Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Amara paused, looked up at the million billion stars gleaming at her from the dark, then trudged through snow toward her tower. She’d known the weekend would be awful, but it was now a full-on calamity galloping toward a debacle.
She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his, pulse hammering so hard she could feel it in her temples. Quick as thought, his arm came around her as he leaned in and—
“Amara?”
“Gah!” Her pulse was hammering again, but for the wrong reason. “Jesus, Cherny, don’t do that!”
Chernobog, the Black God, took half a step back. “Sorry,” he rumbled, because he had a voice like a gravel truck. “Thought you saw me.”
“No one ever sees you until—never mind. Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap.” She extended a hand. “It was nice of you to come. It’s been a while.”
Short, blunt fingers engulfed hers and squeezed.
Like all of them, he was physically unchanged, still rocking the bulky physique, sweatshirt, and jeans that were his unofficial uniform.
He had the build of an NFL athlete who’d retired a decade ago, thus the beer belly (gin belly, technically) sheathed in muscle.
His black eyes were so bright the corneas looked blueish, and his hair was a pale helmet. Like La Croix, he could loom without half trying.
“Saw your father. No change,” he added before she could ask.
“I know. It’s a problem.”
“Heard you Reaped.”
“Of course you did. Death gods gossip more than BuzzFeed.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
A short silence fell, because the god of darkness was the opposite of chatty. As she had many times before, Amara felt obliged to shatter the silence. “So you probably also heard about my friend.”
. . .
“Well, I kissed him today. Yes! That’s right! I orally mauled my best friend.”
. . .
“Not a peck. A full-on, all-lips-on-deck sort of kiss.”
. . .
“And he started to kiss back! That’s the part that’s screwing me up.”
“Problems.”
“You’re damned right.”
“Change things?” At her blank stare, Chernobog pointed to his yellow head. “You can be something else.”
“Oh. No, we’ve been best friends forever.
I know that’s an overused phrase, but it’s an overused phrase that happens to be true.
What we had was perfect and I was stupid to risk it.
Change is bad, especially now. Oh, and your attempt to dye your naturally black hair platinum looks entirely natural, so don’t worry. ”
. . .
“Well, thanks for listening. Goodbye?”
A nod, and then he was gone, doubtless back among the shadows from whence he came. Or he was going to hit the kitchen for some cold venison. Either way: not her problem.
Scratch Chernobog, she thought. He wasn’t around for any of the death-god shenanigans. I can’t wait to tell Gray I was able to elim—
She cut herself off. She wouldn’t be able to look at him right now, much less have a conversation.
I’ve ruined it. I ruined everything.
Her first instinct—to annihilate the memory of her blunder with copious amounts of booze—was (maybe?) a bad plan.
She would, however, indulge in a long, mostly booze-free soak while she figured what the hell she would say to Gray when she saw him.
Thank God the compound was . . . well, a compound.
She should have no trouble avoiding him.
She’d managed to avoid her aunt for most of the summer back in ninth grade, and dodged a subpoena her senior year.
Oh, you piece of shit coward.
She opened the tower door, took care to creep past Gray’s (closed! yes!) door, then trudged up the stairs to her room. She flung the door open with a sigh which was immediately cut off by her yowl of surprise.
“Jeez, finally,” Gray said. He was wearing what she instantly recognized . . .
Oh no.
. . . as one of his sleeping outfits.
No no no no.
Flannel shorts, a T-shirt (Jim Gaffigan’s Barely Alive tour), and his Shrek slippers.
“What are you doing up here?” she cried.
He had the complete gall to look surprised. “You wanted me to sleep with you tonight.”
“And you came?”
Even more surprised: “I said, didn’t I?”
“Well . . . yes . . . but then . . .”
“‘But then’ nothing. Don’t worry, I grabbed some extra blankets since I sleep clammy, and I saved some midnight lefse for you.”
“My mother sent that up here for me!”
“There’s still plenty here.”
“Not your call!”
“Don’t you dare shame my stress eating!” Gray sighed and ran his hand through his brutally short-but-coming-in-nicely hair. “This is a lot of shrieking, even for you. Is something wrong?”
“What?”
“It’s about the kiss, isn’t it?”
She was so humiliated/furious/confused, all she could do for a few seconds was gulp like a walleye flopping on a dock. “Of—of course it’s about the kiss, you beautiful imbecile!”
Gray shrugged. “Well, you’ve got a lot on your plate this weekend. I’m not so egocentric to think I’m your biggest problem right now.”
“You idiot, you’ve never been any sort of problem, never mind my biggest, now get out.”
