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When David returned to school on Tuesday, he seemed to be back to his old self, but every time I tried to talk to him, he made some excuse to be elsewhere. I guess now that everyone thought I was cursed, he didn’t want to get tangled up in that. Not when he had a child to protect. But I wondered if that meant he no longer had to honor his promise to me.
By Thursday, with my birthday party just two days away, I’d started to really miss his quips and bad jokes and the way he’d inconspicuously fight with Cal over me. He was an entirely different David lately, docile and lost in long stares at nothing, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. But when I walked into Mike’s on the Jetty for open mic night, determined to pull him aside and have a chat, I couldn’t see him anywhere among the large table of friends.
“Hey, guys,” I said, sitting down. “Where’s David?”
“He hasn’t shown up yet,” Jane said.
“But you get to see me play.” Cal winked at me.
My eyes drifted to the stage then as Eric hopped up and introduced himself, his hair glowing blue with the lights reflecting off the glossy banner behind him. It was a pretty neat little café. Last time, I’d only sat outside with Lors and Ali, but inside it was very urban and rustic, with overstuffed bookshelves on every wall, and the deep aroma of coffee moving back for the stronger beverages served in the evenings. It was crowded and the energy in here was bustling with life. But I felt a bit disconnected, maybe disappointed that David wasn’t here. I even told myself to just sit back and enjoy the night, that I could talk to him tomorrow, but myself didn’t believe that. And she didn’t care. We both wanted to see him now.
“Hey, you okay?” Cal asked, clicking his fingers in front of my face. I tried to smile, but it was as plain as Jane that I didn’t want to be here.
“Hey you.” Ali bumped her hip into my shoulder, standing above me with a tray of drinks on her other hip. “So I hear you’re gonna be working with us starting next month.”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “Jack gave me the thumbs-up apparently.”
Ali looked over at the stodgy guy behind the bar. “Yeah, he said you had a good work ethic and a bubbly personality.”
I had to laugh. “Bubbly? Me?”
“That’s what I said,” she exclaimed dramatically.
“So you getting up?” Elora asked, coming up behind Ali.
“Up?” I said.
“On stage.” She nodded to Eric.
“Who, me?” I said, aiming my thumb at my chest.
“Yeah.”
“Um…” I looked at Eric, at how amazing he was—his rough but sexy voice stilling the crowd, his fingers moving so easily over the strings that I, strangely, thought of David. “I don’t play,” I finished.
“At all?” Ali looked at Lors.
“Um, no.”
Elora squatted down to my level and leaned in close. “I know you do.”
My eyes shot up to meet hers.
“Eric picked up your guitar, remember?”
“So?”
“So it was in tune,” she said, and my blood flooded with ice-cold realization. “It wouldn’t be in tune unless you’d been playing it.”
I felt like an idiot. What a stupid mistake to make. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I turned in my seat so I could whisper in her ear. “I’m having fun here. I like this life. If I tell Brett I’m remembering things, he’ll take me back to my old life, and I won’t see any of you guys again.”
Elora jerked back in shock. “What are you remembering?”
“Shhh.” I motioned over my shoulder to the noisy group of teens. “Not much. Just… I remembered my favorite book—like, every line—and I just… I could play guitar, like a reflex.”
“Do you… can you remember any people?”
“No,” I said sadly. “I dream sometimes that I do, but it’s always David in my dreams.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m there in what I know is my old life, and I know the house and the faces, but it’s hard to focus on them, and when I do, I dunno”—I shrugged, a bit embarrassed—“I guess my brain is mixing the old with the new and more familiar faces I’ve come to know.”
Elora’s wide eyes and open smile made her face look bright, as if she’d just been given really good news. “So you see us?”
I nodded.
“Are they happy dreams?”
“Some are, and some are… horrific. I…” I checked to see if anyone was listening before I repeated this. “I had a very hot dream about your brother—several.”
“Have you told him that?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll think I’m… he’ll take it the wrong way.”
“How should he take it?”
“I can’t be anything more than friends with him right now, Lors. I like him lots, but it just isn’t like that.”
“Like what?”
“When I think about… when I imagine myself living a life with him… my entire life, or his entire life, I guess, I… I don’t want it.”
“So you love him as a friend but not as anything more?”
“Yeah. And isn’t that okay?”
