by S. L. Naeole
I looked up to thank her, but her gaze was frozen on something else. Or someone else. I followed it, traced it back to its source, and saw that she was glaring at him. The one who had promised never to hurt me. And yet he just had. “Why?” I mouthed, but was dragged away towards a worried Graham and Stacy, lines of concern etched into their faces, before he could answer—before I could see him leave.
Graham reached for me and pulled my hand away from Lark’s. He looked into my eyes and saw the hurt there, recognized it, obviously, but thankful that he hadn’t been the one to cause it this time. He glowered at Robert, though his reasons were completely different, and asked me if I was okay.
I nodded my head, wincing as I did so, the pain that still echoed inside feeling as though it were bouncing around with each movement. “I’m fine. Just a bit clumsy,” I said with a half-hearted chuckle.
He didn’t meant to do it. Larks face was stern, her eyes flat and emotionless. He’s an interfering idiot who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone, but he didn’t mean to hurt you, Grace.
At the moment, I really didn’t care. Too many things were piling up for me to want to rationalize anything. His behavior was odd, even for me, and I simply couldn’t appreciate his reasons, however valid they might be.
Graham left to clock out, and Lark, Stacy, and I were left standing in the middle of the lobby. I knew that Lark hadn’t shared a single thought with Stacy about what had transpired in those few short minutes between brother and sister…and me. I could only guess that it was out of respect for my privacy, as well as hers.
“So, you two don’t want to share?” Stacy asked, her eyes hungry with need for information, gossip, anything that would at least hint to what was going on between us.
Lark shrugged her shoulders, and said in a monotone voice, “It’s family business.”
I watched for signs that Lark was lying—a twinge of pain, a grimace—but there were none, which meant that this was, indeed, family business. That I was considered family should have sent me over the moon. Instead, I was feeling even more confused than before.
“Okay, ladies. Let’s go watch some Zombies,” Graham said as he returned, his hands quickly divesting his shirt of the clip-on tie.
The reaction from Lark was expected. Her face was lit brightly, her smile radiant, making anyone who stood next to her appear quite plain. That meant, of course, that I became even more insignificant than I normally was.
But there was one exception; one highly unexpected exception.
“Stacy,” Graham began, a sheepish grin on his face as he nervously shoved his tie into his pocket, quick to look around, making sure no one was watching. “I’ve got tickets to go and see that blues band that’s playing in Newark next week. Do you want to go with me?”
Lark and I both stopped walking, our thoughts conjoined in mutual shock. Stacy?
“Uh…sure,” she replied, her broad smile and bright eyes reflecting genuine pleasure. I turned to look at Lark, whose disappointment was plain, and tried to comfort her. Neither of us had expected this—why hadn’t she read his mind beforehand?
I didn’t want to know what he was thinking anymore. I wanted everything to be new… Lark’s eyes suddenly grew very opaque and glossy with unshed tears. I looked back at Graham and Stacy, who hadn’t seemed to notice that we weren’t following them anymore.
I wanted to cry out to him, “How could you?” But, as they rounded the corner, I couldn’t bring myself to utter a sound. I wasn’t a part of that equation. Once again, the decision had been made for me, and the fact that this time, more than one person was hurt felt like I had stepped on a landmine of helplessness. If I stepped away, I’d be leaving Lark in the lurch. If I stayed still, the threat was always underfoot, just waiting.
“I’m so sorry, Lark. I thought…he told me-” I tried to explain, but Lark held up her hand and shook her head.
“No, it’s better this way. No complications.” She took a deep breath and pulled me forward down the end of the walkway towards the room our movie was playing. The landmine didn’t go off…but it would. I was sure of that.
SETTLEMENT
The movie went as all zombie movies go—the only survivor was some half-dressed, hysterical, buxom beauty who was rescued by some big, burly hero who then showered her with kisses and professions of love. I gagged. Lark snorted. Stacy sighed. Graham squirmed.
