Page 18 of Hopelessly Teavoted
From his seat, he watched Victoria bus tables, trying, but unable, to resist her gravitational pull. She was different. This was no longer the gangly, freckled girl from his childhood. This was a woman in a sexy robe, the sleeves tapering into red lace over her curves, the weight of the years in her arms, her thighs, her breasts. Her ass. Devil damn him, he was kind of a creeper, staring at her like that while she reached up to grab a canister of tea off a tall shelf, hem creeping halfway up the backs of her thick thighs and threatening him with oblivion if she reached any farther.
The memory of Vickie hurt more than seeing what he would never touch again, now in red lingerie and a silky robe under a ridiculous skull-patterned apron.
He tapped his fingers against the tabletop and concentrated on not thinking about what was under the robe. Tried not to imagine gently circling her wrists with his hands and brushing that edge of crimson lace on the long sleeves. He forced himself not to consider the way it would slide across his fingers if he asked her to go upstairs with him. He was not imagining the way the fabric might feel against his hand if he placed it on the small of her back, or the even softer slip of what her skin would be like against his fingers if he skimmed them lower to dip beneath the edge of the robe.
Az was definitelynotpicturing kissing her through the robe until she screamed his name the way—well, no. He was definitelynotthinking that. At all. Just because his body held some residual wanting didn’t mean he cared for her as anything more than friends.
Vickie turned her head and smiled at him in a way that made him wonder if his thoughts were written all over his face. The glitter sparkled in her hair, which was set in rollers, just like in the “You Need to Calm Down” video. He half expected her to pull out a blender and start making a cocktail.
Azrael swallowed.
Sultry Sunday was about embracing yourself for who you were, his mother used to say, but he never had participated, not really. He had always just dreamed of feeling normal.
“Az!” Vickie called from across the shop, waving. “Where’s your Sultry Sunday outfit?”
He shrugged and raised a hand in greeting. It was muscle memory. She asked him this every time. Always had. Vickie had gone all out for it since childhood, and he knew what it was like to come with her, usually dressed as one of her favorite musicians, while he lingered next to her, a dark star in the orbit of a bright sun.
Today, just like all those other days, he was clad in designer jeans and a solid gray T-shirt, always unwrinkled. What good was magic if it couldn’t at least iron your clothes and fix your hair from time to time?
And devil damn him, Vickie was beautiful, Az thought, taking note of the bright blue eye shadow and red lipstick, so different from her usual makeup. Azrael needed to concentrate hard on why he shouldn’t be thinking of her this way. But as that silk dressing gown slid across her smooth skin, hard was quite possibly the worst and most tempting word choice. Vickie was so soft, and she was handing a plate of croissants to Hank Dewey, who was in a sheer pink bathrobe with hot pants underneath. Hank was a sort of grandfather figure in town,and so seeing him nowdidhelp Azrael get a hold on his suddenly unpredictable libido.
Well. He was calm now. That was something.
“Morning, Hank,” he said, admiring, as always, the bravado of a man in his sixties willing to live that authentically. Az wished for that kind of freedom, but the shackles of his self-doubt weighed as heavily on him as the memory of everything he had ever ruined with Victoria.
“Azrael Hart!” Hank’s jolly face lit up in a smile. “Back in Hallowcross at last! It’s good to see you, son. This year has been a tough one.” Hank teared up a bit here and looked like he might stand, cross the distance between the tables, and lean in for a hug. Vickie’s fine eyes darted over him, calculating. Az hated hugging people he didn’t know well, though he didn’t mind physical contact from those he was closest to. But so many times as a child he had poured his insecurities in Vickie’s ears about how a high five or a handshake from an acquaintance or a stranger could unsettle him.
It would be hard for the retired postman to understand the bubble of personal space Azrael enjoyed and preferred left undisturbed. Hank’s comfort at hanging belly-out in a sheer robe did not make Azrael any less nervous about extraneous physical contact, to say the least. His parents had him tested as a child, for he wassodifferent from pranking, audacious Priscilla. His pediatrician and psychologist, as well as his mother’s plant craft spells, had all reported clinical depression and anxiety. It was to be expected, they all said, for him to not want to be touched much. The Harts had concluded that Azrael simply required a larger bubble of personal space than most. And Zoloft, which, frankly, allowed him to function close to something like a human.
But surely adult Victoria would leave him to battle his deepest fears. It had been so long since she had been the girl next door that he loved.
Vickie stepped closer to Hank for a moment, defusingAzrael’s tension by placing her body between them. “More tea, Hank?” She smiled at Azrael, raising an eyebrow. She was blocking Hank for him. Intercepting potential hugs as though she cared about what he needed.
Like his parents, Hank’s husband had died in the pandemic, though much earlier on than the Harts. He didn’t want to refuse the hug, but he also didn’t want the hug.
She remembered. Fuck if that didn’t tug at his heartstrings. Az snapped his fingers, and some of the tension loosened from Hank’s shoulders. He couldn’t cure grief and wouldn’t want to, for pain like that had purpose, but he could nudge Hank in the direction of fond memories of his husband that might ease the pain of it all. Azrael could help him to feel the love persevering in that grief, and to find comfort in the knowledge that memory was a blessing.
“Ah, no thanks, Victoria,” Hank was saying, pulling Azrael out of the spiraling misery of realizing that perhaps he wasn’t quite as over his childhood flame as he wanted to imagine. “I have plenty, and I’m focused now on these beauties.” Hank gestured at the pastries on his plate.
“I’ll let you enjoy, then.” Vickie walked toward Azrael’s table, and his face flushed hot.
“Can we talk while you’re closing?” Az hoped he sounded cooler than he felt. “Prissy said you needed something.”
A week back in town and already he was as much a mess over her as he ever had been. He raked his eyes across her face, hoping it was not obvious. Reassuring himself that he was only here because of that nagging feeling that there was something magical she wasn’t telling him. Because of the whispered tip from his sister, that meddler, that he should check in with her as the shop’s new owner. Nothing else.
And now here he was, already memorizing, or rather realizing how much the memory had imprinted directly on his brain, the swirls of her freckles and the tilt of her smile.
Fuck, he was a mess.
Victoria was calm and collected, though. There was a daisy tucked behind her ear in between the curlers and spray-on glitter that rounded out the ensemble.
“Sure. We close in twenty, and Hazel’s off then. It’s just me cleaning up.”
Hazel must have been the teenager at the counter with the bright pink hair who was now looking with great interest between him and Vickie. A grin crept up her face, mischief glinting in her brown eyes.
This made him smile; it was one of the things that he was looking forward to about returning to a classroom after substitute teaching to make ends meet in California. Teenagers were not always subtle, but they were much cleverer than most adults gave them credit for. The astute observation when she caught his eye, looked at her boss, and raised her eyebrows was both embarrassing and amusing.
“Are you all right, Az?” Vickie’s voice was gentle and quieter than usual, tucking around him. This was a private question.