“Nope.”
“Gray!”
“How many times have we crashed in the same bed together? Five? Ten?”
“Twenty-six.” The blood rushed to her face as she realized that, quite unconsciously, she’d been keeping track.
“. . . Twenty-six, okay. So if I leave now, it’ll get weird.”
“It’ll get weird?”
“Weirder,” he amended. He crossed the room to her, and she had to fight the ridiculous, simultaneous urge to back away and step closer.
He took her hands and looked at her, really looked.
And she couldn’t pull her gaze from his.
Couldn’t even yank her hands out of his grasp.
When did Gray get magical hypnotic cobra powers? “Look, Amara, I get it.”
“That makes none of us.”
“You had a crap day, one significantly more awful than I thought, and were forced to live through your worst nightmare, and turned to me in a moment of extreme—”
Yearning? Horniness? Unrequited nonsense? “Stupidity?”
“—stress. So we kissed. Who gives a fuck? I’m not reading anything into it.
You prob’ly shouldn’t, either. It’s like that time I got hopped up on gummy bears and went to a noncostume party dressed as Baby New Year and you saw my dick.
No big deal.” She snickered; she couldn’t help it.
Gray, stone sober, nude but for a too-short sheet, had been a sight indeed. “Grow up, idiot.”
“So, no big deal?” she asked.
“No big deal.”
“It’s just that easy, huh?”
“Sure.”
* * *
It wasn’t.
“Dammit! I need more blankets.”
“Pretty sure every blanket within a five-mile radius is on you right now, Amara. I can barely hear you; pretty sure the quilts are pressing the air from your lungs.”
Amara thrashed beneath her quilted cocoon. Before this evening, the fact that Gray slept clammy had been hilarious. He could draw body warmth from a cucumber.
But there was nothing hilarious about current events. She was aware that he was only a few inches away, that it would be the easiest/scariest thing in the world to roll toward him and kiss him again, to reach below his waist and yank down his . . . argh.
She was afraid to look at the clock, to see just how many hours of awkward they’d been enduring.
She sat up and glared when Gray giggled. “Sorry,” he continued. “It’s just I’m amazed you can move at all with that weight on top of you. Oh, shit, did I just do a metaphor?”
“You did not. Isn’t this bothering you?”
“I’d endure any amount of awkward with you.”
She sighed, and not just from frustration. “All right, that’s sweet and stupid.”
“And it’s not like this is the first time things got weird between us.”
“Yes, but those other times were related to death-god shenanigans. Or ordinary shenanigans, like when you bet merch you didn’t have and lost.”
“I swear I had New Mutants #98. Double-sleeved!”
“Yes, yes, the first appearance of Deadpool, I remember.”
“Pretty sure my mom took it, but it’s not like I was going to reach out and ask her. Easier to just pay up and clean your damned oven. Who uses an oven like a microwave, then forgets she uses the oven like a microwave? A week later, I could still smell the burned plastic.”
“Don’t remind me. I still feel bad about ruining that fried chicken.”
“My point is, things have been awkward before. And my other point stands—you were stressed beyond belief. I knew it, and you did, too. So obviously I would never—”
“I’m aware.” Was she ever. Gray didn’t have to spell out his revulsion.
“You didn’t let me finish. I would never—”
“Let’s move on, shall we? I was dumb, you were dumb, all were dumb, forever and ever, amen.”
“Let’s put that on some T-shirts,” Gray suggested. “No, I’ve got enough T-shirts; let’s make hoodies instead.”
“I can’t wait until Chernobog scares the nonsense out of you.”
“Oh my God! I forgot about him. He comes at night and it’s night!”
“He does and it is and he’s here.”
“Why didn’t you lead with that? I’ve been wondering about him since yesterday. Have you seen him? Did he admit to a plot to kill your father?”
“Yes, and no. And he’s a platinum blond now. So calm down.”
“Calm down? The creepy death god who runs around at night dyed his hair and you think that makes him less terrifying? Is he here right now? He is, isn’t he?
” Gray shot upright, and the move seemed instantaneous as he wasn’t encumbered by a dozen quilts.
“Oh my God, is Chernobog in the bathroom? Is he standing right over us? I can’t see shit, he could be here right now!
Why the hell don’t you have a night-light? ”
“Because I outgrew them decades ago?”
“Well, the fact that you’re calm is helping me get back to calm. And lefse would make me more calm. I know you hid some from me, you perfidious bitch.”
She smacked him in the face with a pillow and he obligingly laughed so they could pretend nothing had changed.