Chapter 37 #2
But Belinda seemed a little dim, her warm, tan skin for once not glowing brightly. Her face was sunken like mine had been from Helen’s phantom flu. She kept looking my way but was too shy to say anything, which wasn’t her, and that made my heart pinch in concern.
“Belinda,” I said, “I owe you an apology for how I acted at Rayne’s party.
I know — I’ve been made aware — of all the other times I avoided you, too, and I’m sorry for hurting your feelings.
Sometimes I go in my head to get away for a minute, but my intention was never to ignore you.
But I know I did. And I’m so sorry for that. ”
She placed both hands flat on the table, her brown eyes finally brightening. “Thank you for saying that. But it’s all water under the bridge. From this point on, I’ll try harder to read your cues.”
“Oooh! Pretty!” Skye said, putting an end to the conversation as the servers elegantly delivered our drinks in choreographed synchronicity.
I wiggled a butterfly-shaped orange garnish off the edge of a tall highball glass, then licked a dot of pink salt from the rim.
Skye stirred her neon-pink cocktail straw and watched the glittering pink liquid glimmer and swirl.
My first sip was sweet and tangy, not a hint of moonale detected as the drink went down as smooth as an orange creamsicle.
“Belinda,” I said, marveling at the contents of the ice-cold glass in my hand. “This is the best drink I’ve ever had.”
Her whole face spread into a smile, and probably too soon, a server brought me a second one.
Rayne, sitting with a view to the door, shifted secretively, as she always did when Leland was on his way to approach me.
And though my back was to the entrance, I caught Vyra’s swallow, I heard my heart kick-start, and I felt him getting closer.
Skye got up, shuffling down a seat to free the one beside me.
My stomach swooped like I was flying downhill on a rollercoaster.
I looked up at a soft layer of dark stubble shaded around his handsome mouth as he stood over the back of my chair. With two quick pats, Skye tapped the vacant seat for him to sit, and he did — my face immediately flushing. I hid behind a sip of Sunset Moonale.
Slowly, his eyes swept down my face, my stomach tense and fluttery as I looked back at him and down to his arm, dying to know if he had one less Death Bond.
“Is it gone?” I asked, ready to roll up his sleeve if he didn’t answer.
He reached across my chest to brace a hand on the back of my chair, bent his head, and whispered, “You are so fucking pretty. Do you know that?”
My heart raced, unlike everything else around me, which seemed to happen slowly. I forgot to demand to see his arm, and instead just savored the feel of his breath and the tickle spreading up the back of my neck. The only thing to do was blink at him, my mind slowly registering his answer.
“So does that mean . . .”
Motion flashed in the corner of my eye.
It was Skye, launching her orange butterfly at me. And Leland, without even looking in her direction, twisted and caught it in his fist, inches before it smacked me between the eyes.
He shook the sticky orange out of his hand. “It’s gone,” he said to me, meaning the Death Bond. Then to Skye, he said, “Stop throwing things at her.”
Skye pouted, and I felt a twinge of protectiveness at the sharp tone he’d taken with her. Really, she hadn’t done anything wrong. Ever.
“Right,” I said, setting down my second empty glass of Sunset Moonale. “So Skye only throws fruit. Not like hard fruit. Just small, squishy ones. Clementines. Sometimes raisins. Craisins?”
Skye nodded that this was correct but also lifted her eyebrows, half laughing at me, half trying to indicate the type of fruit she threw wasn’t as important as her reason.
“She’s helping me with my reflexes,” I rushed to add.
“She always stops when I ask. And. When she’s not looking, I move everything on her desk by a millimeter.
Or I take one of her fancy pens. Or switch the backs to her earrings.
Which is worse than fruit-throwing, once you factor in how we relatively feel about these things — ”
Belinda spat a mouthful of drink back into her glass and clutched her collarbone in horror. “You touch her earrings?”
“I — yes. And her pens.”
“For my perception,” Skye said.
I caught her smiling victoriously at Leland’s confused expression. I would have smiled, too, except I couldn’t breathe, and my chest was pounding.
“You two are — ”
“The specialest,” Skye finished his sentence. “We obviously know that.”
I looked around, feeling like I belonged, and a dull sinking sensation settled in.
How could I be happy? Dad was in the human realm.
When would I ever see him again? I knew our neighbors would do what they could to take care of him, but .
