White (The Wings Trilogy Book 1)

by Angelina J. Steffort

  The three of us were heading towards the parking lot. I drove to school when it was too cold to walk. Today it was especially chilly. The clouds in the sky were heavy with rain. It was only a matter of time until they would burst and spread their contents over Aurora.

  “…In Critique of Pure Reason he tried an investigation into the limitations and structure of reason itself. It encompassed an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology…” Lydia was quoting the whole biography to Amber.

  We were hurrying across the lawn and along the wall of the main building. My heart missed a beat as we turned the corner to the parking lot. Adam was standing a few feet ahead, an open book in his hands, leaning against the wall.

  “…The other main works of his maturity are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique of Judgment…” Lydia finally fell silent. Amber nudged me with her elbow.

  “Are you waiting for somebody?” I called to him.

  He looked up and in our direction. I could see even from this distance that he had his hair cut and his whole appearance showed no lack of energy this time.

  “You!” he called back and made a step in my direction.

  I slowly walked towards him, curious.

  Lydia and Amber stayed behind. “Good luck,” Amber whispered as I took the first step in his direction.

  After a few strides I was near enough to notice that even his eyes looked better. They were light green as usual and twinkled at me.

  “Hi,” I finally said, when I was close enough to speak at a normal level.

  “Can I borrow you for a while,” Adam asked, a serious look on his face.

  I wasn’t sure what he wanted, why he had come here; but it seemed fate was giving me a second chance. “Sure,” I nodded eagerly.

  “It looks like rain,” he observed, “maybe we should go somewhere inside.”

  “The coffee shop on the other side of the street, Noel’s,” I suggested in a hoarse voice. My hand was in the pocket of my jacket and played with the spoon that was still waiting there to be extracted from the tissue and cleaned. Ew, I thought and I cleared my throat nervously.

  “No need to be nervous,” he smiled at me, reassuring. I trembled slightly at this reminder of his particular talents.

  “Shall we—” he asked and started walking towards Noel’s. I fell into step beside him silently, a growing curiosity in my stomach. I was still wondering what he wanted.

  The first big drops were falling from the sky as we hurried inside. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Amber and Lydia heading towards Amber’s car.

  Noel’s was a small coffee shop. It was cozy and friendly with its comfortable armchairs and broad cushioned sofas. Big windows let in the daylight and soft old jazz music streamed through the small shop completing the atmosphere. In the morning it was always crowded with people who were desperate for their daily caffeine rush, during lunchtime some business people sat there, substituting their lunch with a cup of strong black coffee and in the afternoons the shop was usually populated mainly with couples and students. Today the shop was nearly empty.

  “Hey there,” Noel greeted us with a friendly smile.

  Adam led me to a table at the window. I took a seat in one of the big, comfortable green armchairs and waited. He sat down across from me in a crimson one. The red velvet contrasted with his light green eyes. I felt the knot in my stomach slowly return. Adam’s eyes snapped up.

  “Everything alright?” he asked in a worried voice.

  I moved my head in a slow circle, not knowing whether to nod or shake it. And then I remembered most likely he would know, how I felt. I didn’t know how his talent worked exactly, but I thought it possible that he could feel everything I felt right now; when I was embarrassed, or undecided, when I was happy or—I didn’t want to think it—when I felt desire for his irresistible kisses…

  “How do you stand it?” I asked strangely annoyed by my transparency.

  “What?” he looked at me questioningly.

  “The feelings,” I voiced my assumption and blushed. I leaned towards him and lowered my voice, “The things you perceive.” This sounded so absurd.

  Adam looked up as the white haired Noel shuffled towards us from behind the counter. I leaned back in my armchair, forcing nonchalance into my expression.

  “What can I bring you?” He pulled a pen from his apron and scribbled down our orders.

  “A hot chocolate, please, and a glass of water,” I answered at once. Old Noel really sold the best coffee in the area, but the chocolate was something you didn’t get anywhere else in town.

  “A cappucino for me, please,” Adam said.

  Noel gave us a wide smile which made his face all wrinkly under the waves of his white hair, and walked back behind the counter.

  “So—where did we stop?” Adam leaned towards me, a challenging glare in his eyes, “—ah yes, you’ve asked something.”

  “That’s right,” I mocked from my armchair, “do I get an answer?”

  “You asked me how I stand it—” His eyes darkened, his brows pulling together, “—it’s not exactly easy. Well, easier than it was in the beginning, but still …it’s easier than trying to keep it away.” He looked at me seriously.

  “Why are you here,” It was the question I had wanted to ask since I’d seen him leaning against the wall. I silently agreed with Etta James, whose voice was coming from the speakers. At last, my love has come along …my lonely days are over…, I hoped so much that she was right.

  “I came here because—because I missed you—more than I thought possible.” His face brightened for a fraction of a second after my heart jumped with joy. “Thank you,” he answered my reaction. “Thank you, for feeling that way.”

  I found myself caught by surprise yet again and looked away from him.

  Noel was on his way towards us again, carrying two cups on a small tray. “Here you go, kids.” He put the tray down onto the table and headed back like he knew we were in a delicate conversation.