She looked down as she spoke, so I couldn’t quite hear it, but it sounded like she said ‘For now’.
“What?” I said. “I didn’t hear that.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh.” My brow twitched. I was certain I’d heard her speak.
“Look, I just don’t get it,” she said, “if you love him as a friend, why can’t you love him as more?”
Cal’s hand slipped around my waist then and he pressed his chin onto my shoulder. “What we talkin’ ’bout, girls?”
I motioned to Cal with my eyes, trying to tell Elora without actually telling her that I had stronger feelings for Cal right now. He was so much like David anyway, but without all the… attachments.
“Elora!” Jack shouted from the bar, his voice reaching our ears over the noise of the crowd. “Get back to work.”
Elora stood up, her lip stiff below a pair of eyes like daggers, aimed right at Cal. “Don’t tell David that, okay?”
“Why?”
“Just don’t. Not right now.”
“He’s going to find out.”
She looked over at Jack, who tapped his watch at her. “He’s not okay right now, Ara. Don’t make that any worse.”
“Why isn’t he okay?” I stood up, forcing Cal to let go.
“What’s wrong with Dave?” Cal asked, both of us watching as Lors walked away.
“I have to go,” is all I said, grabbing my jacket. “I’ll see you later.”
“Ara!” He caught my hand.
I spun back and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and a gentle squeeze around the ribs. “I’ll talk to you about it later, okay?”
“Okay. Call me if you need me.”
“I will.” I waved, putting my jacket on—well, David’s leather jacket—as I walked out into the cooler night. The egg I found on our drunken walk was gone now, found cracked in the pocket the day after, no bird in sight. When I showed Brett, he told me it was a snake egg, which meant that, somewhere in our house, we had some kind of snake slithering around. Lucky we were immortal. But I did wonder sometimes if it was an omen of sorts—what it meant, I hadn’t yet figured out.
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I rapped on David’s front door and Mike answered, catching me off-guard.
“Mike!”
“Oh, hey, Ara. You here to see David?”
“Um… yeah…” I walked in past his broad, warm body, taking a second to breathe him in a little. At some point in my life, this man had been my best friend—like the way I thought about David and Cal—and it seemed odd to me that I’d once been in love with him and now couldn’t remember it.
I turned around as he closed the door, and studied him studying me. He clearly didn’t know that I knew anything about our past, because he looked at me like a forty-year-old man would, and he actually looked forty, too, which I knew was clever makeup. But without that, would he look at me like he was my age, and would I look at him that way? Would we see each other as equals, not as a teenager does an adult?
“He’s depressed,” he said.
“Who?”
“David. That’s why you look worried, isn’t it? Cause he’s not right lately?”
“It was.” And now I felt even more worried. I’d only ever seen depression on TV, and the victims usually took their own lives, or tried to.
“He’s on meds now—”
“Meds? What’s that?”
“Medication,” he said. “But they make him tired, and he finds it hard to concentrate.”
That hurt—to know that David had become so sad about something that he needed medicine. “So… what made him depressed?”
“You don’t know?” he asked, as though it was impossible for me not to.
“Know what?”
“Ara, he’s in love with you—”
“What?” So he was saying this was my fault! “Look, I know he likes me a lot, but he isn’t in love with me.”
“Aw, come on, Ara, tell me you’re not that bloody blind.”
“I… I don’t even know him. How can he be in love with me? That’s…” I tried to find a better word, but couldn’t. “I’m sorry, but that’s creepy.”
Mike just laughed and shook his head, his face warm with that same kind of smile I’d always loved on a guy. And now I wondered if I always loved that kind of smile because I’d always loved him. “Ara, there is nothing creepy about him being in love with you. You’re a Lilithian, and a part of what makes you up is very appealing to humans. They fall for our kind more easily—”
“That explains a lot,” I cut in, thinking about how many guys I’d been able to line dates up with.
“Yes.” He laughed again. “So don’t hold it against him.”
“I’m not,” I promised, eyes wide. “But it’s complicated.”
“What’s complicated about it? You like him, he likes you—”
“Yes, but I don’t like him in that way,” I said, and his face went blank.
“What? At all?”
“No. Not really.” Not anymore at least.
“Ara,” David said gruffly, standing at the top of the stairs. “What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too,” I joked.
