Lucian Divine(40)

With one long stroke of her tongue, she licked a streak right up the side of my cheek while holding my hands above my head. “How’s my oyster breath?”

“Divine.” I kissed her on the mouth and rolled her back to my side. “Now go to sleep, my angel; it’s late.”

She mock pouted but curled into the crook of my arm anyway and dozed off moments later.

I knew exactly what Evey needed. I had always known what she needed; I was made to know. She needed normalcy. I feared I wouldn’t be able to give her that forever, but there was no way I’d let someone stop me from trying, not Mona, not Zack, not even God.





IT WAS A Wednesday when I got down on one knee at that sketchy Japanese place Evey loved near the Wharf. “Marry me. I want to be your husband. I want you to be my wife.”

“Yes,” she had said breathlessly.

Later that night, we had a long talk.

“Why though, Lucian? Why are we doing it? It just seems so fast.”

“You said yes, Evey. You said it without hesitation.”

“Because I’ve dreamt about that moment my entire life and…”

I knew she had. She went through a phase when she was ten where she only sketched wedding dresses. She used to scour wedding magazines and create elaborate wedding ceremonies with Barbie dolls. I wanted her to have all of that. The guilt I felt for what I was doing to her was sometimes so unbearable that I’d become grumpy and despondent. All I could do was try to give her the things I knew she wanted.

It wasn’t until she and Brooklyn got older that Evey forgot about those dreams and started dating all of those rejects. That was when she lost faith in love. Now her faith was strong, and she deserved the fairy tale.

“And so you said yes, but now you’re having second thoughts?”

“I just don’t know if I see the point,” she said.

“I want you to have a wedding, and since you’ve stubbornly insisted on being with me, I’m going to do everything I can to create some semblance of normalcy for you. You’ve always wanted this. I know that about you. Plus, I already asked your dad for permission.”

She sat up quickly and pressed her back against he headboard. “What? He must have been shocked. We’ve only been together for a couple of months.”

“Nope, not shocked. I believe his exact words were, ‘I’ve never seen my DD so happy. You have my most genuine blessing.’”

She laughed. “You’re a charmer, you know that? You’ve already won my dad over, and my mother basically can’t take her eyes off you, which I find a little disturbing. What am I going to do with you?”

“Marry me. You’ll be my wife. I’ll be your husband. Done.” It surprised me how badly I wanted to be married to Evey. Such a human feeling.

She shimmied down and cupped my face. “Yes again, Lucian. Yes, I will marry you.”

We kissed and kissed, and then I told her that I would never be able to give her babies.

She replied, “We can adopt a little angel who needs a home.”

That was Evey… selfless. Why couldn’t I be more like her?

As our wedding approached, Evey became swept up in plans with her mother and Brooklyn while I went unnoticed in the corner. The story that I was “at work” made me laugh every time I heard Evey say it. It also made me wish that I was a normal man who went to work and didn’t linger somewhere out of sight.

I tweeted at Jesus, but he never responded. He had a secret account we all knew about. It was like our version of a confessional. He didn’t ask me to repent though, so I guess I was forgiven, or maybe forgotten. Maybe a lot of us are forgotten. What happens when people stop doing their job? An angel dies and what if Mona forgets to reassign the soul? Mona is flawed too. I’ve seen her make mistakes. Are those souls forgotten just like me?

All I could do was focus on the present by making Evey the happiest bride in the world, but I feared what was to come. I had stopped showing Evey my wings—they were deteriorating. Maybe I was becoming a simple man. I thanked God in advance if that was true.





“YOU ARE ONE heck of a beautiful bride, DD… just like your mother. Are you nervous?”

“Not at all.” It was true. I was marrying Lucian, so why would I be nervous?

It’s practically impossible to hide your wedding dress from someone who pretty much hears and sees everything, but we managed to pull it off. No one had a clue as to what Lucian really was and it would always have to be that way.

One night, a few weeks after we got engaged, Lucian had asked me if I wanted a traditional wedding in a church. We had both laughed at the idea. I’d told him I’d be too worried he’d go up in a plume of smoke after stepping foot inside the house of God. He said the Earth itself was the house of God. That made perfect sense to me.

Our outdoor wedding venue was small and intimate—basically a glorified back patio covered in twinkle lights and lush greenery on the other side of the bridge—just out of earshot of the bustling city. It was at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley, surrounded by beautiful redwoods. There were farm tables and candles, and we’d gotten plenty of wine to go around. Even Lucian was planning to have some wine. Thankfully, bottles of whiskey were a thing of the past for him. He’d said it was easy to give it up after that last time he got drunk.