  “Sorry,” I heard Adam say as I watched Noel disappear, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You didn’t,” I lied, but I knew he wouldn’t have any problems seeing through it.

  He smiled half-heartedly, as if searching for words. “If you are willing to take me back,” His smile turned into a grimace of tension, “…I know it’s not easy for you, considering all the weird things…but I swear, you’ll never regret it.”

  I froze right there, where I was, in my armchair. Had he just asked me to take him back? My thoughts flashed back to the last time I had seen him, his kisses…

  I found a thrill to rest my cheek to, a thrill that I have never known. Oh, yeah when you smile…, Etta sang along, and this time she was right.

  “You know what, Adam,” I looked at him with certainty. “I’ve been thinking about the…weird things—and I found I can handle it…that you are kind of supernatural, I mean.”

  He laughed cheerfully and leaned even farther over the table reaching out for my hand with his own. “I love you, Claire. If you say you don’t want me with my odd gifts, I can live with that. I just couldn’t live with not letting you make the choice. I had to come here today to tell you what I feel for you, so you can decide what to make of it—to send me away, or to love me back.”

  My head filled with absolute silence while my heartbeat sped up and pulsed through my body making me dizzy. I couldn’t believe my ears. Had he just said he loved me?

  “You’re confused,” he said in a broken voice and his fingers closed around my hand more securely. It wasn’t a question and he was right. I was confused; but happy, couldn’t he feel that, too? I closed my eyes for a second, letting his words wash over me once more, and took a deep breath.

  I knew what would happen when I opened my eyes. His gaze would bore into them burning away my senses. I left them shut for another breath. He released my hand from his grip.

  When I opened my eyes he had lea
ned back in his armchair, gazing at me intensely.

  “What do you receive from me—right now?” I asked him, staring back into his handsome face.

  His light green eyes looked at me for a moment, his features tensing into a thoughtful expression. “Right now—caution …and…,” he answered with an earnest voice.

  I picked up my cup from the table and took a sip of hot chocolate to hide my embarrassment.

  “Don’t be ashamed,” he said reassuringly and shook his head slowly. It made loose black strands dance on his forehead. He ran his left hand through his dark hair. The movement made his shirt stretch tightly over his muscular torso, and another feeling that had already surged up in my chest when he had said he loved me intensified by a hundred times. It was like the fire he had lit when I had felt that body against mine while we had kissed.

  I heard him inhale. Hoping that he wouldn’t know what I was feeling at the moment, I continued to drink my hot chocolate.

  He chuckled to himself, “…and longing.” I could imagine perfectly well how amusing it would be for him, feeling my desire for him burn in me.

  I let my gaze wander over to the window to hide my blush. The rain was getting heavier still. The dark gray clouds were brewing into a purple, almost black mass in the sky and the water they set free formed big puddles on the street and sidewalk. I realized that guaranteed me some time with Adam, at least until the rain wore off and we could leave the cafè without the danger of drowning.

  “If you feel all these things at the same time, how can you distinguish between your own feelings and others? I mean, there are three people in the room, how do you know which feelings belong to whom? And how do you know when you’re in a big crowd. Don’t get me wrong, but …how can you be sure which feelings are your own, and which of them belong to somebody else? And how do you know that it’s my longing,” I spat out the word, “and not Noel’s?”

  If I wanted to be with him I had to know how his abilities worked, so I wouldn’t go crazy.

  “That is a lot of questions,” he smiled at my apprehension.

  “What? Don’t you think I have a right to know what I’m getting myself into?” I demanded. “I mean, if I consider being with you,” I quickly added, so it wouldn’t sound too accusing. “Don’t you think it would help me with my decision?”

  “You do have the right. And I want to answer your questions,” he started. “First, I have to say that it doesn’t work all the time. It’s been getting more and more regular over the last few months, though.” His shifted in his seat, “How do I distinguish between my own feelings and somebody else’s? I can’t tell how I do it exactly, but I know because my own feelings come from inside me and the others’ seem to come from somewhere outside.”

  I tried to paint the picture before my inner eye, but it didn’t work. “I don’t understand.”

  “I can feel what others feel while I look at them. If they are out of sight, I cannot perceive more than anyone else.”

  His statement appeased me in a pulse calming way. So I wasn’t completely transparent to him.

  “So you don’t feel Noel’s emotional state right now,” I continued.

  “Since I’m not looking at him directly at the moment—no.”

  “Which would mean that if you look away from me, you don’t perceive me either?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is it enough for you to just fix on a point a foot away, or does it have to be another direction? Do I have to vanish from your peripheral vision before you don’t feel me anymore?”

  “Peripheral vision will do. If the person is outside my peripheral vision I can’t sense anything.”

  “So it isn’t a bad as I thought…,” I murmured more to myself.

  Adam chuckled, “No it isn’t—Not that bad.”

  I had to laugh.

  “But as long as you somehow see them, you feel what they’re feeling.” I wanted to get it right, so I knew for the future.

  “Yes.”

  “And you can’t do anything about it.”