He came down, bouncing a little with each step, giving Mike a cold look as he took me by the arm. “This is none of your business, Mike.”
“Fine.” He raised both hands, bowing his head. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
David dragged me away, but I wanted to keep talking to Mike. I wanted to tell him I knew we were friends once and maybe ask him a bit about my past self. But before I could break away from David’s firm grip, he’d closed the glass French door to the piano room and spun me around to look at him.
“Why are you here?”
“I came to see if you were okay,” I said timidly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’ve been really distant lately—”
“Of course I am, Ara. I’ve had to sit back and watch you cuddling up to that no good loser every day—ignoring me!”
“Loser?” My brain went into a whirl, wondering what he meant. And then it clicked. “Are you talking about Cal?”
He turned away.
“David, we’re friends, you and I—”
“But it’s okay to be more than that with him?”
“I can’t believe you’re jealous.” I just wanted to slap some sense into him. “I’ve known you for, like, six weeks—”
“That has nothing to do with it, Ara! Time is irrelevant to the heart. I know you would love me back if you just gave this a try.”
“Love you back?” I took a step closer to the door, ready to just run away from this pathetic argument. “David. I. Don’t. Know you!”
“You do, Ara.” He moved into me, grabbing my face with both hands; I tried to jerk away but he gripped tighter. “Look at me. Look into me. You know me, even if it’s only on the surface. You know I’m a good guy and you know I would care for you and—”
“I do know that.” I gently cupped one hand and moved it from my cheek, keeping hold of it. “But I don’t see you in that way—”
“Then why Cal? What does he have that I don’t?”
“I’m not dating Cal either—”
“But you would—over me. If you had to choose.”
“But I don’t.”
“If you did.”
“Then Cal, if you really must know.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I just like him more—”
“No you don’t!” His voice went high before breaking a little on the end, his hands squeezing my face. “Can’t you see? Can’t you feel it—the deeper connection between us, the magic when I touch you? You know me, Ara. Look inside yourself. Why do you think you’ve always felt safe with me—”
“Once felt safe with you,” I snapped, trying to peel his hand from my face.
“But why? I would never hurt you, Ara. Never!”
His distraught voice reached deep into my heart and twisted it around, while the tears rolling down his red face made me want to cry too. But I knew so little of him really, and where I felt safe with him before, I just didn’t now, not after he confessed his love for me and tried to yell me into loving him back.
“I think you need help,” I said coldly, shoving him away. As I reached the door, he snagged my arm and I felt only a rush of air and a whirling sensation as he yanked me back, planting his lips to mine. I fought him, our faces meshing together in a slushy mess until I finally got enough breath to tell him no. I shoved him back hard and my palm instinctually came down across his face, splitting his soft human lip open on one side.
He covered it quickly and reeled away, slumping hard onto the coffee table where he just sat, saying nothing, his head in his hands.
“You had no right to do that!” I screeched, feeling no regret for making him bleed. “I was saving that kiss for someone I really liked!”
He looked up with reddened eyes, his lip already swelling. “That was your first kiss?”
“Yes! You jerk!” I marched over and shoved him again, but he grabbed me as he fell back, and we both tumbled onto the floor on the other side of the coffee table. I slapped at his arms, trying to fight them away from my body, but he held me tight, laughing like a madman.
“Stop it!” I yelled, bashing my fists into his chest. “Stop it. I’m not laughing.”
When I finally broke free and scurried away to the other side of the room, breathless and distraught, he slowly stood, wiping his bloody lip on his sleeve.
“Does it change anything?” he asked. “Did you feel anything when I kissed you?”
“When you stole a kiss from me?” I yelled. “No. I didn’t feel anything but hatred! And now that’s all I’ll ever feel for you, David.”
He sat down again, looking at the floor between his feet. “Why won’t you just give me a chance?”
“Because you’re insane—”
“Before you thought I was insane?” He looked up, propping one palm on his knee, his eyes scrunching with the obvious pain he was in. “When we first met, why did you give Cal a chance with you and not me?”
“I…” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to admit this aloud. But it needed to be said. “I did like you that way, for a while, but…”
“But?” He got up slightly, eager to know.
“We want different things in life.”