As we filed out of the theater, my thoughts were running helter-skelter with uncertainty and confusion about what had happened in the past twenty-four hours. The lobby was nearly empty, everyone either on their way home or watching their select films, and the popcorn and beverage stations were closed, their lights turned off; I looked for Robert, but he was nowhere to be seen. I wasn’t sure what I would have said to him anyway, my emotions were so twisted.
“Grace, are you riding with me or with Graham?” Stacy’s voice broke through my confusion, and I shook my head.
“I want to wait for Robert,” I answered, my gaze focused on a door I was certain would open at any minute, revealing the angel who could both heal and break my heart with a single thought.
“I’ll wait here with you, Grace,” Graham announced, seemingly oblivious to the inner turmoil he had caused that was exacerbating the jumbling of thoughts in my head. “I’ll call you later, Stacy. It was good to see you again, Lark.”
Lark looked stricken, but she managed to pull a smile onto her face, and began walking towards the exit, Stacy following behind, stopping only to wave shyly at us before disappearing. Part of me wanted to be the fly on the wall when the two of them got into the car, but I knew full well that Lark wouldn’t be anything but kind and graceful to Stacy, despite how she felt.
“Can you explain to me why you asked Stacy out, when just this morning you were telling me that you were interested in Lark?” I barked as soon as we were alone.
The carefree smile that Graham had been wearing started to wear away, the person who had made it necessary no longer around. “I’m still interested in Lark. I like her, Grace. Really, really like her—it’s scary how much I do. But…when I saw you and Robert arguing—by the way, you guys need to start getting loud so that we can hear you; it makes eavesdropping much easier—I thought about what would happen if things didn’t work out between Lark and me. What would that do to you and Robert?
“You’ve already had a hard time because of me. I didn’t want to cause more problems. This way, if Stacy and I don’t work out, it’ll be just like normal, there’ll be-”
“No complications,” I finished for him, comprehension of what Lark had meant finally dawning on me.
“Yeah. No complications.”
That’s what comes from the foolishness of extreme like. You’re willing to convince yourself that life gets less complicated if you stay away from the things you want, and settle for what you know you can live with. No one is ever happy that way.
“What time do you think Robert will be getting off?” I asked him, needing to change the subject before I started pushing him towards talking about things that neither of us felt comfortable discussing. Not yet, anyway.
“Probably in another twenty minutes. It’s a weekday, so the theater closes early, plus he’s not the regular nightshift manager, so he won’t have to close.”
Sighing, I looked towards the exit doors that led into the mall. Though the theater was nearly dead, the mall wasn’t. After holiday sales were driving people to spend money they didn’t have in droves. “You ever wonder what it must be like? Never having to do anything, work at anything, and just having everything fall into your lap so easily?” Graham asked dejectedly.
I turned to look at him, his face a mixture of sadness and defeat, and didn’t understand what he meant by that. “Want to run that by me again?”
“I know you’re thinking that I’ve had it easy, especially when compared to you; you’re right about that. Things have been much easier for me than most, and definitely a lot smoother than they have
been for you, but you have to wonder about people like Robert and Lark. They come here from another country, don’t know anyone, they talk differently, have different ways of doing things, and yet everything just happens for them without them even trying.
“I mean, look at you. You’ve had problems making friends since I’ve known you. But Robert shows up and all of a sudden you’re his friend, and now his girlfriend and I barely get to see you. He applies for his first job and he ends up getting a manager position, while I’m stuck making popcorn and cleaning booster chairs. And then there’s Erica. I know—I know she was wrong for me, but I tried to get her to go out with me for over a year before she finally said yes—don’t look at me like that; I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her—but Robert shows up and on the first day, she’s ready to dump me for him.
“What is it about him, Grace? Can you tell me so that I can understand? I’m not jealous—really, I’m not. I just want to know what makes him so damn special.”
