Chapter Twenty-Four – Bishop
Cleo was like a mini-Angel, except her blond hair was darker, her eyes a bit of a lighter blue, and, you know, she was twelve. Nothing more than a kid, but the way she stared at us made me realize she knew exactly who we were.
This kid was a fan. A hardcore fan.
“I’m not allowed to take pictures with you, am I?” Cleo asked with a smile.
Priest chuckled. “How do you even know who we are?”
“Please. I’ve been listening to Black Sacrament since I was eight,” she proudly proclaimed. We stood huddled together near our car, which was parked right in front of the single-car garage, on the driveway. Giving Angel and her mom some privacy after that bomb had been unleashed.
Way to go, Priest. He’d said way too freaking much.
“Eight?” Deacon echoed. Even he was shocked at hearing that—mostly because our music wasn’t for eight-year-olds, and also, four years ago, we weren’t half as big as we were now. She was pretty much one of the OG fans.
“Uh-huh.” Cleo nodded proudly. She was a skinny girl, but I could tell she liked to bounce off walls. Heck, when she’d first seen us, she’d literally thrown herself at us because she couldn’t contain her excitement.
She was a character, that’s for sure.
“I was also the one that sent in the clip of my sister singing,” she rattled off, again proud.
Angel had told us the truth, how a strange twist of fate had brought her to us, but hearing her sister so confidently proclaim it was a lot different than hearing it come from Angel’s mouth. “You were?” I asked, tilting my head, as if it was the first time hearing it.
“Yep. It was my idea for her to date you guys, too.”
Okay, that was a new one. I was rendered speechless, while Priest busted out laughing so hard he had to hold onto his stomach. “Holy crap,” he spoke as he laughed, “you’re a funny kid, you know that?” Once he was done, he wiped an imaginary tear away from his eye and reached for Cleo, messing up her hair.
And she let him do it, smiling widely all the while. “I mean it,” she said, not bothering to fix her hair once Priest was done. “I told her she should date all of you and bring you home to our mom so she can get used to the idea of her daughter dating more than one guy at a time, so then when I’m older, I can bring home all of my boyfriends and Mom won’t blink an eye.”
“Wow” was all Deacon could say, and Priest, for the first time ever, couldn’t say a thing.
“Have some boys in mind already?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest and leaning my backside against the hood of the car.
Cleo was something else. She was a toddler when I’d been around—and needless to say, back then, I didn’t see much of her. It was like, after practically a decade, she was this whole new person that had suddenly sprang up.
A tiny person, but a person nonetheless.
“I’m twelve,” she said confidently. “I want everyone to be my boyfriend.” She said it like it was the general rule for twelve-year-old girls: they were all boy-crazy.
And, okay, maybe they were. I’d never been a twelve-year-old girl before. I’d been a twelve-year-old boy, but at the time I was too busy dealing with my parents’ divorce and having to move away from everything I’d ever known to really pay attention to girls.
Well, except Maggie, but she’d been more of a friend than a crush, I think.
Priest chuckled. “You’re something else, kid.”
Cleo pursed her lips and cocked an attitude. “You’re treating my sister good, right? If you aren’t, I’ll find you, wherever you are, and take videos of you snoring and post them online.”
“Good thing we don’t snore—”
Priest tried to laugh off the threat, but Cleo spoke with authority, “I wasn’t done yet. Anyway, before I was rudely interrupted, I was going to say that, once everyone’s laughing at you, then I’ll kill you.”
Deacon glanced at me. “Wow, right to the big finish.”
“She’s my sister,” Cleo stated. “Even though she’s annoying sometimes, I love her, and I will protect her from everything—even you three if I have to.” Her threatening demeanor—which, to be honest, wasn’t all too threatening to begin with, given how little she was—faded, replaced by giddiness once again. “But back to the band. I love all the new stuff. I can’t wait to get old enough to go see you guys play. You’re amazing.”
We were just going to ignore the threatening part of this conversation I guess, but I was fine with that. I smiled at her and said, “Thank—”
But I couldn’t finish, because she plowed on, “Are you guys going to stay for dinner? Please say yes.” She gasped and clapped her hands together. “Oh, my God! You have to sign the poster in my room! Come on!” She led the way to the front door, but none of us followed her.
“Uh,” Priest chimed in, “I think your mom wanted to talk to your sister in private.”
“Whatever.” She shrugged. “I’m sure they’re done.” She burst through the door, poking her head in first, and then she glanced back at us, saying, “Yep! They’re done. Come on! ”
Such an excitable, rambunctious little girl she was. She had a much more boisterous personality than Angel, like two sides of the same coin. Life could never be boring with someone like Cleo around.