“Like what?” He stood fully and moved toward me; I stepped back reflexively, making him stop. “Ara, I love you. I will want what you want—”
“But you can’t.” I walked across the room to stand near the door again. “I want to travel and see the world. I want to talk to people in every language and taste the food the way the locals make it. I want so much out of this life, David, and you…”—I looked at the door—“you’re tied down.”
“Tied down?” It took him a moment, but it clearly sunk in, making his shoulders round. “You mean Harry.”
“I’m sorry, David. I just… I don’t want to be with someone that has that kind of responsibility.”
His hand came up to his mouth and he stepped widely backward, turning away. “So you won’t love me—no, won’t let yourself love me because I have a son?”
To hear him put it that way made me feel like a beast. But it was true. I just didn’t want to be a stepmom at nineteen.
“Of all the things you could have said to me, Ara”—his voice shook, his eyes cold as they met mine—“of any reason you could’ve given not to love me, that is by far the cruelest, most cold one.”
“I know,” I said in a very small voice.
“He’s a child!” he yelled. “I don’t understand how his existence in this world can make you hold back your feelings for me.”
I shrunk as he studied me, his eyes so round and wide they looked menacing. “It’s what’s best—”
“For who? For you?” he spat. “Is that all that matters here? Because I thought we’d connected, Ara, and what about Harry? What about how he feels?”
“We can still be friends—”
“How? After what you just said! Do you have any idea how much it will break him to hear that! Any idea what it will do to him!” His whole face colored with fury. “I can’t take that back now. I can’t erase that from him!”
“I… he wouldn’t have heard—”
“Of course he heard. He has…” He pointed to his head, getting frustrated then and throwing his hands up. “Damn it, Ara!”
“I’m sorry, David, but I can’t change the way I feel.”
“No, I don’t suppose you can.” He exhaled, wiping his palm across his mouth. “And that’s just it, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“I’m the fool. I didn’t want to believe it, but you are a very different person to what I thought you were,” he said coldly. “I’ve been holding on to this idea of you, and…”—he shook his head, closing his eyes—“it’s clearly time I let that go. If not for my sake, then for Harry’s.”
“Let it go?” I started to panic. “What are you saying?”
He just sighed.
I stepped a bit closer, my heart the size of a boulder in my throat. “Are you saying we can’t be friends anymore?”
“I’m not sure we ever really were to begin with.”
“Nothing has changed, David. I’m just me, and you’re you, and maybe we’re just not really all that compatible as anything more. Maybe no amount of wishing is going to make it feel right.”
“I guess not,” he whispered, as though this entire conversation weakened him. “So just go, please, and don’t ever come back.”
“Ever?”
“You heard me.”
My eyes watered until I couldn’t see. “But you made me a promise—”
“And now I’m breaking it,” he said coldly, and turned away from me.
“Really?” My whole face crumpled, my chin tight and trembling around the devastation. I stared at him, waiting for him to change his mind. “Can you do that? Can people really just break promises?”
He pressed both hands into the top of the armchair, leaning down into them. “Just get out, Ara.”
I spun away, swinging the door open and running down the short corridor before he could see me cry. Harry reached for me as I passed the stairs, but I was faster than him. I didn’t want to stop—to say goodbye or even to tell him I was sorry. How could he possibly understand that I could adore him but not want to be his stepmother? I just wanted to run away from all of this and never come back. Never feel like this again.
When I got home and saw the car wasn’t in the drive, I felt relieved. There was no way I could tell Brett what a horrible thing I’d done, and I knew if he was home, it would all come pouring out. I ran upstairs and didn’t even turn on the light as I slammed my door, sliding down the back of it and finally letting myself cry.
Something in me had detached when David told me to get out—when he severed the strings of that promise and cut me from his life for good. I hoped he was just angry and hadn’t actually meant it, but the look in his eye made me certain he did.
I leaned forward and ripped off his jacket, throwing it across the room. It felt wrong to wear it now that we weren’t friends anymore, and as the cold night air touched my bare arms, the full weight of everything I’d lost bore down on me. I buried my head in my arms and closed myself away from the world, the thunder outside drowning out the severity of my broken-hearted sobs.
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The naïve girl in me was dying. Almost completely dead. But she still sat on the porch steps for most of the night, waiting for David to come to her birthday party. He didn’t show, though. Not even when it was time to blow out the candles.
“Ara?” Cal sat down beside me, leaving a neat gap between us. “Are you okay? You’ve been really distant today.”
