Three Wishes: Time Traveler Romance (Heart Of The Djinn Book 1)

by Lisa Manifold

  I got out of bed, and tidied myself a little. I looked up at the ceiling, and sent out a little plea for hope. Hope that I wasn’t being a delusional fool. Took a deep breath, and opened my mouth.

  “Dhameer.”

  He stood, sort of, in front of me.

  “Decided, have you?”

  “What the hell was the point of putting me through all this today? Was it just a dream?”

  “Yes and no. It was a dream, but it really happened. Call it a little test. I wanted to see if you would call on me anyway.”

  I glared. “I can see why genies are associated with maliciousness.”

  “I prefer the term ‘djinn’. Most of us shouldn’t be. Humans have long been willing to put poor choice off on something or someone other than themselves. An evil spirit is a winning lottery ticket in that respect. As I told you, I make my own decisions and choose carefully whom I grant wishes to. Part of that is seeing if you are capable of having a little faith, some belief when it seems impossible. Rather like an application. You, Toots, have passed. You ready to head down memory lane?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I know where I want to go first. It was—” He cut me off.

  “No need to tell me. Close your eyes and see it in your mind. What you were wearing, how you looked, where you were, summon up all the details you can.” He was quiet then, and I closed my eyes and brought it back.

  I was at the neighbor’s house. My hometown had a good sized college in it. Our neighbor was an alumna and had a son who was a current student. The wife half of the couple liked to host parties and invite all her son’s friends over. It was a big football game, an away game, so a ton of people had come over to watch the game. My family was always invited, as my parents were friends with them. They didn’t know the horrors that happened in my house daily. My parents hid it well. The son and I got along, but it was casual. One of his friends was a different story. Oh, Rick. Rick Montevaldo.

  I had met Rick the end of my freshman year of high school. He was finishing up his freshman year of college. He hung out at the house a lot, and so we got to see one another frequently as my parents socialized with the neighbors regularly. And boy, did the neighbors like to socialize. Looking back, that socializing may have been why my parents got along with them. Drunk birds of a feather, and all that. I was just so involved in getting through my life I couldn’t see that my normal might not have been normal to everyone else.

  In spite of trying to make sure my parents didn’t disgrace us all, Rick and I flirted like mad at these parties. Our friendship grew out of that. Since I didn’t have a driver’s license, he would take me out shopping and to run errands. I looked forward to those times. I had a boyfriend, and while Rick and I flirted, he never seemed serious because he was a jokey kind of guy.

  Something changed in our respective junior years. He had taken a violent dislike to my boyfriend which was, in hindsight, a good call. Things were rocky with the boyfriend and me, so that night, rather than go out with him, I went with my parents to the neighbors. I was hoping Rick was there, and he was.

  The game didn’t go well. The home team got stomped. Everyone was drinking their sorrows away. That was back when I was a Serious Athlete, and wouldn’t dream of drinking. I was down in the basement, watching a movie, and getting another soda, when Rick found me.

  chapter six

  He was drunk. I hadn’t seen him like this before. Since I didn’t drink, it was a little scary. I was standing right next to the wall, and he leaned over and put his hand on the wall behind my head.

  “Open your eyes, Tibby, and take it from here, Toots.” I heard in a whisper in my ear.

  “Hey, Slickster, what’s up?” Slick Rick was his nickname. I didn’t know why, but I had appropriated it and made it a little bit mine.

  “Been lookin’ for you,” he said.

  “I’m right here,” I said with a little raise of my eyebrows, flirting like we always did.

  “Good. I wanna talk to you. ”

  “Okay. You want to sit down? We can talk.”

  “No, talk right here. So I want to ask you to my formal, but I can’t.”

  “What are you talking about?” I guessed this was something to do with his fraternity.

