With one last sympathetic look, Lia left her to her brooding.
At the very least, she wasn’t dressing up for him anymore. She was going home and putting on slobby clothes from now on and if he showed up, it would be obvious that she was done. Ruin had won.
Was she trying to kill him? Even though he was immortal, he was beginning to think it might happen.
He’d stayed away for the better part of three weeks. Sure, he’d stopped by to check on her, but she didn’t invite him in and he didn’t ask, but every time he saw her, she had on curve-hugging worn jeans and t-shirts so thin and soft he wanted to run his hands across them.
“It’s my brother’s,” she said with her eyebrows raised, as if in challenge.
“What is?”
“My t-shirt. You were staring. That’s why it’s so big and comfortable.”
“It looks very comfortable,” he allowed. If by comfortable she implied it would make him vastly uncomfortable—then she was right. It was nearly as bad as that dress she’d worn in February.
No. Nothing could be that bad. It’s like that dress was designed as the perfect temptation for him. What a horribly miserable night that had been. If only it’d been colder that night or they were somewhere that actually experienced real winters. He’d felt like he was about to burst into flames. Just thinking about her in that dress made a rush of heat trip through him, and it was March.
“And big... and shapeless,” she said.
He stared at her. Shapeless? “It’s not shapeless. I wish it was shapeless.”
She squinted. “Why?”
“Because we’re meant to be just friends. But how can we stay just friends when you dress so... so... provocatively!”
She bit her lips, fighting a smile. “I’m dressed provocatively?”
“You probably can’t help it.”
“Oh, I can. I tried. I just had you pegged wrong. Clearly, you’re a... baggy t-shirt and paint-splattered jeans sort of guy.” She stepped back and held the door open. “Would you like to come in?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Because I’m dressed so provocatively?”
“Because I promised your brother we’d be friends—and what I’m feeling for you now is not friendship.”
She clenched her fists at her sides. “Listen, Ruin, if I’m an obligation to fulfill—a promise to keep and that’s it—stop coming around. Yes, my brother died, and I will never get over that. Not in a year. Not in a lifetime. But you’re compounding that hurt by insisting my brother’s death determines your decisions more than my happiness. Phillip never would have wanted you to hurt me, and that’s what you’re doing.”
He took a deep breath. “Phoebe, I’m not capable of being more than a friend to you. The nature of what I am... it’s not compatible with your happiness.” She had no idea. There were so many strikes against them as a couple. It could never work. Any aspirations he had to that effect were ridiculous. “It can’t work.”
“Then, stop coming by.”
“What?” She had to be kidding. His whole life seemed to revolve around these visits. When he wasn’t with her, he was thinking about her.
“I can’t be like this without wanting to be with you.”
He understood that. He felt the same way. “That doesn’t preclude friendship.”
She cleared her throat. “I meant with you in a non-friendshippy sort of way.” She stepped forward until her forehead brushed his chin and then, placing her hands on his chest, she stood on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear, “I meant like this.” Her hot breath tickled and tormented him, and then she dropped her mouth to just below his ear and touched her tongue to his skin. She dropped slowly off her toes as she dragged her tongue down his skin to his collarbone where kissed and then nipped with her teeth.
He grabbed her shoulders. Tipping his chin down, he took her mouth with his. He felt like a phoenix in the middle of a renewal. Burning. The flames licked his skin as he pressed her mouth open with his own and brushed her tongue—that amazing tongue—with his. She moaned into his mouth. He wrapped his arms around her.
Panting, she broke the kiss. “That is what I was talking about.” Her eyes were dark, her pupils dilated. “Tell me you didn’t feel anything.”
“I felt a lot... but…” That didn’t change that things wouldn’t work out between them.
Closing her eyes, she stepped back. “Tell me one thing, Ruin.”
“What?”
“Does being an angel mean you shouldn’t have... an intimate relationship with me?”
He wasn’t an angel, but… “No.”
She bit her lower lip and opened her eyes—they were glassy and looked wet. “Have you had relationships with other women?”
An actual relationship? Once. There were women over the years. He was no angel. But only one relationship. He could explain, but it was counter-productive to what he was trying to achieve. “Yes.”
A tear overflowed from her eye and she stepped inside the house. “I don’t want to see you anymore.” She slammed the door shut.
He heard her crying inside the house and snapped his fingers. He couldn’t listen to her crying. Not again. He’d held her a few times when she’d cried over her brother. He couldn’t be the reason she was crying. Not again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sometimes what you wanted—wasn’t at all what you wanted.
In April, she decided to bury herself in community service. She was going to forget Ruin so hard—so completely. She volunteered taking meals to people unable to leave their house. It seemed like it was working... right up until Mrs. Yaconetti spilled marinara sauce all over her dress proclaiming it was ruined. The poor woman wasn’t anticipating Phoebe bursting into tears. After she’d recovered, Mrs. Yaconetti told her about being widowed for twenty years and they cried together.