I looked at my friend, and I did what any friend would do in that situation. I lied.
“Graham, there’s nothing special about him, really. He’s the new guy—he has that air of mystery around him because of where he comes from, but he’s just like everyone else.”
It hurt to do it. It physically hurt, and I knew it was because I had never done it before—not when I knew that the truth was what he was seeking, and not some generic answer to a rhetorical question. He wanted answers because he was hurting, he was angry, and above all else, he was feeling very alone. And yet, when he needed me to be his friend, the kind of friend I wanted to be…I chose loyalty to Robert instead.
I had to look away, and waited for his response. When none came, I knew that something had changed between us—he knew I was lying, knew that I had chosen.
With a large sigh, he finally spoke, his voice straining against the bitter sting of what I could only guess was betrayal. “I think that if I had been able to ask Lark out, we would have ended up just like you and Robert; defensive and protective of each other, no matter the cost. I’ve already made one stupid mistake. I’m not about to make another one.”
That hurt. It hurt and he knew it did—he wanted it to. He didn’t understand why I couldn’t tell him the truth—not that I could have explained it anyway—and so he was lashing out.
“I think I’ll head back to the house now. I’ll see you there, Grace,” he finally said in a rough voice. He coughed, and I looked up to see Robert approaching us, his tie in his hand, and a sad, half-smile on his face.
I whispered a faint goodbye as Graham stalked off, not knowing whether or not he had heard me, just knowing that he couldn’t stand to be around me at that moment, and all those emotions that I had thought I was incapable of feeling again started to crawl their way back into my heart.
Sensing the emotion-induced paralysis that I was slowly succumbing to, Robert helped me to stand and supported me as we walked out of the theater. I felt him in my head, sifting through the many thoughts that I had jumbled up in there, wading through the nonsense and the empty pockets to find what he was looking for.
“Grace—you shouldn’t have lied to him for me. Whatever I am to you, whatever you are to me, it doesn’t change the fact that Graham is your best friend, and you should be honest with him.”
I stopped walking, and looked up at him. We were in the parking lot of the theater, his bike only a few feet away from us. “I shouldn’t have lied to him? What was I supposed to say, Robert? ‘Sorry, Graham, the reason you aren’t the most popular boy in Heath anymore is because Robert isn’t human—he’s the grim reaper’?”
Robert looked around us, checking to see if anyone heard what I had just announced, and he shook his head. “No. You know that’s not what I meant.”
Exasperated, I threw my hands up, my words coming out in great huffs of impatience and anger. “Well what do you mean then? That I tell him you’re an angel? That you have wings and can fly? How about I tell him that you can read minds, and that you can also make people do things, alter their thoughts so that they bend to your will—is that what you meant?”
In the pale phosphorescence of the parking lot lamps, I could barely make out the slight glow that radiated out from his skin. I say glow, but the mood he was in caused his glow to look more like a shadow that enveloped him—my heart started racing.
“Grace, you’re being ridiculous and you know it. You should have told him that you couldn’t tell him the truth—it would have hurt a lot less than lying to him did. He knows you, Grace—you’ve never lied to him before. Being with me has turned you into a liar…”
Few things escape me—of this I am quite certain—but when I first saw the darkness that was Robert’s glow, I was sure that he was angry at me for my outburst. Instead, I now realized that he wasn’t angry at me; he was angry at himself.
“Robert,” I began, trying to think of a way to say what I felt without him hearing the thoughts first, not wanting to be redundant. “You’re under the impression that you’re to blame for what I did. You’re not. I lied to protect more than just your secret. I also lied to protect Lark’s, and mine. And I did it for Graham, too. He deserves the truth, but he can’t handle it right now. I don’t know when he might be able to, but I know that telling him now wouldn’t help anyone out, least of all him.”
The frigid silence that separated Robert and I felt like it was clawing at me to say something, but I waited.
