Lucian Divine(15)

When I woke up, he was no longer lying with me. He was standing above me, next to my bed, looking gloriously handsome and clean.

“Did you shower?” I asked.

He smiled, lifting his index finger to his mouth. “Shh.”

Something had changed in his demeanor. There was resignation and surrender, and when I looked closely into his squinting eyes, I also saw veneration… serenity… love. I can’t explain what exactly I saw, just that I could feel all of the feelings that he had for me by simply looking at him.

“I’ll always be here for you, Evey,” he whispered. Then he pressed his thumb to my forehead.





“PINKY!” BROOKLYN YELLED from the other room. “I made pancakes. Come and eat.”

Brooklyn loved to cook, but when she did, she made a huge mess and then she would just leave it. I went into the kitchen feeling groggy. Sitting at the small round table in the corner, I scanned the countertops littered with bowls, plates, eggshells, a milk carton, and trash. I rolled my eyes. Brooklyn was playing the song “Clouds” by the Borns loudly from the iPod dock while she danced around flipping pancakes. Not a care in the world.

“Last night was weird, huh?” she yelled over the music.

I put two pancakes on a plate and drizzled syrup over them. “Yeah! Can you turn it down?” I had a vague sense of déjà vu.

Brooklyn turned down the music. “So what happened with Beckett, and why were you acting all creepy weird in the living room by yourself last night?”

What was she talking about? “I wasn’t acting weird. Beckett got into this stupid music playing at the Star Wars bar. I think he had them turn it up or something, I don’t know. I just left him there and then felt bad about it, so I went back and he was gone. I sat at the bar and had one more drink, alone, before coming back home. Uneventful.”

She turned around and smiled. “Whatever you say. You were acting weird.”

The details from the night before were a bit foggy, and this morning was even foggier. “Why are you cooking pancakes at two p.m.?”

“Well, because we both slept in and pancakes are yummy,” she squealed.

“I think I was headed out for a run, then I went back to sleep. Ugh, I have a headache. I drank too much last night.” My head was pounding. I was staring into the open refrigerator.

“What are you looking for?” Brooklyn asked.

“OJ.”

“Uh, it’s right in front of your face, weirdo.”

It was centered in front, on the top shelf.

“Oh.”

She knocked lightly on my head. “Hello? Yeah, last night you were even more out of it. Weird how you were like, ‘Do you believe in guardian angels?’ Um, okay, Pinky, what’d you and Beckett smoke?”

“Guardian angels?” I stood there, stunned, holding a box of orange juice in the middle of the kitchen.

An image of a man popped into my mind, a beautiful man with striking blue eyes and dark hair. I blinked, trying to recall where the image came from. Was it a dream?





“YOU FUCKED UP,” Zack said, appearing beside me in Evey’s kitchen as we watched the disaster unfold. “You didn’t zap her good enough.”

“No, I did.”

“Look, I can tell she’s thinking about you. If you had zapped her good enough—oh, fuck yeah,” Zack mumbled as he looked at his phone. “My wide receiver scored eighteen points today. I’m killin’ it like a boss!”

He had zero attention span from all the screen time and video games. I glanced at him. “Is that your sports betting thing?”

“No, moron, it’s fantasy football.”

Evey and Brooklyn were sitting at the table, eating pancakes and chatting about some new guys Brooklyn had met. I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore them while Zack and I sat on the counter undetected.

“Dude, get off your phone and talk to me. Isn’t that why you’re here?” I asked.

Still staring at his screen, he said, “No, I’m here because your weird life is entertaining to me. You know what I think you need? A hobby. You have one soul, and that’s why you’re losing your shit. You need to do something for Lucian, for yourself.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe knitting. You can’t make one person the center of your universe. You’ll go crazy all cooped up in here. Get a hobby. Take up craft-beer making or join a book club.”

I was trying to ignore Zack as I watched Evey inhale her pancakes. I zeroed in on a drop of syrup next to her mouth. I wanted to lick it off.

“I zapped her good,” I said mindlessly. “I don’t know why she’s short-circuiting over it.”

“Apparently you didn’t. You have to hold your thumb down until you smell something burning.”

I turned to face him, my jaw on the floor. “Are you kidding me? Is that what you do? You’re frying people; you know that, right? It affects them.”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

“Yeah, really, it does. I can’t believe I’m the one who’s always in trouble. Anyway, shouldn’t you go check in with your souls?”

“They’re fine. They’re eating and binge watching Top Chef.”