by Lucy Score
“We’ll see,” she said noncommittally and stepped into the studio before Jasmine could bring up any of several good points on why she should get naked with Nick.
The space was crowded with bodies in various stretches on the wide plank floors. The incense was smoking. The crystals were aligned. The bolsters were stacked.
Gabe opened his eyes from the hero’s pose he was perfecting and waved. He gestured toward the empty space around him. Apparently the rest of the class preferred to admire the man—celestial being? God-like spirit?—from afar.
“Who. Is. That?” Jasmine whispered.
“Tell you later,” Riley said out of the side of her mouth.
Wander shot them a loving yet warning glance from the front of the room. They both zipped their lips and unrolled their mats. Between the incredibly athletic black man on her left and the long-legged Indian attorney on her right, Riley felt like an inferiority sandwich.
Her parents bustled in, not speaking but still causing a ruckus with Velcro mat straps and excessive grunting to remove shoes. Her dad waved at her, then nodded in Gabe’s direction with exaggerated eyebrow movement. His questions didn’t need to be vocalized.
Is this the guy your crazy grandma sent you?
Riley nodded and turned back to the front of the room when her sister started the music.
“It’s warm yoga tonight,” Wander said, beaming at the crowded class. The windows were open to bring in the summer evening heat. “Tonight we’ll be working on unfolding and opening. Accepting where we are physically and mentally while working to go deeper, to find more joy, more sweat, more passion. Let us begin.”
Oh, boy. Just what Riley needed.
Her body hurt. Her muscles ached. Her joints felt like concrete. Sweat rolled and dripped and trickled its way down her body to the mat and floor. By the time Wander took the class into corpse pose, Riley felt like she’d been wrung out and left to dry. She also felt marginally better.
Her sister ended class with a serene “Namaste” echoed by the rest of the now enlightened students.
Riley stayed where she was, a limp, soggy corpse, while Gabe led a spontaneous round of applause.
“Thank you, Gabriel,” Wander said, coming to kneel next to Riley’s mat. “You were a wonderful student.”
“And you were a magnificent teacher,” he said.
Riley opened one eye and rolled her head to the side to look at Jasmine. “Are they flirting?” Riley asked.
“Either that or complimenting each other’s sublimeness,” her friend answered.
“Great class, kiddo,” Roger said. “I gotta get out of here. Trivia starts in half an hour at Arooga’s. You feeling better, Rye Bread?” he asked.
Riley gave him a thumbs-up. “All good, Dad.”
“Good. Come by and meet my cow this weekend.” He gave Blossom a kiss on the forehead and an affectionate tweak on the nose before ambling toward the cubbies on the back wall.
“Cow?” Jasmine wondered.
“Don’t ask,” Riley said.
“Gabe, it’s wonderful to meet you,” Blossom said, joining them. “I’m so happy you’re here to help our Riley finally discover her gifts.”
“It is my honor to be here,” Gabe said.
“Yeah. About that,” Riley began with a yawn. “Maybe we should start this training some other time?”
“I’ve waited thirty-plus years for this moment,” Blossom reminded her. “Now is good.”
“May I join you?” Wander asked.
“By all means, of course,” Gabe said.
Great. Now Riley was going to have an audience.
“I’m not missing this,” Jasmine said, dropping back down onto her mat.
Gabe got to his very large feet and asked permission to collect a few items for the training. Wander scampered off to help him.
Blossom patted Riley’s knee. “Now, don’t be nervous. We’re all here to help you.”
Riley groaned. “Mom, I don’t really want to do this. Especially not with an audience. I already feel like crap, and every time I get hit with a vision or something, I get all sweaty and sick. Do you really want me to barf in Wander’s studio again?”
The first time had been during hot yoga with a hangover.
“Sweetie, it’s easier if you open yourself to it and just go with it. Stop trying to fight it or control it.” Blossom perked up. “It’s actually just like vomiting!”
Gabe returned with a hulking bicep full of pillar candles in purples and whites and a collection of amethyst crystals.