“Not really.” I sunk my elbows onto my knees, resting my chin in my hands. “I had a fight with David on Thursday night.”
He closed the gap, putting his arm around me. I almost pushed it off, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings this week. “Wanna talk about it?”
“I…” My ribs tightened as I tried to hold back the tears. “I’ve never felt so awful in my life.”
“What did he say to you?”
I wiped my cheek. “He told me to get out. And he looked at me like I was the worst person in the whole world—”
“Aw, Ara.” He squeezed me, and it felt nice.
“He broke a promise, Cal,” I said, shaking my head. “I… how can someone make a promise and then just break it?”
“People do that all the time, Ara.”
“But why? I mean, how? Promises are supposed to be kept—”
Cal laughed. “Yes, they are. And if he made you a promise and then he broke it, he’s a bad guy.”
“But he’s not a bad guy,” I insisted. “He was hurt by what I said, but even then…” I tried to make sense of it. “Friends sometimes say things to hurt each other, right? But they always make up. That’s what the promise is for.”
“Yes.” He brought his other arm up to hug me, pressing his cheek to my head. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. But not everyone can make good on a promise, and the ones that do—time and time again—they’re your true friends.”
“And the other people? The promise-breakers?”
“They’re not worth crying over.”
I sniffed hard, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. Cal laughed and offered me his shirt sleeve. I smiled, waving him away.
“So what was the promise he made?” he asked.
“He said that he’d never shut me out—that we’d always be friends.”
“And then at the first test, he shut you out?”
I nodded, folding my head into my lap to cry again.
“You must have really hurt him?” He chuckled, making light of it all. “What was the fight about?”
“He told me he’s in love with me.”
Cal nodded, exhaling loudly.
“You don’t think that’s insane—after knowing me for only six weeks?”
He laughed, his teeth showing from under his wide smile, and traced a line over my face with his blue eyes before gently sweeping a curl off my brow. “There’s a lot to love about you, Ara. If that makes him insane, then I guess I’m insane too.”
“Oh, not you too!” I hid my face in my hands.
“It’s not so bad.” Cal rubbed my back. “I’m a pretty good guy.”
“But I’m seventeen,” I lied. “I don’t want love yet!”
“Well, I’m sorry.” He held his hands out apologetically. “But it’s your fault, you know?”
“How?” I spun a little at the hips to look right at him, my pretty yellow party dress catching on the wooden step.
“You’re everything I could want, Ara—everything I’ve ever looked for. And the fact that you’re new to this life in a lot of ways just makes you even more interesting, and unfortunately for you, makes you a lot easier to love than other girls.”
“But we’re only kids, Cal. We aren’t supposed to know what real love is.”
“Then maybe it’s not real love,” he suggested. “Maybe it’s just the kid kind that only lasts a month or two, or less,” he added with a hopeful grin, bumping shoulders with me. “But it doesn’t mean it’s not real now.”
Love. I looked up at the stars. Why was it so complicated? Why were there so many hidden corners in its maze? So many exits and entry points? How could one person have only one lifetime to figure it out?
Cal sat quietly beside me as I combed through my thoughts, and after a while, I decided that if there were people in my past that had loved me through all the tragedy and heartache I suffered before my death, then maybe I needed to go back to them in order to understand this complex emotion. Maybe it was time to get the truth, time to fall in love with those from my past again, so I could be free to make mistakes and so that the hurt I might cause wouldn’t make them turn away from me. I was making a rotten mess of this new life and destroying hearts in the process. David and Harry were the last people on this planet that I wanted to hurt, aside from Cal, and now I just didn’t know how to fix it.
“Do you want me to talk to him for you?” Cal offered.
“It won’t help,” I said sadly, pressing my cheek onto my knuckles. “He hates me.”
Cal laughed. “Ara, if he loves you like I do, he can’t hate you.”
I smiled at him then, letting myself acknowledge the kid love that was growing between us—the love I would have to shut down before it got any worse, like I should have done with David long before now. “Thanks, Cal. But I need to talk to him—tell him what I should have told him to begin with.”
“Which is?”
I cast my eyes to the stars again, tuning in to the noise of the party going on inside without me. “That I’m not ready to love anyone, and if those that are close to me can’t accept that, then they need to keep their distance,” I said, brushing my skirt off as I stood and walked back inside.