  “I could, but you saw what happened last time. It makes me lifeless and tires me. I don’t think I can survive too long without sleep and without energy.”

  “So, is that what you do? Take away their energy?” I asked thoroughly alarmed.

  Adam seemed taken aback. “I could never do that—even if I knew how. It just diminishes my own energy when I keep myself from seeing, or feeling, more than others do.” He frowned at the memory of the few weeks he had tried. “I feel like I lose a part of what I am and it makes me ill.”

  I nodded and shuddered at the memory of our last conversation. His eyes had been more of a gray than a light green then and he had looked seriously down; like he hadn’t slept one single night in the weeks before. Shying away from the picture, I threw myself into the conversation more eagerly. At least he looked normal today—if you could call his mesmerizing appearance normal. “And if you look at somebody, you know everything about them?”

  “Not at all. I mainly feel what they feel. And most of the time I get the main idea behind that feeling …why they feel that way. When I spend a lot of time with a person I start to notice patterns—like in behavior—and that makes it much easier to guess accurately at their reasons. The better I know someone the easier it gets.” He paused for a minute to take a few sips of his coffee. “It’s not that easy with everybody however, some people are harder to read than others.”

  “Hm,” I murmured deep in concentration.

  “What about me? You said it was different with me…You told me you knew things about me before you first met me.” I confronted him with his own statement.

  They sounded so absurd, the words I had just spoken. If somebody would have heard me they’d think I was mental.

  He eyed me for a moment, considering. “I guess that was because you’re different from the others—for me at least. It was only one single time that I had that …let’s call it an emotional vision of you, that I felt somebody whom I didn’t look at.

  “That’s what makes you so special, Claire—you’ve been there in my life before you were really there—physically I mean.” His face darkened. “But since the vision, I’ve never felt you when I didn’t look at you.” Adam’s gaze washed over me briefly. “Don’t think it doesn’t scare me not knowing how you are, how you feel, when I don’t see you.—It pains me to be away from you.”

  I listened to him carefully, taking in his every word.

  “When I had my vision of you I felt a certain pattern without knowing where to put it. I hadn’t seen you yet and still I felt everything you were. It was like I was taken through your life in time lapse. I know so much about you, though I don’t know anything at all. I know there was so much pain in your past…”

  My eyes widened in shock. “How can you feel things that happened years ago? That’s not—normal, I guess?” I couldn’t find a better word to describe it.

  “There is hardly anything normal about the way I perceive you, Claire,” he said, mocking. “After I had that emotional vision, I knew that you were everything I wanted. It drove me crazy that I couldn’t relate it to somebody I knew. You know, it’s fairly annoying, searching around for a face matching the pattern. All I knew was that I had to find you …though I had no idea what you would look like—except for your beauty, I was sure of that—” He let his head sink to his chest. “It was frustrating, running around day after day. I knew so much about you, but still I didn’t know where to find you …maybe you weren’t in Aurora at all.”

  I imagined Adam striding through the streets staring at every woman who passed him in the hope of finding the right one to match his emotional visions.

  The things he told me slightly distressed me, but I tried to be openminded. I wanted to hear all of it, I wanted to know. “Why did you come to the graveyard that day?” I asked, hoping for the whole story to make sense soon.

  “I don’t know exactly …somehow, I felt the urge to visit my Gran’s grav
e. And I was more than surprised to find you there. I had given up on the thought of finding you—though I didn’t know it was you then. You know what I mean…” He rested his head against the back of his chair and looked up at the ceiling. His expression was glowing with excitement. “—And everything clicked into place. I saw you and knew that it was you who matched the pattern I loved already, so it had to be you that I loved. And so I do …I love you.”

  My insides melted away as he looked at me intensely with his soft green eyes as he spoke the last three words. His sensual lips pulled into a sweet but serious smile.

  If he felt what I felt now he wouldn’t stay on the other side of the table too long.

  For a moment his eyes grew wild with the fire that was licking at the insides of my chest, then he turned away. I stretched my fingers towards the glass of water, and gulped down half of it. Its cool contents streamed down the insides of my throat and farther down into my stomach; like it could erase the hot flames from my chest. Adam chuckled again, his hands clutching the cup in front of him.

  “Not funny,” I told him with a sarcastic frown.

  “I know, I’m just—” he searched for the right words for a moment, “—impressed.”

  “What?” Incomprehension crept through my mind. “Why would you be impressed?”

  “I’m impressed by how you handle it…” He laughed. “Most girls have no self control at all.”

  I could guess what he was trying to say.

  “Most girls—preconditioned that they are interested in me, and trust me—which of course, I would know—radiate their desire with such force that it knocks me off my chair.”

  “And you give them what they want, I suppose—easy prey.” I said, more to myself.

  Adam looked at me, alarmed. “No. That’s exactly what I don’t do. It’s more like I try to save myself before they can get their claws in me.” And then he chuckled again.

  “Still—Not funny,” I repeated. I was positive that my cheeks were flaming red with shame.

  “It’s still very dark and wet outside. What do you want to do until the eternal rain stops out there?” he changed the topic.