  “My formal. For my…for my fraternity.” Woo boy. He was drunk. No wonder he’d scared me. Too much like my daily life. I didn’t say anything, and he continued. “It’s comin’ up soon, and I want to ask you. But I know your dad won’t like it. Cus’ I would take you, and people would say, oh, hi, what year are you? And you would say, a junior, and when they asked what school, you’d say your high school, and I’m just too old for you. And your dad would kill me. Shoot at me, maybe.”

  We were coming up to the crossroads. Just as it did all those years ago, I could feel my heart pounding. I’d always wanted to hear something like this from Rick, and now I was. Sure, he was drinking. But unlike my parents, he hadn’t ever hurt me. I didn’t know whether this was the booze or for real, and I wouldn’t until I let this go on. Besides, if he was like my parents, I was better equipped to handle him. A knee right to the crotch and I’d be outta there. I took a breath, and calmed myself. A drunk guy, and especially this guy, was nothing to be afraid of. Not everyone was my parents. Part of me was pissed at how much damage they’d done. Time for that with the shrink later.

  “I don’t think he would shoot you, Rick. I don’t think you’re too old, either.” Like my dad would even notice. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  “I am. I’m too old. I wish you were jus’ a little bit older. Then I wouldn’t get shot, an’ no one would be calling me cradle robber.”

  “No one calls you that.” I looked at him a bit more closely. Now that I was in this, and not just remembering, he wasn’t as drunk as I’d thought.

  “Yeah, they do. They keep saying, when you gonna finally rob that cradle? You’ve been rocking it for two years, Slick, time to make a move. I wanna make a move, I just want to take you out, go places, hold your hand, and go out. But it’s hard. I like you a lot. I jus’ wanna date you, like a normal guy. Beat your boyfriend’s ass. He’s an ass. You’re too good for him. Asshole.” He leaned down, shaking his head.

  Wow, I had really exaggerated how drunk he was in my memory. Seeing him now, he seemed somewhere between tipsy and drunk. What a difference nine years makes. When I had found myself here before, it had made me uncomfortable, and I hadn’t really listened. I was planning my getaway. My sister had just come downstairs, and was looking at me with the do you need help? look. Before, I had given her the Save me! crazy eyes, and she had come over and helped me scoot away. This time, I shook my head a little, and she walked into the other room where a bunch of people were playing pool. Change of choice number one.

  I stood a little closer to him, looking up at him, making him look at me.

  “You don’t need to beat Dave’s ass,” I said. “We’re about over anyway. Waste of time. I’ll just dump him and be done with it. I like you, too. I have for a long time. I just didn’t think you were really interested. Let me talk to my dad, and I’ll stop him from getting a gun, okay?”

  “How could you think that? It was totally obvious,” he protested. Clearly I had been missing a lot of signals.

  “Not to me. You’re older, hot, and way out of my league. I just thought you had fun flirting with me.”

  “I wanna do a lot more than flirt,” he said. He leaned down and kissed me. It was kind of clumsy. Clumsy groping was another fun side of semi-drunken declarations.

  I put my arms around his neck and kissed him back. I kissed him pretty fiercely, nearly biting his lip. I backed away, wanting to apologize, but he pulled me up hard, close to him, and kissed me before I could get a word out. It was far less clumsy than before. Holy hell, I could feel it all the way to my toes.

  He broke off kissing me as a loud cheer started behind us. Jake, my neighbor’s son, and a bunch of his friends were applauding enthusiastically. Rick looked a little embarrassed, an
d took my hand, and said, “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He towed me towards the stairs, ignoring all the catcalls coming from his friends. I have to admit, I was blushing. Nobody sounded hateful. He was telling the truth. People had seen his signals. God. Teenagers were really blind. Maybe he was right, and this four year age difference was too much.

  Wait. It was actually a five year age difference in my favor. I was really twenty-six to his twenty-one. I wasn’t the seventeen year old who had run from this before. That calmed my momentary panic. I looked around, paying more attention to where he was taking me than I had when in the throes of rising panic. We were upstairs in the main living room, but on the edge of the room. He leaned down to me.