“Grace, you’ve been lying for us—because of us. This isn’t a life meant for you-”
“What do you mean by that?” I interrupted. “What life am I meant for if it’s not this one?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation here, Grace. Get on the bike. I’ll take you home.”
Knowing that the conversation wasn’t going to proceed any further, I capitulated and headed towards the motorcycle, Robert following me sulkily. It had been a few months since I had ridden on it but my legs’ memory was very good, and the resulting hesitation was causing them to tremble.
Sensing my fear, Robert lifted me effortlessly onto the seat, situating himself in front of me with blinding speed, and then turned the key to start the monster up. Its rumble beneath us caused me to squeak. “Where’s the helmet?” I asked him, feeling incredibly vulnerable at the moment.
I felt the tension within him recede as his body shook with laughter. “Grace, are you kidding me?”
I shook my head. Of course. I should have realized that there was no need to worry about safety whenever I was with Robert. What better person to save you from severe injury and death than Death himself?
Thank you.
I nodded and rested my chin against his shoulder, my arms wrapped around his waist in preparation of the quick leap into motion that I knew was coming. We took off through the parking lot and headed down the road towards my neighborhood. I counted the houses that still had their Christmas lights up, not wanting to have any type of conversation yet. I needed to go over what it was that I needed to say, what I wanted to know, and my mind’s ability to focus on more than one thing at a time allowed me to do that, all while ensuring that Robert wouldn’t know.
As we pulled up towards my house, I saw the light in my room was on. Graham was there, waiting. The tenseness that had permeated Robert in the parking lot had now returned. I felt the air leave my lungs with frustration. So much for getting down to the bottom of things with Robert.
“I’m going to talk to him,” I sighed as Robert eased me off the bike.
“He shouldn’t be in your room.”
Knowing where the conversation would head if I tried to argue with him, I simply leaned into him and pressed my lips against his cheek. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I started to walk away, but he held fast to my hand. I could see his thoughts of remorse and I couldn’t help but smile. “It’s not easy for an angel to be so wrong so often,” he mumbled as he pulled me towards him, wrapping his arms around me. “I love you, Grace, and I
think that messes with my ability to see what’s real and what’s not sometimes.”
“Do you know how comforting that sounds? Most people would tell me that you’re not real, that this—us—we’re not real. I grew up thinking that people like you don’t exist, so for you to start having delusions…it completely helps to normalize me.”
His hands made their way from my waist up to my face as he held me immobile. “Grace, I love you. That is real; don’t ever doubt it. I know I have been behaving like an idiot lately and I apologize if I’ve hurt or upset you. That is the last thing I want to do.”
The silver in his eyes were liquid, flowing in endless circles as he stared at me, waiting for my response. I raised myself on my toes, and with his help, I managed to press a quick kiss to his mouth. “Thank you.”
He didn’t let go of me, didn’t want me to go at all. He brushed my lips with his and pressed his forehead against mine, his thoughts mingling with mine until I knew all of his hopes, and his regrets about this evening. It was difficult for him to deal with such human emotions when he wasn’t one; a side-effect of being in love with one, he suspected. I laughed because it wasn’t a side-effect that only affected angels. Humans experienced them, too.
“And who have you ever felt jealous of?” he asked as he pulled away, but not before I managed to steal one last kiss.
“I don’t think it’s jealousy per se, but I do often wonder whether or not we’d be more physically connected if I were as beautiful as some of the girls in school that follow you around.”
I had touched a nerve, I could tell. He let me go with an exasperated sigh—I was very good at making him do that.
“Grace, you and I aren’t just a pair of hormonal teens infatuated with each other. Do I think you’re just as beautiful as those girls in school you’re referring to? No. I think you’re incomparable to them,” he said smugly. He brushed the strand of hair that had fallen into my face, and made me look into his eyes, seeing my reflection in them in a way that I knew no one else had ever seen, or could ever see. In them, I was beautiful.