The guys and I traded looks, and then we were off to follow Cleo, I guess to sign that poster. I was the first to step into the house, and I saw Angel sitting with her mom on the couch. When they glanced at me, I said, “She’s got something she wants us to sign in her room?” I asked it like a question, for whatever reason, as if I thought we weren’t allowed back there.
That was dangerously close to Angel’s room.
To Maggie’s room.
Here she wasn’t Angel, she was Maggie, but none of the other guys knew that.
“Oh,” her mom said, waving us off, “I’m sure there’s a lot more than just a poster.”
And there was. After the guys and I traveled down the short hall, we turned into Cleo’s room, and what we saw was nothing short of a shrine. Multiple posters of us—including a new one with Angel, though many were from older merch releases, with Pope on them. She had placed sticky notes on Pope’s face to block him out, even drawn a frowny-face with X’s for eyes on them, my guess as to not damage the actual poster itself.
On her walls, on the inside of her door. The girl had Black Sacrament stuff up everywhere .
“Yeah,” Cleo said as she hopped up onto her bed. “I kind of asked for a bunch of stuff for Christmas. I’m probably your guys’ biggest fan, huh?”
“You definitely are,” Priest spoke with a smirk. “Now, where’s a marker?”
Cleo had to race out of her room to grab a marker from another room, and when she came back, she handed it to me so I could sign everything first.
It took a while. Of course it did. The girl’s room was filled with Black Sacrament stuff, and I couldn’t sign one thing without signing a whole bunch of others. While I went from item to item, poster to poster, signing my fake-signature, Cleo rattled off a list of her favorite songs. It seemed the girl could talk and talk and never get tired.
By the time I handed over the marker to Deacon, my wrist ached—and that was saying something, since I was used to holding a guitar. Priest was busy amusing Cleo by answering all the questions she threw at him, so while Deacon started signing his name, I took the opportunity to slip out of her room and find Angel’s room.
It wasn’t a long hall like the Redborne. Angel’s room was literally right across the hall, and when I stepped inside, I was met with a neat, tidy room that looked like your average teen girl’s room. A fraction of the size of the rooms at the Redborne. A fluffy bedspread, pictures hanging on the wall with Angel, Cleo, and their mom huddled together, smiling. On her dresser sat a few pictures of her and a friend, my guess this Alexa girl. They looked happy together.
I picked one of the small frames up and brought it closer to my face to study her. Based on the braces Angel wore in the picture, I’d say this was taken a few years back. She had a pimple on the left side of her nose too, big and red and angry. I chuckled once I noticed. They were at some festival, sitting at a wooden picnic table, their hands covered in something white. The remnants of whatever they’d finished eating, if the empty, grease-covered paper plate near them was any indication.
“Uh, excuse me, sir,” Angel’s voice filled the room, “but I don’t think you were invited here.”
I grinned, turning around to watch Angel step into the room, holding her hands behind her back. Her white hair was free, tumbling over her shoulders in messy waves, her blue eyes so big and mesmerizing. “I was just looking at this picture,” I told her, offering it to her once she got closer.
She took it from me, smiling softly as she studied it. “This is a terrible picture,” she said. “Alexa’s mom took us to the county fair, and she just had to take a picture of us while we were eating a funnel cake.” She brought the picture closer to her face, and then made a disgusted sound. “Ugh, I have a pimple, too. Just,” she paused as she returned the picture to its rightful place on her dresser, “pretend you didn’t see that.”
“Why would I pretend?” I asked, moving behind her. She still faced her dresser, so her back was to me, and I set my hands on her hips and made her lean back against my chest. “This happened during the years I missed.”
She hummed against me. “Trust me, you didn’t miss much. It was all braces and acne. It’s good you skipped those years.”
“No,” I told her, leaning my head forward so I could kiss her cheek from the side. “I’d give anything to go back and spend all those years with you.”
“I wouldn’t.” Angel turned around so she was facing me, a gentle smile tugging at her lips. “Because if things were different back then, we wouldn’t be here now… and I wouldn’t trade this away for anything.”
She lifted a hand, setting it on my cheek and dragging those soft fingers down my jaw, igniting a fire within me just from that one tender touch. Just like that, I wished we were back at the Redborne and not here, if only so I could feel that hand everywhere on my body.
She had that power over me. I couldn’t say it was a power any other girl ever had.
Things couldn’t exactly get hot and heavy since we were at her house, where her mom and sister were—with her bedroom door open, let’s not forget—but I couldn’t stand there and not do anything. So, I leaned my head down and brushed my lips against hers, kissing her softly, slowly, with the same kind of tenderness her touch had instilled in me.