  “There’s your dad. Can you go get him? I wanna talk to him now.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You’re a little toasty.” I was worried how my dad, also probably a little toasty, might react.

  “I want to get this in the open. I figure if you’re standing with him, I won’t get shot right away.”

  I had to snicker to myself. He had pegged my dad pretty accurately. Dad was very protective of my sister and I when he was sober. No doubt because he knew exactly what men were capable of. He hadn’t liked one of my boyfriends yet. He hated Dave. Called him the Grab Ass, because he swore Dave had groped me right in front of him. I had never recalled such a thing, but in hindsight, Dave was an ass. Everything that happened once we broke up showed that.

  Anyway, time to focus on the situation at hand. “Okay, I’ll go get him. You sure you want to talk to him?”

  “Yes. I’ve wanted to talk to him for the last two years. Don’t want to wait any longer.” His face was determined. I stood on my toes and kissed his cheek, and then walked over to where my dad was sitting. He was talking with some of our other neighbors, and I waited for a lull in the conversation. That was probably new too. I was pretty self-centered as a teenager.

  “You need something, honey?” He looked up at me. I could see that he’d been drinking moderately. It was hard not to shake him and tell him to clean the fuck up. Stop, Tibby. You’re a teenager, and you need something from him. He’ll want to be the great dad in public. Act nice and ask nicely.

  “Dad, can you come here a minute? I need to talk to you.”

  He looked alarmed. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, it’s fine. But I really need to talk to you. It won’t take long. Please?”

  “Well, okay.” He got up from the couch.

  “Thank you,” I said to him. I looked over at the other two men. “Thanks for letting me steal him for a minute.” My dad looked at me with a faint air of surprise. Hmmm. Apparently my manners had not been stellar at the time, either. What a nice side effect of the do-over—seeing what an ill-mannered snot you were. I shrugged that off and took my dad’s arm. It made me wonder if my dad put on manners too. A thought hit me. Maybe they weren’t the assholes I’d thought of them as. I needed to look at this through my eyes, not my teenaged eyes. Stop it! Focus on the task at hand!

  “Could we just step into the other room?” I asked.

  “Sure, honey. You sure everything’s okay?”

  I laughed. “Quit worrying. I just need to talk to you, and I’d rather get it over with than wait.”

  “You’re making me nervous. Are you pregnant?” He hissed, and tightened his grip on my arm.

  Chapter seven

  “Oh my god, not even close!” I pulled my arm from him, giving him a what the fuck glare. Figures. We didn’t have an audience now. We passed by where Rick was standing, and I angled my head at him to let him know to come with us. I went into the front room, which, since it had no TV, was empty of people.

  “Have a seat,” I said, steering him towards an arm chair. Rick came in behind me, sort of hesitantly. Once my dad sat down, I took Rick’s hand, and sat on the sofa across from where my dad was sitting. It forced Rick to sit down with me. I stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye. In spite of his earlier determination, he looked nervous. I could understand that. My dad could make me nervous too.

  “What’s this all about?” Daddy asked. He looked from me to Rick, and I could see the dots connecting for him. At least he’d put the I’m a good dad face back on. Plus, I wasn’t sitting near enough for him to get hold of me.

  “Dad, I’ve liked Rick for a long time.”

  “I know that.” Oh hell. He sounded like his gruff self. The same man who had met my first boyfriend when both the guy and I were thirteen, and waved a shotgun in the poor guy’s face. Add to that an exaggerated drawl, and my dad asking the guy if he knew what shotguns were used for, and you had the shortest relationship in history. That particular boyfriend was gone before he walked out of the door ten minutes later.

  “He likes me too.”

  “I …like her a lot, sir,” Rick said.

  Whoa. He didn’t sound completely steady. Perhaps he was more intoxicated than I thought. In spite of my dad being a drunk, he was pretty judgmental about others who drank. I stifled my sigh. I needed to get through this. C’mon Tibby. You’re twenty-six, not seventeen. And this is not as horrible as you remember. Handle this like an adult!

