Among the Recipients
Dane meant it as a welcoming line, but the moment “We meet again” formed a word bubble in the air, he realized it was true.
Diane gasped, Oh my God, it’s him.
Holy shit, it’s you, Dane thought.
The rooftop angel seemed half of what he’d been on that New Year’s Eve. Definitely grayer. Alarmingly thinner. With a silver-threaded beard that barely hid the gauntness in his face.
But the eyes.
Those amazing, absurd, who-gave-you-permission purple eyes. Dane would’ve known them anywhere.
What happened next couldn’t have taken more than two seconds, but Dane felt time slow down as a melee of thoughts collided, fought, and rationalized their way to a decision.
He was first suffused with a euphoric delight that was almost triumphant.
You found me, his atoms sang. This man had clearly gone all over the world looking for his lost, nameless companion.
Finally arriving here, worn down to a thread, but intent on claiming Dane as his own.
Because it was meant. It was all meant to be.
You found m— Wait, do you even remember me?
The joy gave way to consternation because this dude was looking straight through Dane without a shred of recognition.
His beautiful eyes red-rimmed and bleary, he looked more than tired.
Something in his demeanor was utterly broken.
And blank. A soldier returning from a war that had not been won.
He didn’t recognize Dane. Hell, if Gene Simmons in full makeup had opened the door, this guy might not recognize him either.
But then Dane remembered.
Oh shit…
The night of the party, Dane had been covering up his brown eye. He needed Diane’s blue eyes to do brave things, like go be social, reinvent himself as an expert listener, and gracefully decline an unexpected proposition from… Wow, what was that guy’s name again?
Nando, Diane said absently. Short for Hernando. As in…
Jesus Hernando Christ, Dane thought, blinking his eyes as if trying to signal this wayfaring stranger by Morse code.
No use. He’d been at a board meeting with Orange County Agriculture and Farmland Protection and while he didn’t need bravery among any strangers who’d be present, he noticed people tended to stare at his two different eyes more than they listened to his words.
So he covered up the blue and went all brown. It was easier.
Brown-eyed and unrecognizable, he looked at his former crony and grasped it might be for the best. The way this guy was barely holding it together, it might be necessary to keep the conditions and circumstances just as they were on that New Year’s Eve. Nameless and otherworldly.
Which sucked, frankly. All that long mourning year, Dane had kept the encounter tucked in a pocket of his mind like a worry stone.
When things got especially tough, he’d close mental fingers around the pact he made with a mysterious man and squeeze it tight.
Thinking, I have to make it to New Year’s Eve.
I have a date with a violet-eyed fox. I promised him.
Stay alive for Saskia. I just gotta get through the next five minutes.
The next hour. This month. Five more months. One more month…
The discipline of not cheating and asking Huff and Maisie who that guy was.
The often toe-curling anticipation of it all.
Trudging across a desert of grief, stalwartly putting one foot in front of another because the New Year’s Eve date loomed ahead like an oasis.
But then Huff Jensen had his accident and the party was kiboshed.
Dane went over to the house anyway, just to keep company and help Maisie out.
He’d sat on the roof, hoping against hope, even though he himself had sent the mass cancelation email to everyone in the Jensens’ address book.
No doubt the violet-eyed man was among the recipients.
But now here he was, standing on Dane’s porch, looking destroyed. The roles had thoroughly reversed. Time had not been good to this man and it was Dane’s turn to serve a purpose. Be nothing more than a gentle, anonymous safe space for this traveler to rest a little while.
Diane was making Dane’s blue eye twitch at corner as she whispered, Be careful here.
As if to emphasize, a little high-pitched whine buzzed in Dane’s left ear. A warning bell. A finger pointing to counsel extreme caution.
Be really, really careful with him.
All this time, Dane had been clutching the postcard from today’s mail. The twenty-seventh of his growing collection, postmarked from an English village called Bridford. His hand relaxed and he set the card down on the hall table, opening the door a little wider.