God, I could kiss these lips forever. Kissing her was like coming home. Wherever we went, as long as we were together, I was home. She was absolutely everything to me, and I couldn’t picture any sort of future without her.
“Whoa there, Nelly,” Priest joked, causing Angel and I to pull apart and turn to watch him and Deacon enter her bedroom. With the four of us in here, it felt crowded, not at all like the Redborne rooms. Heck, her bed couldn’t fit the four of us, let alone three. “Now’s not the time for secret smoochies.”
“ Smoochies ?” Angel repeated with a chuckle. “I think my sister rubbed off on you already.”
Priest threw a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to Cleo’s room across the hall. “Are you kidding? That girl is certifiable. Do you know she threatened to kill us? After coming into our rooms and taping us while we’re snoring, that is. Now, I tried to tell her I don’t snore, that Deacon’s the only one—”
Deacon glared, his scowl intensifying as he muttered, “I don’t snore.”
“But,” Priest went on, “she didn’t believe me. Such a precocious little girl. I don’t get how you’re related. You two are like opposites.”
Angel opened her mouth to say something back, but her mom poked her head in from the hall. “Are you four going to stay for dinner? Because I’ll cook, if so. The last dish I’ve mastered is meatloaf. I’m pretty proud.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world” was Priest’s response, while I nodded and told her, “Yeah, we’ll stay.”
As her mom smiled and disappeared from view, Angel sighed and whispered under her breath, “Meatloaf. Hopefully it’s good. My mom never really learned to cook since she was always working. It was always whatever I could make Cleo and me. This should be interesting.”
And, what would you know, it was. The only thing was their table couldn’t sit six, so we had to crowd around the living room to eat. Angel sat on the couch with Priest and Cleo, while Deacon and I sat on the floor, using the coffee table as a, you know, table. Her mother sat on the reclining chair.
The TV was off, but that was because, with Cleo, we had all the entertainment we could possibly want. The girl was an expert at talking with her mouth full, much to her mother’s embarrassment. No amount of scolding could stifle Cleo’s excitement over this whole ordeal.
The meatloaf was actually not that bad. I’d never had meatloaf with egg in it—I ate around that part—but it wasn’t bad at all.
My plate was halfway finished when Cleo proudly said, “Mom, did M—I mean Angel—tell you that this was all my idea?” She puffed up her small body, radiating a smugness that was way too strong to come from a twelve-year-old.
“Yes, honey, we all know you were the one who sent in the tape” was her mother’s reply.
“Not about that. About them dating.” That got their mother to glance sharply at her, but she seemed un-cowed as she explained, “I told Angel she should date the band, and look. She is.” Cleo giggled.
Their mom wasn’t too pleased. “And why would you tell her that?”
“Uh, duh, because she’s the first-born, so she needs to pave the way for me to have my own harem of boyfriends.” The way she said it, so matter-of-factly, made Deacon choke as he sipped his drink.
“How do you know what a harem is?” Their mom’s next question.
“Mom, I was raised on the internet. I know a lot of things.”
Angel coughed, and before this could escalate any further, she said, “Maybe we should talk about something else? Anything else. Really. Literally anything else would be better than where this conversation’s going.”
Sadly for her, their mom wasn’t going to give it up. She asked Cleo why she wanted a harem of boyfriends for herself, and Cleo’s response was, in a word, hilarious: “One to take out the garbage and do outside chores. One to do inside chores. One to cook. One to make a lot of money so I can buy a lot of stuff. One to massage my feet when I have a hard day at work—”
She went on to list a whole bunch more jobs for her future harem of boyfriends, not realizing that she was also stunning her mom into silence. She’d apparently thought a lot about it, and that’s what made the whole thing funnier.
It was Angel who asked, “So if they’re doing all these things for you, what are you going to do for them? Relationships are a two-way street.”
Cleo gave Angel a look that read: Are you stupid? “I’m going to be the eye candy, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Priest agreed, and Angel elbowed him on the side. “Ouch. That’s going to bruise.” He feigned injury, and then he leaned over to Cleo and comically whispered loud enough for the whole room to hear, “Take notes, Cleo. That’s not how a girlfriend should treat her boyfriend.”
“Actually,” Cleo had a comeback ready, “she can do whatever she wants, because she’s in charge.”
Angel pointed her fork at her sister, mouthing the words, That’s right , which made the girl grin ear to ear.
Cleo was definitely unlike any other twelve-year-old I’d met, not that I’d met lots. Whatever would happen, one thing was for sure. Whoever she ended up with would have their hands full.