Page 71 of Habibi: Always and Forever

LIKE NORMAL COUPLES

H e waded through the crowd like a silver gemstone in a sea of dirt and coal. I didn’t know if it was magic or just him, but he was beautiful.

The words and feelings were still foreign in my mind after spending an eternity as a prisoner within my own body. The mere thought made me angry. It made me want to punch a wall, shatter some bones, crack some ribs, but…

Then he approached, and my entire ecosystem was at peace.

This feeling for him might be entirely new, but it felt so…liberating.

Maybe it was because a part of me, the one buried deep within my subconscious, recognized Caleb for who he was. My soulmate.

Or maybe this was what it was like to feel love for the first time in my life. Love that wasn’t orchestrated, manipulated or erased. Just pure love. Pure me.

“Hey!” he said and leaned in for a kiss.

I braced myself as if he was about to hurt me when I knew for a fact that wasn’t the case, and looked around me, at all the people passing by. Were they staring?

His lips touched my cheek, taking me by surprise—I really thought he’d have gone for my lips—and he pulled back before I even had a moment to embrace the sensations in my body.

He smiled, his gray eyes shining like two stars one could make a wish on.

“Don’t worry,” he said, reaching for me with his gloved hand and giving it a squeeze. “I know this… thing …is still new to you.”

I bit my lip and held him back.

“It’s not…I don’t…” I sighed. “I don’t want to be like that.”

His smile softened.

“It’s okay, Wade. You don’t have to explain. I understand. You had your whole world shaken from its very roots. It will take some adjusting.”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “I just need to get over myself.”

He tugged at me gently, making me focus my wandering gaze back on him, and his expression turned serious.

“It’s only been four days. This is your first full day as a free person. Don’t do this to yourself.”

I nodded.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

“I know,” he said and flicked his short silver hair back as if it were long and luscious. “I’m always right. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

He slapped my cheek a couple times for good measure, making my body come to life. But not in the way it used to before. I didn’t see red in front of me. I didn’t feel the urge to kill just because I felt a twinge of desire for him, like I used to when I was trapped under Christian’s spell.

No, this was…exhilarating. Breathtaking. And it felt so much more dangerous. And yet I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Before I thought too much about it, or got worried about bystanders again, I pulled him onto me by the small of his back and drove my lips to his the way I craved.

It was nothing but a chaste kiss, but I’d be damned if it didn’t shake me to my very core, just like every time he kissed me.

Especially as his power of empathy unleashed on me and I was flooded with a passion, desire, longing and sadness that weren’t mine, but I felt them as if they were, all the way right to my heart. Just like he could experience every worry and concern within me and pick apart my very soul.

It should scare me, his power. And it did, but when we were like this, in each other’s arms, kissing, it felt like the safest place in the world. As if it were just the two of us, and every one and every thing else ceased to exist.

We pushed each other back as if we needed all our strength to separate, and I stared at him for a moment before we both broke out in laughter.

“We’re a mess, aren’t we?” he said.

I took a deep breath and shrugged.

“We are. But I like it. I like us,” I said.

He smiled. I offered him my hand, and he frowned, glancing around.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I didn’t respond. Just grabbed his hand and held onto him for dear life.

I might not be able to feel his relief through his gloves that blocked any empathic links, but I could feel it in his posture, in the softness of his face, in his slow breathing.

“So…what are we doing at Camden Lock Market in the middle of the day?” he asked after a moment of just standing there, probably pissing off all the people trying to walk around us.

“I thought we’d do something normal for a change. As a couple.” The word felt alien on my lips. I didn’t want it to, but it did. But it didn’t matter. I’d just have to repeat it a few thousand times more to make it feel like home.

“Us and normal don’t go together. Don’t you know that already?” he chuckled.

“We can try. Doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“And this is the place you thought we could be a normal couple?” He glanced around as if in total disbelief.

My stomach clenched and my throat tightened.

“What? Why? What’s wrong with Camden Lock Market?”

Other than the old witch living in the tunnels underneath, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with one of the busiest places in London.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just where all the rich-prick witches hang out.”

“They do?”

“Well, it is a stone’s throw from Primrose Hill, and what did we say about North London?” he asked, leaning in as if testing me on my maths.

“That’s where all the posh witches live.”

“Shoot. I didn’t think.”

Caleb laughed.

“It’s okay. We’ll just stay away from that side of the market. There’s still plenty to see.”