In May, she started to wish he was named something uncommon. Cecil. Barnaby. Archibald. Why wasn’t he named Archibald? He’d ruined the word “ruin” forever and people seemed to say it all the time, but she didn’t burst into tears anymore. Lia got engaged and kept it secret for two weeks rather than upset the delicate balance that was Phoebe’s sanity. She’d become that person.
Then she wasn’t. As she sat beside Mrs. Yaconetti for her eighty-fifth birthday on May twenty-fourth, Phoebe stared at the flickering bonfire that was her new friend’s cake and smiled. Life went on. She existed without Phillip. She could live without Ruin. Dammit, she was on her own and doing just fine. She was evolving. If Ruin had stuck around, maybe she’d be a codependent mess by now. But she was strong. Mrs. Yaconetti grabbed her hand as she attempted to blow out the most candles Phoebe had ever seen on a cake. Her face felt sunburnt. Life was good. She’d be fine.
In June, Phoebe took a class in stained glass windows. It was fun and distracting right up until the instructor insisted they visit a local church to check out their angelic windows. Nobody needed that kind of pressure and stress. She was healing. She was capable. Empowered Phoebe was not going to be sideswiped like this. After a ten-minute rant about how secular subjects never broke anybody’s heart, her class fee was returned and she was invited to pick a less controversial class.
Lia convinced her to go on a double date with her for a Fourth of July party at Lake Mead. Her date was utterly forgettable—other than his middle name was Archibald. They had less than no chemistry. He did have a golden retriever named Cookie. He had pictures of Cookie in his wallet. She had pictures of Lia and Phillip. That defined relationships—who or what a person kept pictures of. Maybe she’d get a pet. She’d start little—with a goldfish.
Phoebe came home from the party to a mowed lawn. Again. Also, Ruin had fixed the broken back step. He’d been doing little things outside her house, like Phillip used to.
How could she get over somebody who still was around?
Maybe she didn’t want to. There was a certain sort of peace in being on her own but knowing somebody else was watching over her, making sure she d
idn’t come to harm. She missed Ruin, sometimes as much as she missed Phillip, but both men felt like comforting presences, even if she didn’t see them.
Not that she wouldn’t mind seeing Ruin, but she’d never gotten so much as a phone number from him. She’d considered yelling his name now and again until he appeared, but that might push Lia or people nearby into an intervention or a 911 call. With her peace and independence came clarity. Maybe she should have given him more time. Maybe it wasn’t too late.
Walking into the cemetery in mid-July, she stopped beside her family’s plots.
As she crouched in front of her brother’s gravestone and laid down flowers, Phoebe knew Ruin was there too. “I know you’re around,” she whispered. Somewhere nearby, he was still watching over her as he’d promised her brother. She’d felt the comfort of his closeness again and again. Sometimes, she’d even sworn she could feel his arms around her for a moment—the imprint of them. Maybe that was his superpower—he could comfort without having to even be around.
It was a lame superpower. She wanted to drop kick it.
She wanted Ruin to be with her. The last few months had taught her that she could be on her own and be alone, but she didn’t necessarily want to be. She wanted Ruin.
Standing up, she shaded her eyes as she looked around, knowing she wouldn’t see him. He’d taken her at her word that day in March. She never “saw” him anymore. Stubborn immortal.
Did he still want her or had that faded because she refused to consider anything but a physical relationship?
The sharp pang of lusting after him had dulled to this longing to just be with him. She wanted to bring that rare smile to his mouth and see that look on his face when he tried something new and really liked it.
Who knew how many interesting mortal things he’d tried in the last four months? And she hadn’t been around for any of it because she’d thought there were only two options—either they had a romantic relationship or they had nothing. Now they had next-to-nothing and it really sucked. There had to be something she could do to get back to being friends. She could build on friendship. Operation Seduce Ruin could be a stealthy sneak attack... that took months and months, as long as she was with him.
“What would you do?” She brushed her hand across the top of her brother’s tombstone. It was hard to believe it’d been seven months. She couldn’t have imagined making it through a month, let alone so many. Thankfully, Ruin had been there in the beginning when she was such a mess, and then, she’d pushed him away. “I didn’t mean to,” she said aloud. “Seriously, Phillip, what would you do?”
A piece of paper fluttered in the wind toward her and dropped suddenly, catching on her shoe.
“You think? Maybe?” She was clean out of ideas so maybe she’d trust in fate and go with this.
She pulled out a pen and wrote on the piece of paper:
Hey Ruin,
I miss you. I wish we could hang out again. We could be just friends.
Phoebe agonized over the salutation before just signing her name and calling it good. She put his name on the front and left it beside her brother’s tombstone under a rock. Since her brother had started this thing—he could continue to be their go-between. This was the only place she was sure that Ruin would come, and the only place no one else was likely to stop by and pick up the note.
Now, she had only one day to get through before she could return and see what he said.
The next day crawled by. It was the first time in a long time that she ran out the door right at five p.m. Usually, she didn’t visit the cemetery every day. Most of the time, it was once or twice a week. Ruin knew that. Her hands clenched the steering wheel. She could play it cool and go home and check for a response tomorrow. Phoebe made the turn for the cemetery. He was a guy. An immortal guy. Playing coy was probably wasted on him.