Wander handed out meditation cushions.
“Me too?” Jasmine asked, delighted.
Where Riley had always envied Jasmine’s genius brain and effortless good looks, her best friend had made a big deal out of the Thorn women’s psychic abilities. Until right this second, Riley had assumed that it had been the teenage equivalent of a supportive, “No, those pants don’t make your ass look huge.”
“Of course. We all have gifts. Intentional cultivation of those gifts can be the beginning of a great journey.” Gabe said.
“He sounds like a—”
“Fortune cookie,” Riley finished the thought for Jasmine.
They settled in a semi-circle around Gabe on thick cushions. Riley dragged her feet into the appropriate cross-legged pose, noting that her twinges and pains were marginally better after an hour of yoga.
“Please choose a candle,” Gabe instructed as he methodically lit each one with a match, the flame never seeming to get close to his fingers. “Watch the flame dance and flicker. Let it be only the light that you see.”
She wondered what she could scrounge up for dinner tonight. She should have asked Fred before he left class what they were having.
“Allow your mind to settle, your breath to deepen. It is in this state of peace and non-judgment that your gifts can open.”
All of this talk of opening irked her. Bad things happened when people were open. People didn’t want you to be real and vulnerable. They wanted you to shut up and do what you were supposed to do.
She shot a glance to her right and was disappointed to find Jasmine fixated on her candle. She sighed. Great. She was alone in her cynicism. Something drilled into her leg.
It was her mother’s freakishly strong finger sending her a warning. Blossom had been gifted with steel rods for fingers and wielded them when necessary.
Fine. She would try.
Riley cracked her neck, rolled her shoulders, and picked a candle at random.
If she got this over with fast enough, she could be having dinner in—
She was floating on nothingness. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was pink and blue ether. Or clouds. Or cotton candy. Whatever it was, it felt thicker than air. Thick enough for her to be suspended in it, to be connected to it.
There was a cacophony of voices like she was sitting in a theater surrounded by people. She couldn’t see anyone, but she could feel them. And hear them.
“My son is missing out on the life he’s meant for by marrying that dingbat with the boobs.”
“I’ve sent them every sign I can to tell them I’m fine and the afterlife is great, but none of those yahoos have paid a lick of attention.”
“She needs to know that the secret ingredient to my porridge recipe is vanilla bean extract.”
Voices crowded in on all sides of her, and Ether Riley held up her hands. “Can everyone just shut up for five seconds?”
“Excellent work.” Gabe’s voice was pleased.
“I didn’t do anything. And they all keep yelling at me,” she complained. The nausea was already rising in her empty stomach.
“You have opened yourself. Now, it is time to control it.”
“Control? How?” She was shouting just to hear herself over the demands of the dead.
“Why is she screaming?” she heard Jasmine ask.
“Because I can’t hear myself think,” Riley yelled.
“Ask them something,” Gabe suggested.
“Like what?”
“Something you want to know.”
Something she wanted to know. How to be normal? Yeah. Right. Like a bunch of ethereal blabbermouths were going to know that.
What was for supper?
“Uh. Okay. What’s for supper tonight?” she asked.
The voices dropped down to a dull roar, and Riley saw, or thought she saw, meatloaves in tins in an oven.
She liked meatloaf. And she didn’t feel so sick now.
“What are you seeing?” Gabe asked.
“Meatloaf.”
“She loves meatloaf,” Blossom stage-whispered from somewhere far away.
Riley ignored them. “Um, how about: Is Griffin going to live happily ever after? No! Wait!” She shook her head. She didn’t really want the answer to that one. It wasn’t like she wanted him to live a life of misery with weeping boils. But she also really didn’t want to know that he’d avoid karma forever. “Okay, how about this. What do I need to know?”
The voices disappeared completely. There was nothingness, and then there was something. She was hurtling through space, heading toward a tiny prick of light.
“I don’t think I’m doing this right,” she yelled.