. . I hoped he was okay. I suppose the one comfort was that nothing would make him happier than this, seeing me surrounded by friends.
Still, my eyes burned, my throat turned sore, and the black hole within me was about to gush open.
I heard a buzz from my transmitter, then saw Leland’s left hand wrapped around his under the table.
Leland Stray: Want to go?
Ember Blackburn: I should probably stay at my own party . . .
Leland Stray: Okay. Now answer honestly.
Ember Blackburn: Yes. I want to go
* * *
I stood in his room, not looking at his gigantic bed, which had been Vanished from the large space, but at the round table in the center of his room with four light-oak chairs around it, and the tan, L-shaped couch by his open-concept closet in the corner.
Still tidy, and it still looked like him, but less like a bedroom and more like the living room of a mid-century modern home.
He set down the two drinks he’d grabbed on our way out of the cafeteria.
My gaze lingered on his couch, the buttery leather begging to be laid on and sunken into.
And it was a couch and not a bed — not that I was thinking about beds.
Though the dark-gray throw from his bed was draped over an armrest.
Leland stood an agonizing two feet away from me, his big palms open at his sides, his broad shoulders relaxed and his muscular arms making a hip-wide opening like the one he’d made in my dream before saying, Come here.
“Please don’t make me beg,” he said.
I slipped into his arms, stiff at first, but then his hands settled against my lower back, mine finding somewhere to rest in the center of his.
Our breathing brought us closer until, eventually, I sighed into his solid warmth.
It must have gone on for five minutes before he lowered his mouth to my temple.
“You okay?” His lips were one nod away from caressing the shell of my ear. “You seemed a little shaken after your fruit monologue.”
I laughed some of the heaviness in my chest out into his shoulder. “I’m okay,” I murmured, and raised my chin to look at him so he knew I meant it. “I just started thinking about my dad, and . . .”
Leland’s hand slid up to cup the back of my neck, giving me the strength to keep going.
“I don’t honestly know how I am. I don’t think I want to keep talking about it, but it’s . . .” I breathed out. “I think it’ll be fine.”
His hands loosened, the one around my neck falling to his side. Our hug became friendly and one-handed, no different from how a teacher hugs a student — if you overlooked the charge electrifying the air between us. I slid sideways out of his arm and proceeded to act like the hug never happened.
“Couch or table?” asked Leland, his gaze sweeping across his room to inventory all his expertly crafted furniture. When I didn’t answer, he gave an inquisitive head tilt and tried, “Arcade common area?”
Definitely not the common area. Though I also wasn’t sold on the other options.
The chairs looked hard and cold, and the gaps of empty space between them were too big.
I’d prefer sprawling across the puffy, white sheepskin rug on his floor, somewhere we could recline side-by-side like we had on the daybed.
Couch? The couch looked like I’d never get up from it.
“Tableee,” I said, and nodded through the sting of the lie to convince myself it was what I wanted.
Leland didn’t buy it. He grabbed our drinks and led us to the couch, offering me the good side with the chaise lounge, while he relaxed into the opposite end, on the other side of the small leaf-shaped coffee table.
My eyes dropped to where his lips were wrapped around his neon-pink cocktail straw as he sipped his Sunset Moonale. I stared at his lips, utterly transfixed.
“Yes?” he asked, hazel eyes burning.
“Your drink is very beautiful,” I said, fighting a smile as I watched him toss the straw to the side with abandon and drain half the glass with his lips around the rim.
“Why is it so good?” he groaned as his head dropped back.
“Belinda’s a genius.” I shrugged, trying to ignore my replay of the guttural sound he’d just made, and other scenarios he might make it in.
I glanced away at every possible moment and just as quickly looked back at him.
I tried to name the potted plants sprinkled around his room.
Monstera? Some kind of palm? And I replayed Leland’s groan, like a record that wouldn’t stop scratching.
“Burning?” he asked.
“No,” I said quickly. Freezing, actually. I picked up the throw blanket and awkwardly laid it over my legs. It smelled like him. Woodsy.
He Summoned my cuffs and slid them across the walnut coffee table. I picked them up and slipped them over my wrists.
His hand shifted and jostled the ice in his drink.
“How you were when we found you in the temple was . . .” He set his glass down and stared down at his thighs as I watched a ring of condensation mar his table.
I didn’t know if I wanted him to finish the thought, not wanting to return to the place where I thought the best thing I could be was unconscious.