She walked slowly to her brother’s grave. As slowly as she could. There was a different paper under the same rock. Her heart sped up and her mouth went dry. This was it. “I hope you were right,” she whispered as she picked up the note with the letter “P” on the outside.
His handwriting was chicken scratches—typical boy. She wrinkled her nose as she tried to decipher it.
The days have seemed long. Even though I know they’re not. Twenty-four hours doesn’t feel like twenty-four hours anymore, but I know it’s the same number of hours, minutes, and seconds it was before. I think that means I miss you too. Are you sure you want to be just friends? -R
She pulled out a new piece of paper after pocketing his.
Ruin,
I feel the same way about the days being long. Today was very long. We could try being friends again. I was still trying to figure things out after Phillip died and maybe I needed time to figure out how to exist without him, but I’m done with that, and I need a friend. Please.
Phoebe
She almost scratched out the “please” and then she almost threw out the entire note. But she could feel him watching her. She added:
P.S. You could call me.
She tacked on her phone number just in case he’d forgotten it. There. That wasn’t bad. Setting it under the rock, she grimaced at her brother’s gravestone. “I bet you’re loving this. You always said I should date more and now you’re almost encouraging me to date less. Of course Ruin and I were basically dating before, but we didn’t call it that. Maybe if I don’t call them dates, he won’t know. It’s sort of underhanded, but I think you’d appreciate that kind of plan.”
Phoebe sat down cross-legged. “Did you know when you told him to be my friend that he’d take you at your word?” If so, she wanted to punch her brother, just like she had when they were kids. She ran her hands along the tops of the grass beside her. It tickled her palms. “Remember when we used to go to the lake and swim until we were burnt to a crisp and then we’d go lay on the grass in the shade and whine about staying out so long? Eventually, mom would bring us out watermelon and we’d forget our pain and get sloppy-soaked with watermelon and go out and swim some more to wash it off.” She sighed. “I miss that. Being the only one left to store all those memories is hard. It feels like such a responsibility.”
“I feel like... if I forget those days, they might as well have not happened. I’m the only one left who remembers them. If anything happens to me…” She shook her head.
“This is why, when I have kids, I’m going to have like a dozen.” She frowned. “If I have kids. It’s probably not a great start to have a platonic relationship with an angelic being.” Phoebe chewed her lip. “You probably can’t have kids with angels... even if they are willing. I bet the sex is out of this world though.” Was it weird to laugh to yourself while in a cemetery? Yeah. It was. “If you’re around, you’re probably looking for a stick to jab into your ears rather than hear your fifteen-minute-younger sister talk about having sex.” She pulled out Ruin’s note to her and read it again and then sighed and put it back in her purse. “You probably don’t have to worry. At least not with Ruin. He’s been taking care of me, though. He mows the lawn every other week for me. Did I tell you that? It’s not like he could take your place, but he’s helped. I miss you, Phillip, but I feel stronger now than I was at first. Better. Healthier. Thank you for sending Ruin.”
Pushing to her feet, she brushed away a stray tear. She cried here every so often. If Ruin was watching, he most likely wouldn’t guess he was the cause this time. Just friends. She must have been crazy to suggest it.
He didn’t even wait until she’d left this time before he snapped his fingers and stopped time so he could go read her response.
These past four months had been hell. He’d felt the thud of every second like he did on New Year’s Eve. This made no sense. She was mortal. He was immortal. It couldn’t work. Could it?
Ruin stopped beside her and wiped the glittering frozen tear from her cheek.
“You... confuse me,” he said with a sigh. He wasn’t sure whether to take her at her word and try to be her fri
end when he wanted so much more. Perhaps she’d gotten over him and she really did want only friendship. Ruin continued past her and picked up the note, reading the curvy lettering quickly. Then, he reread it.
His brother Zeit had told him that mortal women often had subtext in everything they said. It was possible this missive was the same way.
“Does she want to be friends? Does she not?” Great. He was talking to her brother’s gravestone like she did. Sighing, he tucked the note in his pocket. He’d kept the other note too. He was becoming as sentimental as mortals. “It’s confusing. She is confusing,” he grumbled, pointing at Phoebe. Nonetheless, he willed a piece of paper into being and sat down to write something.
It was easier and harder to write things out. He felt like he could say what he thought, but coming up with the exact words was... a pain in the ass. There was no other way to describe it. He wasn’t cut out for beautiful prose. His handwriting alone should tell her that.
He wrote her initial on the outside. Okay, he’d gotten that far. Now what?
I think being friends is a good bad unwise
Obviously this was a rough draft. He scribbled out the entire sentence.
More importantly…
How are you? You seemed upset today.
No. Then, she’d know he’d been watching her. Of course, she must know that because she’d left a note for him. Or maybe she’d left it with her brother and trusted him to pass along the message to her “guardian angel.”
That got crossed out too.
I’m worried about you. I’ve never been worried about anyone before. It feels awful—like things crawling inside my ribs and gnawing at where my heart is.
No. Too descriptive. He slashed a line through that.
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