allowing me, so obviously, to see up his man skirt?
Although it may sound creepy, it wasn’t creepy at all. It was sexy—a whole new level of sexiness, using my imagination and brain rather than just rushing into it and banging on like hammer and tongs. Sometimes when I was bathing or showering, I knew he wasn’t looking away. I knew he was looking at me. But because I wanted him to see me, I wanted him to enjoy my whole body as much as I had enjoyed part of his body. No, it wasn’t creepy; it was very deeply sexy. Because it was impossible for us to have a physical relationship, this was the nearest we could come to it. Sometimes I stood in the shower, my eyes closed, imagining him standing in front of me, water splashing over his broad body, trickling down his hairless torso, down, down, down, past the treasure trail that wasn’t there, down to himself. I could feel his eyes on me as I stood in the shower with my eyes closed, relieving the tension built up by my imagination.
I missed talking to Sky; I wanted to tell him about my day at the bank, to ask him to explain how I knew he was drawn to me even though he wasn’t meant to feel that way.
I returned to the pint glass containing all the feathers I’d collected. I h
eld the glass and rubbed each of the feathers individually, talking to Sky at the same time. I asked him when I would see him again, what I needed to do for him to come back to me.
But nothing, no more feathers, no angels in the mirror, nothing.
I began to worry that I’d imagined the whole thing. That it had been one of those irritating dream sequences that allow the characters to sidestep decisions or events already past. I had no actual proof of ever seeing him, except the feathers. But if I closed my eyes, I could still picture his face and imagine his body, lying on the bed next to me, so close I could have touched him.
Amy met me in central London for dinner one night after work. She was keen to hear all about what I’d been up to.
“When am I meeting this mystery man?” she asked, having just ordered.
“No time soon.” I stared at my menu.
She leant forward and held my hand on the table. “What happened? It was all going so well.”
“I’ve not seen him. Not since ‘the night.’ Nothing.”
“He’s not returning your calls or texts, just nothing?”
“Something like that.” I still stared at the menu.
“What a twat. Do you think you’ve scared him off? You know, too much too soon.”
“We didn’t do anything. It was all very innocent.”
“Except the baring your hearts and souls to each other—but you didn’t do anything, right?”
“Hmmm, I hadn’t thought about it like that. I suppose I’m just not used to doing all that with someone. It’s ironic that you can have less of a connection with a man you’ve slept with than another man you spent the whole night talking to but haven’t even kissed.”
“Bloody hell, that’s deep for you. Is that from a card or something?”
I hit her playfully as our drinks arrived. I smiled at the waiter, who was hot in a slightly generic, Mediterranean way. He was all dark hair, olive skin, and deep brown eyes.
Amy noticed me staring at the waiter’s bum. Waiting for him to leave, she said, “You could do a lot worse, you know.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” I paused, sipping my wine. “How’s things with you?”