“Stay there. Be open,” Gabe’s distant voice instructed. Did he sound concerned? Had she ripped down some psychic veil? Was she hurtling toward hell? Could she still be sent to jail for a crime she didn’t commit if she were in hell? Would she survive long enough to have meatloaf?
The light was getting brighter, bigger. Until she was pushing through weird cotton candy clouds and stepping into it.
Uh-oh.
It was a small room lit by a ghastly orange glow emanating from a lava lamp tucked into the corner. The bedspread, that god-awful orange and green floral blanket, was rumpled and half on the floor.
It probably had something to do with the tangle of naked bodies writhing on top of the bed. She watched as Nick Santiago used that very talented tongue to tease his name from… big-time uh-oh.
Her lips. Vision Riley was buck naked, pulling his hair, and thoroughly embracing having an equally disrobed Nick move over her body.
Not Currently Engaged in Sexual Intercourse Riley covered her eyes. “Oh my God,” she said, feeling all kinds of things in all kinds of places.
“What do you see?” Gabe’s voice asked soothingly from a distance.
There was no way in hell she was sharing this particular vision. She was basically having sex in front of her mother right now, and that was not cool. Not cool at all. Could Gabe see this? Was this some kind of psychic sex tape?
“I see more meatloaf,” she lied.
And then she was back. Like the snap of a rubber band. She’d been pulled and stretched and then released back to the present.
“I swear I could smell Uncle Jimmy’s aftershave,” Wander was whispering. “Like a warm, lovely cloud of it.”
“I just saw like a lot of blue,” Jasmine said, sounding disappointed. “Like when you squeeze your eyes shut too tight.”
“Jasmine, let me do a tarot reading for you,” Blossom insisted at Riley’s elbow. “I feel like I’m bursting with spirit guides right now.”
Riley sagged off her cushion and onto the floor. She was sweaty and spent. And very hungry. At least she didn’t feel like she was going to projectile vomit. Improvement.
“Riley?”
She felt her mother’s sausage fingers prodding her arm.
Then big, warm pancakes of hands were tapping her cheeks.
“Meatloaf,” she whispered and opened her eyes.
“What the hell happened?” Jasmine asked. “Are you all right?”
Gabe was grinning down at her. “You are very powerful indeed.”
Blossom jumped to her feet. “I knew it! I knew it! In your face, Carol Loomis! My daughter is a savant! And your creepy Ouija board-manipulating son is a loooooooser!” She danced an inappropriate boogie around the studio.
“Mom!” Wander was both amused and horrified.
“What? Oh, sorry.” Blossom seemed to remember where she was and hurried back over to where Gabe was helping Riley sit up. “What happened? Tell us everything so I can put it all in the Guild newsletter!”
“Could you, uh, see what I saw?” Riley asked Gabe, trying to sound like a woman who hadn’t just foretold really great sex. She avoided making eye contact with everyone.
“Riley accessed a realm in the Other,” Gabe explained.
The Other meaning Cotton Candy World, she guessed.
Wander pressed a glass of water into Riley’s hands.
“The Other?” Jasmine asked. “Why can’t I be cool and psychic like the Thorns?”
Riley blinked. Had her beautiful genius of a best friend just wished she could be more like her?
“I like to think of it as the beyond,” Gabe was saying. “The Other can be experienced through senses outside the traditional limited ones.”
“I saw meatloaf in the oven,” Riley said. She took a big gulp of water, let it soothe her tight throat. “Everything was behind these big fluffy clouds, and I had a hard time seeing through them.”
They were all hanging on her every word. Her mother was taking notes in her phone.
“I texted Lily when you said meatloaf, and she sent this,” Blossom said, crawling over to shove her phone in Riley’s face. “Look at this.” Little tins of mini meatloaves lined up in the oven.
If the meatloaves were real, then… Holy. Shit. She was going to have sex with Nick Santiago, no-strings bad boy extraordinaire.
“Oh, this is so exciting! I can’t wait to tell everyone I know,” Blossom crowed.
“Mom! No! No telling anyone. I don’t need the world to confirm that I’m a freak,” Riley groaned.
