Page 90 of Hopelessly Teavoted
“Hazel!” his jolly voice boomed. “Weren’t you saying you had to get home to watch your baby brother?”
“Yes, Hank, thank you so much for reminding me. I’m in such a hurry, and I almost completely forgot. Vickie! Can you close without me?”
Hank tapped the side of his nose with a chubby finger, glee stamped across his face, and Hazel winked at them, as though the pair actually thought they were being subtle.
“You know, it’s been so long since I’ve seen your mother; I could give you a ride home so you’re not late for that very urgent babysitting job that you have to get to.” Hank made a dramatic gesture of checking his wristwatch.
Vickie appeared in the doorway from the back, glaring at the two of them, who ignored her withering gaze.
“Well, since it sounds like you have an important family obligation that for some reason Hank wants to remind you of, you’d better get going.” Her gaze fell on Az, bright green eyes more tired than he wanted to see, stress written across her forehead. “Azrael,” she said.
“Bye, boss! Bye, Mr. Hart! Don’t do anything Mary Shelley wouldn’t do. See you Monday!”
Hank and Hazel hustled out of the door, locking up, and not even bothering to complete their ruse when Hank turned left toward the parking lot and Hazel right to her bike on the stand out front.
Azrael couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Well, they could not have been any more obvious, could they?” Vickie grabbed a rag and did a final wipe down of the counter, though it was clear that Hazel had planned this and cleaned up before taking off. “I’ll be out in a moment if you want to sit down and drink that. I just need to dump the rest of the coffee.”
The kitchen door swung behind her, harder than he wanted it to, and he thought about following her. Hazel and Hank had to have been plotting daily, hoping he’d show up at the right time. That made him smile. Hallowcross felt like home in more than just Vickie.
So he could sit here and wait and breathe in the rightness of it all.
Home was in the warm smell of mint and rooibos drifting from the drying sink, where Vickie had dumped the teapots. In the lingering sweetness of baked goods and, always, the strawberry scent of Vickie. The way the shop was both old and new, part of his family growing up and his love—his new family—now.
He pulled the coffee cup Hazel had given him closer. It was patterned with small bats on the inside that changed colors with the heat of the coffee. In sprinkling his sugar, he’d missed a little bit, and the dusting of it clung around the rim in a spot he’d hit with liquid. It reminded him of years ago with Vickie.
Azrael remembered the burn of the margaritas they’d made, rimmed with sugar like this, but coarser. Vickie hated salt, even for margaritas. She had been sweetness and deviance rolled into one glittery sunshine girl stealing liquor from the cabinets of her parents’ posh barroom. The Starnbergers never noticed it was missing. Or if they did, they never cared.
That night with the margarita had been one of many nights in high school when Azrael almost told her how he felt. He recalled the pads of his fingers grazing those soft, soft spaces on the backs of her legs that he now missed so torturously as he carried her to the bathroom after one too many blender margaritas. He hated vomit, but he didn’t care quite as much if it was Vickie’s.
Any amount of grossness was worth the song that thrummed in his blood when she had been near, and he’d been a fool in his love for her. Consumed.
He’d peppered the walls of his gothic bedroom with posters of old movies. His parents had left them there, and thememories made him ache, for the tragedy, but most of all, for Victoria. Before school started, he had finally taken down the matte images of a retro space opera he adored, and the poster of the much-older-than-he-was seventies band fronted by a free-spirited woman Vickie loved. He’d rolled up the posters of the fictional British prince who loved an American president’s son, the first movie, and then the second, and the print she’d given him once of two old-fashioned movie starlets kissing passionately. Taking the art down made him ache, the thought of the fairy tale of one couple, and the tragic ending of the other, but most of all, Victoria. The girl he worshiped more than his first kiss, Mike Starnes, and his perfect blond hair with the little swoop that had made Azrael’s heart skip a beat when he kissed him. More than Nella Caruthers, who had been the person he’d had awkward sex with for the first time. More than gorgeous Alison Price in the gazebo that mildly embarrassing time senior year.
He even had a Kinks poster, an homage to Vickie’s name that he wondered if she had figured out. He always thought of her when he looked at it. But the posters were better suited to hang in his classroom now, relics of who he had been as a child paired next to iconic poets and authors, a jumping-off point to understanding the children who would walk through his doors. When he’d taken the parts of himself into the blank walls of his classroom back in August, hanging them carefully with a pride flag and his heart, he was happy. Hopeful that he could be the person that they came to when they needed help with writing, with reading, and with thinking critically about the world. That they could add posters too.
Every day he was tired, and every day he worried about the looming deadline, but that didn’t change how he felt about Victoria. He’d messed up before, waded through the heartache of misunderstanding. He could handle the threat of potential immolation.
Vickie was still rustling around in the back, but Az had waited long enough.
He strode through the door, confident in his ability to keep his distance. He’d win her heart, even if it was from afar. He wasn’t just done pretending away the way that he loved her. He was ready for her to be done pretending too. But he could wait until she decided that on her own. Being patient was awful, itchy almost, but it was feeling something real.
“Hey, Vickie,” he said, stilling the swinging door with his hand.
She was standing at the back counter, cleaning up from measuring ingredients for tomorrow’s pastries.
Her shoulders tensed a little, but she tossed the rag to the side and wiped a stray spot.
“What?” When she turned, he saw it on her face. The pinched lips. The wrinkled forehead. She rolled her neck, and he must not have hidden the cracking of his heart at her tone well because her face softened. “Has there been news? With the psychic? Your asshole boss?”
He shook his head. “No change with Madam Cleopatra. Not even so much as someone trying to break past the wards around the hospital again.”
“That’s strange. And your asshole boss?”
“He’s still an asshole, but I can’t prove any other wrongdoing. I’m tempted to start following him after school, but what if he catches me and we’re wrong?”
“I think, if there are no other leads, it may be time to sacrifice yourself on the altar of dignity.”