“Are you sure? We can go somewhere else.”

Caleb nodded.

“Wherever we go, there’s going to be something ‘ wrong ’ with it. So we might as well enjoy ourselves.”

“Okay. Let’s do this,” I said and walked down the path with Caleb, browsing the shops, stopping to check the restaurant menus or to orient ourselves in the maze that was the Camden Lock Market.

It felt nauseatingly mundane. Almost like a dream. Being normal. Doing normal things. Not hunting witches or planning their demise. Not chasing after evil vampires and putting an end to their reign. It was human. Just being in the world.

And yet, I longed for more of it. So much more. I’d had enough pain and death in my life. Could anyone blame me for just wanting to be?

“How about ice cream?” I asked after loading up on Korean burgers and feeling all the heavier and sated for it.

“Ooh, yes. Ice cream! I could murder an ice cream right now,” Caleb said, then stopped in his tracks and bit his lip. “What an unfortunate choice of words.”

I chuckled. “Hey! That’s what normal people say. It’s not our fault that our lives are literally surrounded by blood and schemes.”

Caleb considered my words for a moment before he nodded.

“You’re right. Let’s go kill some ice cream instead of people for a change!” he exclaimed, making more than a few heads turn our way.

We casually ignored them and approached Charm Café, a small shop sandwiched between a charity shop and a fish-and-chip shop.

The bell above the door jingled as we walked in, and its ringing reverberated through my very bones with a sense of awe and familiarity that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

I turned to Caleb, who narrowed his eyes as if he, too, had felt it.

Before we could say anything or get the hell out of Dodge, a young man greeted us from behind the counter, and his smile…it put me at ease for some reason.

“Welcome to Charm Café! How can I help you?”

We both turned to the man and approached him with caution, even if he didn’t seem to pose an immediate threat.

He did feel magical, though. I had no idea how I knew, but I did.

“We…we were after some ice cream,” Caleb asked with caution.

“Of course,” the man exclaimed and side-stepped to the other side of the counter where the ice cream display fridge was situated, and he leaned two very hairy arms on top of the fridge shelf where the cones, bowls, spoons, and napkins were kept and put his head on top, smiling widely.

“I’ve got every flavour you can imagine. What will it be? Some Truth Tiramisu for you?” he asked Caleb, who raised his eyebrow in response. “Or some Liberation Lychee for you, perhaps?” He turned to me.

“Wh-what?” I asked him.

Could it be a coincidence? Or was this guy a magical threat?

“I said I have chocolate brownie, passion fruit, and everything in between,” the man said, but when I looked at Caleb, he was equally confused, which meant we’d both heard something different.

Caleb frowned and, with some hesitation, looked down at the fridge. He cocked his head to the side and bit his lip.

“I guess I’ll go for Apple Pie,” he said, and the man got immediately to work.

“Will that be one or two scoops of Apple Pie Passion?”

“What?” Caleb asked.

“I said, will that be one or two scoops of the Apple Pie flavour?”

Caleb frowned again as if he’d heard differently the first time around, but told the man he wanted two scoops, and then it was my turn to pick a flavour, but when I looked down at the fridge, I couldn’t find any apple pie whatsoever.

Instead, it was filled with variations of chocolate and vanilla, and right at the corner was some lemon sorbet.

“One chocolate brownie, one lemon, please,” I said, and as the guy served my ice cream, I turned to Caleb and grimaced.

I was beyond confused.

“One chocolate comfort and one lemon luck for you,” he said as he handed me my cone.

I had no idea what that meant, but I wasn’t about to ask him to clarify, since it seemed whenever we did, he just changed what he said anyway.

Instead, we focused on paying him and getting the hell out of there.

“It’s two pounds,” he said. “Or whatever you can spare.”

“That…that seems awfully cheap for ice cream. In London. In Camden,” Caleb said.

The man shrugged.

“I don’t need much to get by. I prefer bringing love and fortune to people.”

“Fortune?” I asked, putting two pounds and some change in the man’s hand, and his smile deepened.

“There’s life for you beyond your cage, my friend,” he said, and without missing a beat, turned to Caleb. “And you need to stop worrying and let yourself love again.”

“What?” Caleb asked.

The man shook his head, and I was fully prepared for him to change his monologue, but all he said was, “You’ll see. Fate has great, beautiful things in store for you both.”