“You are most certainly not a freak,” Gabe said. “You are a powerful, gifted clairvoyant.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t need Mom taking out a billboard on the Camp Hill bypass to tell the world about it,” she frowned.
He laid a massive hand on her shoulder. “Do not worry. This is the first step in learning to control your abilities,” he promised.
Control. Stop. Whatever. As long as this meant she wasn’t going to have to live with voices in her head anymore.
24
6:35 p.m., Friday, June 26
He wasn’t nervous. Pfft. Nick Santiago didn’t get nervous.
He’d gotten a haircut because he was due for one. The new pajama pants in his bag were because he didn’t have time to do laundry. And the six breath mints he’d downed on the ten-minute drive to Riley’s? Well, she didn’t need to suffer because he’d ordered onions on his sub at lunch.
He was definitely not nervous about platonically spending the night with her. He eyed the overnight bag on the passenger seat. Great. Now he was lying to himself.
It had to be the platonic thing. If they’d been planning to have a few hours of strings-free naked fun, he’d be fine. He was confident when it came to sex. He had a track record of proven results backing him up. But this pretending to be a boyfriend—now fiancé—without any of the physical stuff. Well, it was messing with his head.
“Get yourself together, man,” he muttered. He climbed out of the SUV and crossed the parking lot, debating whether he should use the front door like a guest or keep it casual by using the back door.
Nick fired off a text to Riley, letting her know he’d arrived, and let himself in the unlocked back door. He heard a congenial ruckus coming from the front of the house. The kitchen was to his right through an open pocket door painted an unappetizing mint green. A large black man with the most perfectly formed head Nick had ever seen was dropping one ice cube at a time into a shiny bucket.
“Hey, man,” Nick said, edging into the kitchen. Riley hadn’t mentioned any new roommates. Definitely not any built like Under Armour models.
“Hello. I am retrieving ice for happy hour,” he announced, hefting the bucket out of the sink. Each bicep was the size of Nick’s hea
d.
“Do you live here?” Nick asked.
“I do. I am Gabe. Riley’s very close friend,” the man said.
Nick didn’t care for the sound of that. “I’m Nick. Riley hasn’t mentioned a close friend Gabe.”
“I am training her for her wedding night.”
“Her wedding night?” Nick repeated. “Hang on. I’m the guy she’s marrying. If there’s training to do, I’ll be the one doing it.”
“You are a very lucky man. She is an incredible woman,” Gabe said with a wistful quality that Nick really didn’t like.
“Gabe, do you need help with the ice?” Riley appeared in the door with an empty glass and a smile. She was wearing the kind of shorts that would have kept teenage Nick up at night and a cute scoop neck tank that gave adult Nick more than a few dirty ideas.
Her smile faltered for just a second. “Nick! Hey.” She looked guiltily back and forth between the two men.
She damn well better feel guilty. Moving in a new “very close friend” right under her fiancé’s nose? That shit wasn’t cool.
Fake fiancé.
He’d just remembered that part. Big Guy Gabe was looking at Riley like he was a loyal golden retriever.
“Hey, beautiful,” Nick said, deciding to prove a point. Dropping his bag on the floor, he pulled her into his arms, pinned her against the wall, and went for the gold. His lips didn’t brush hers. No, they devoured. His tongue didn’t slip into her mouth. It invaded.
He meant to mark his territory. Not produce a porno. But he really liked how her mouth felt under his. Riley didn’t seem to mind either. So maybe he went a little over the top with the performance. Maybe he could have stopped thirty seconds earlier. Maybe he could have kept his hands from slipping under the hem of that shirt to skim over the smooth skin of her waist. He could have definitely not growled when he caught that sexy little moan of hers.
Thank you, six breath mints.
Nick pulled back and felt a caveman-like pride when her knees buckled. Despite his little dry spell, he still had it. What he didn’t have was his own balance. He tipped a little too far to the side and rammed a shoulder into the door jam. Now, she was the one looking smug.
