Page 22 of Hopelessly Teavoted
She’d even heard it before. From him.
It doesn’t mean anything.The words echoed, hollow across the stretch of time, but the hurt in her chest felt recent. Raw.
Victoria couldn’t fathom why it would make her feel so gapingly empty, but she could forgive him a mistake in a moment of grief.
His parents were a great love story, and it was fair to mourn them. If part of her wished he felt even a little bit of that intensity toward her, she could push that to the side. Pretend it away.
She was good at ignoring sobering things. It had been necessary to survive growing up in the cold Starnberger mansion, and she had polished the skill over the decades, sharpening sunshine and joy into weapons against the abyss of cruel riches.
“Don’t worry, Az. Here, come with me to the back, and I’ll change into more sensible clothing.” Heading through the door without turning around, she didn’t want to see whatever honesty his face would betray. “I was hoping you might be able to help me with an odd thing that a ghost told me.”
If the declaration startled him, he didn’t say so.
“Was it ‘long time, no see’?” he called from the other room. “You know, because you can’t see a ghost—well, most of the time, anyway?”
Shaking her head, Vickie laughed awkwardly. The hinges protested as he pushed through the swinging door behind her. She could feel his longing for things to be normal between them. Friendly. It mirrored her own. Well, almost.
“Hey, Vickie, why are ghosts so lonely?”
“Why?” She sat down in front of the desk to unbuckle her heels, propping them one at a time on the surface and rubbing at her ankles a little after removing the snug straps. One of them had dug an awkward line through the flowers tattooed on the inside of her leg, and she spent a few extra moments kneading the skin there.
Azrael looked away, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
Great. Now she’d made him uncomfortable. She didn’t allow herself to entertain the possibility that the look on his face was something else.
“Why are ghosts lonely, Az?” she tried again.
He cleared his throat.
“Because they, well, they’ve got nobodyto lean on.” His voice had cracked a little. A crooked smile snuck up the side of his serious face as she groaned at the joke. A nervous hand scrubbed through his hair. She wanted to act normal. To put him at ease, the way he was clearly trying to do for her with ghastly wordplay.
“That was awful.” Vickie pulled tie-dye sweatpants out of a bag under her desk and shrugged them on, still seated, and slid her feet into green Chucks. Slipping the silky robe off, she folded it and placed it in the bag, taking out her favorite T-shirt, faded yellow with pink roses and a cartoon beaver on it. She stood up and tugged the shirt over her head.
Azrael was studying a spot on the wall as though it held the secrets to the universe, his throat working. If he had any more ghost puns, they were dead on his lips at the idea of her changing.
So he was just as tightly wound about nakedness and bodies as ever.
That tracked.
“Listen, Az,” she said, washing her hands and moving to measure out tea into containers for tomorrow morning. He moved, without instruction, to do the same for the pastry dry ingredients, following the little laminated signs Persephone had kept taped on the cabinets without even needing to read them. “Thanks for doing that,” she said, and he nodded.
“It’s like second nature, really, Victoria. It’s nothing.” Azrael’s voice was rough, and she wondered if it was the memories of his mother filling it with ragged emotion.
Vickie tensed. “Don’t. I know things haven’t been the same, but don’t use my full name like we aren’t even anything anymore. We’re friends, however distant. Full names are for, like, weighty confessions. Breakups. Vows of eternal devotion. Please.”
Az’s face softened. “Vickie. Sorry. I thought it might help with, you know…” He finished with the flour and ran a nervous hand through his hair, leaving traces of white in its wake. “With making it feel normal between the two of us.”
“Az, you’re a witch and I see dead people. We won’t ever be normal.” It was unfair, really, because normal men couldn’t even look like that: cheekbones chiseled from marble, peppered with a five-o’clock shadow, and hair tossed into a smooth perfection of curls that his fingers twitched over, again. If only Azrael had ever been a little less pretty, this all could have been easier.
“I’m a high school English teacher,” he corrected. “And you run a tea and pastry shop. We’re normal,” he insisted.
“Sure,” she said. “There’s that. Though, truth be told, it’s kind of magical on its own without the powers. Okay. We can play normie if you want. Whatdoyou want, by the way?”
“I wanted to ask you a favor,” he said. Vickie’s heart fluttered traitorously. “I know you don’t like to use the flames without good reason, but I never got to say goodbye.”
Ah. That made more sense than the romantic declaration she had, for a moment, expected. Hoped for? But she was soon distracted, looking at him. Misery wrote itself in lines across his forehead, and she ached for the depth of his sadness. Kicked herself for her errant, inappropriate thoughts when he’d clearly matured enough not to make every hour sexy time in his mind.
“Of course. I’d be happy to help you say goodbye.” Vickie would do it for his parents’ sake alone, and in penance for the inappropriate attention she’d paid to that stubbled jawlinethat a raw, impulsive part of her begged to sit on. The offense of six years ago notwithstanding.