  “You do, huh?” said Dad.

  “Yes. I want to ask you if I can take her out and date her. I know I’m older, but I’ve known Tibby for a couple of years, and I don’t care about the age.”

  “Course you don’t. She’s seventeen, hasn’t been around like you.” Crap. Dad was getting all defensive.

  I laughed, trying to keep it light. “Dad, I’ve been dating since I was thirteen. You’ve scared every one of them. Rick just told me how he feels about me. Then he told me he wanted to talk to you right away. I think that’s, well, pretty honorable.” Oh, please please please don’t screw this up because you’ve been drinking, Dad!

  Dad looked at me. “It is, I guess. It’s the decent thing to do. Or the smart thing,” he said, turning to glare at Rick.

  Good grief. Maybe there was a reason I didn’t make this decision back then. I am not sure I could have fielded all this with any kind of grace. I would have gotten all huffy and snippy with my dad, adding it to the list of shit he did to ruin my life, which would have probably doomed the whole thing. Thinking about things that way cheered me immensely. I was already in a better place than I’d been. It wasn’t just because I’d said yes to Rick, either. I might actually come out of this better off. I took a deep breath and banished my nerves.

  “If there are dastardly motives, I’ll figure it out. I’m not stupid.”

  “Why now?” Dad asked Rick.

  “I saw the opportunity and decided to risk it,” Rick said.

  “She’s still in high school. You have the same rules as anyone else who goes out with her. You respect that, and I’ll give you a chance.”

  Rick reached across and shook my dad’s hand. “Thank you, sir. I’ll follow the rules.” He was smiling. Amazingly, he didn’t seem as tanked as before.

  “All right now. Go on, and let me talk to Tibby.”

  Rick smiled at me, and gave me a hug, and then got up and left. I watched him go, loving the way he looked, and then turned back to my dad. No judgement, I thought. Be seventeen and thankful.

  “Thanks, Dad. I know he’s older, but I have known him a while, he used to take me shopping, and never did anything that I would slap him for.”

  “You like him, so why would you slap him?”

  “If he’s creepy, or pushy, or whatever, I would have. Then I would have run like hell.”

  He stood up, pulling me up with him. “That’s my girl. He’s on probation. He’s too old for you, but he does seem to care about you, and he had the guts to talk to me. That’s more than Grab Ass ever did. Speaking of which, this mean you are going to can him?”

  “Yeah. We are close to breaking up anyway. He’s kind of a jerk.”

  “Knew that all along,” Dad grumbled.

  “Well, you have to let me make my own mistakes. You can be happy tha
t now I’m admitting you’re right.”

  “Glad I won’t have to see his sucking up phony face anymore.”

  I laughed. “Hey, don’t be shy. Tell me how you really feel.”

  “I have been telling you. Only now you’re finally listening.”

  I hugged him. “Is it okay if I go now?” I couldn’t be too adult.

  “Yeah, get out of here. No sneaking off to any bedrooms, or I’ll come and find you.”

  “Dad! I can’t believe you think I would do that!”

  “I know my kids,” he said.

  “Well, maybe I am trying to change,” I said in a snotty tone. Gee, thanks, Dad. Stop! Stop it! Your parents are not the point here!

  “We’ll see, kiddo. We’ll see. Go find the guy. Stay out of anywhere dark.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and hurried out of the front room. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere dark, but somewhere sparsely populated would be nice. I rounded the corner, and headed into the kitchen. Rick was standing there, talking to Jake in low tones. He looked up as I came in and his whole face lit up. Wow. Wow wow wow. That was really great to see. I couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked like that when he saw me. I could feel my knees melting.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said as he reached for me. His arm went around my waist, and he pulled me close to him. I leaned into him, and saw my dad heading back into the living room, sending a glare our way without breaking his stride. I rolled my eyes at him as he went past. Rick heaved a big sigh.

  “I am so glad that’s over,” he said.

  “That was smart of you. I know he respects that you came to him up front.”