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The n Charlie Came Over

L ying in bed in the morning, Helena felt so darn snuggly and delicious she thought she might burst into cream-puff bubbles.

Despite her assurances that she accepted her lover as he was, Rafferty had shifted back to human.

“You know, I noticed something,” Helena said, examining him now in the soft glow from her bed side lamp.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, his eyes closed, one hand tucked behind his head, the other curled up on his stomach, totally at rest.

Helena rolled on to her stomach, propping her chin onto her palm. “When you look like your ot her self—”

He immediately made a disparaging face, which made h er laugh.

“No, don’t do that,” she chided, smoothing the expression with a tender hand. “I’m just saying, when you look like your other self, you look less gaunt. You’ve thickened up. Put on som e weight.”

He pinched his eyebrows a little at that obs ervation.

“Here, come on. You switch back and I’ll get you a mirror,” she said trying to bounce up but found it difficult as her legs got tied up in blankets. “Go ahead . Switch.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t want to.”

“Oh come on. Let me see your other face,” she pressed, but he just jutted his chin and crossed his arms.

She sighed. “Well, why not?”

“I like this face,” he said, peeking up at her. “It looks li ke yours.”

Smiling, she leaned forward to giving him another one of the soft kisses she just couldn’t get e nough of.

“Are you hungry?” he w hispered.

Wrinkling her nose, she took stock. “Yeah, I guess so. I was thinking I was going to reheat up that pot pie you made me and try to finish it off for br eakfast.”

He scoffed at that.

“Hey, don’t do that. I liked that pot pie,” she defended. It had been bright and happy and comforting both when served originally and when she had it cold for lunch y esterday.

“I’ll make you something fresh,” he said and pulled away the covers to get out of bed. The sight made her pause as she took in the line of his natural body while he moved to the top of her dresser where she kept his real clothes.

“Is that how you looked before? When you were alive?” s he asked.

He paused and looked down at his body, then up again to the mirror over her dresser.

“I don’t remember, actually,” he said. “My sense of self was destroyed when I died, so possibly?”

He kept looking at his face though, turning it this way and that.

“When’s the last time you looked at yourself?” she asked, knee-walking ou t of bed.

“When would I have needed to?” he countered, but she remembered he had seen his face in the mirrors at the clothing store. Still, she wondered why he was being defensive about it.

Slipping her hands around his waist, she enjoyed the feel of his solid form. She fervently wished she could keep him forever, that he didn’t have to go back and there didn’t have to be this terrible cost to even this innocent moment of intimacy between lovers. No amount of demon magic could grant her that wish, she knew.

“Come on. I’m hungry,” she said and turned to pluck her terry bathrobe from where it hung from her closet door instead of getting dressed properly. “I think I’ll take a quic k shower—”

Just then the doorb ell rang.

The two of them looked at each other in alarm. “Who could that—” she started to say, but then a possibility struck her. “Cindy! Last night. What she did… police would investigate.” She pressed her fingers to her lips in concern. “But how do we explain how we teleported her to the hospital?”

Rafferty’s eyebrows furrowed hard as they both thought. “I could always kill them?” h e offered.

She smacked his arm. “No! You cannot always k ill them!”

“Ow, I was kidding,” he said, rubbing his arm, then pulled on his shirt to work the buttons. “Teach me for trying to make a joke,” he grumbled.

“Okay well, I need to put more clothes on if it’s the police. Could you go answer…?” Then her phone pinged. “Just go answer the door and keep them busy. Please,” she said as she dove among the devastation of her bed to find her phone.

“As you command, my lady,” he said, stepping out of the room, receiving a pillow at the back of her head as payment. He chuckled ba ck at her.

Helena finally found her phone not in the bed but on the floor beside it, face down. It pinged again just as she got her fingers around the edge. The screen lit up to show the message notifications fro m Charlie.

“Helena, it’s not the police,” Raffer ty called.

“Crap,” she whispered, deciding she would respond to him after she dealt with the door, and took a shower… and procrastinated a whi le longer…

“Who is it?” she asked as she left her bedroom to pad down her hallway, still in her robe.

“Helena?” Charlie’s voi ce called.

Oh crap, she thought, but there was nothing for it now. As she came into her main room, she spotted her friend standing by the door, his eyes red from crying. Please be about Cindy, please be ab out Cindy.

But the look he gave her told her it wasn’t.

“Did you know?!” he demanded, pivoting from Rafferty, who prudently shut the door, t o Helena.

“Charlie, you need to take a breath,” she tried to say, but he wasn’t going to have it.

“Did. Y ou. KNOW!”

Helena stiffened her back. “No,” she said.

Charlie stood there panting. He blinked as what she said registered. “No? You did n’t know?”

“No, not ‘no.’ No, you are not going to come into my house and start screaming at me because you’re angry at someone else,” she stated in no uncerta in terms.

Charlie’s eyes flared again as he understood. He opened his mouth to scream again, but then the mature part of his brain, not dictated by emotion, forced him to hesitate. Then to take a breath. Then to deflate. His head dropped and Helena moved, opening her arms to her friend. Holding on, he buried his head in her shoulder.

“Oh God, Helena! What am I going to do?” h e sobbed.

Over her friend’s head, Rafferty indicated he was heading to her kitchen and Helena gave him a tiny nod, with a mouthed “Thank you.” As he passed, Rafferty squeezed her shoulder reas suringly.

She stayed that way, rubbing Charlie’s back and letting him cry until all that were left were shaky breaths. “Here, let’s sit down and talk, and I will tell you what I know,” she said, encouraging him toward t he table.

“Thank you,” Charlie said tearfully, sniffing hard. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“This is not your fault, Char. And it’s not mine either,” she said.

He horked another sniff. “You’re right. It’s fucking Chris’s,” he agreed and dropped into a chair so he could plop his head onto the table’s surface. “I wouldn’t have cared as much if he told me or at least asked for my permission. I would have understood, you know. I mean, we’ve both done boys’ weekend before, but this… this isn’t the same.”

“No, it’s not the same, is it?” Helena agreed, dropping her tissue box in front of him before sitting down kitty corner from him a t the end.

Rafferty reappeared, poking his head out of the kitchen. “Helena,” he said softly, “where is your cof feemaker?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Charlie. Can you wait a moment? I’ll be right back,” she said, patting his hand.

“Yeah, okay,” Charlie said, clutching his third tissue already. Then before she disappeared he added. “No sugar in mine. I… I am supposed to be watching my intake.” And he broke down cryi ng again.

Helena decided to just leave him be for a moment. Getting him coffee would probably help more. In the kitchen, she beelined past Rafferty to go over to the cupboard above her stove. “When the circle cl—when you had to leave the ‘city’ real fast, my coffeemaker got destroyed, so I went out and got you this.” She pulled out a glass carafe with a plunger in a lid out of the cupboard, the purchase tag still swinging from it, and presented i t to him.

“Ta-da! French press!” she said grinning, wishing she could have given her gift under better circumstances but still eager for his reaction all the same.

Rafferty’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes,” he said, taking it to slide the lid off and look inside at the netted component at the end of the plunger. “Oh this is perfect. I will be able to make you a decent cup of coffee now!” Then his face shifted. “That is if you bought the whole beans and not the pre-grou nd stuff.”

She laughed at his reaction and then reopened the cabinet to show him. “I even got French roast,” she quipped.

Pleased her gift was received so well, Helena moved up to him to steal a kiss, which surprised him as much as the coffee press. “I love you,” she whispered and then turned to go back to administer to her wound ed friend.