Page 13 of Hopelessly Teavoted

His voice cracked. His wrecked face pulled into a furrow as his eyes darted from the little skull bells to the cat cup in front of him.

Then to the sign over the counter with a rainbow Black Lives Matter fist wearing a pointed hat.

The stickers with the words Hex Bigotry, Witches.

All little relics of Persephone, her shop, and her vibe, had to be overwhelming for him.

There was so much loveliness lost in the death of his parents, so much magic, real and imagined, in the town of Hallowcross, now gone forever with them.

Without thinking about how it might make her look, Victoria walked over to Azrael and threaded her fingers through his.

For a moment, she felt naked, as though the lace and silk had evaporated.

She hoped he didn’t notice the way her breasts tightened, nipples hardening under the delicate fabric.

The traitors. His hand was warm, and she concentrated on that feeling as her nerves tingled with the magic that rested in his palms. She shut her eyes, unwilling to see if revulsion flashed across his face.

She only opened them once he exhaled loudly enough for her to feel the whoosh of air, which sent tremors down her spine.

“I forgot about that,” he whispered. Azrael was a witch and Vickie was devil-kissed, and when they touched their magics recognized each other, fire and insight, sparks and might. Their hands knew each other.

Probably the rest of their bodies would, too, but she sure as hell would never get a chance to test that out again.

She hadn’t forgotten, though, what it had been like to trace his tingling skin.

He sighed again for a moment, and she wanted to capture it, to swallow it whole.

His eyes were shut, and both their hands rested now on top of the table before he stood up, not breaking the link, and she was reminded of how tall he was.

That much she had forgotten. Had he always been this tall up close?

It was the closest they had been since that moment six years ago, and he seemed larger.

Taller, broader. Even the air around him felt thicker with grief, she realized.

But when Azrael opened his eyes, the startling greenish strands in the brown, his pupils blown wide, it was no longer sadness she saw there, and she stepped forward without another thought.

The heel of one of her precarious shoes slipped, and she fell directly into him, losing her balance and mourning ahead of time the indignity of falling flat on her face.

Which never happened. Instead, a strong arm wrapped around her waist, holding her upright against him while the other, still entwined in her own, pulled upward and, for a moment, held her in a pose as though they were tangoing here on the floor of the tea shop.

It felt like time froze with the inhale she held for a few agonizing seconds, their bodies aligned with the stars, the thrum of magic rippling warmly across all of her.

She breathed deeply, hoping he didn’t notice her heartbeat sped up.

Praying simultaneously that the incessant pounding of his own wasn’t just the adrenaline of avoiding a near fall.

Perhaps there was lust left yet in Azrael Hart for her, though she wasn’t kidding herself into thinking it was meaningful.

All those years gone by, and her stomach still swooped low, looping as though she were about to board a particularly dangerous and thrilling roller coaster.

He tipped her back, and for a brief series of seconds, she thought he might kiss her.

Her heart pounded. They had been few enough that she had forgotten how breathless the times before Az had kissed her were. How momentous.

Evidence of a somber thought danced across his face, and he winced and set her upright, moving away.

“I’m sorry,” she started, the cold of his absence noticeable all over.

Oh goddess. She was so off. She’d read it wrong. Shit. What if he thought she had lunged into him and tripped on purpose? Shit.

“No. I am,” he began. His voice sounded shattered again. Tense. “I got carried away. My dad always used to sweep my mom like that, and for a moment, when I went to catch you, I lost myself. I didn’t mean anything by it, and I’m sorry.”

He didn’t mean anything by it. Sure. That made sense.

She’d even heard it before. From him.

It doesn’t mean anything. The words echoed, hollow across the stretch of time, but the hurt in her chest felt recent. Raw.

Victoria couldn’t fathom why it would make her feel so gapingly empty, but she could forgive him a mistake in a moment of grief.

His parents were a great love story, and it was fair to mourn them. If part of her wished he felt even a little bit of that intensity toward her, she could push that to the side. Pretend it away.

She was good at ignoring sobering things. It had been necessary to survive growing up in the cold Starnberger mansion, and she had polished the skill over the decades, sharpening sunshine and joy into weapons against the abyss of cruel riches.

“Don’t worry, Az. Here, come with me to the back, and I’ll change into more sensible clothing.” Heading through the door without turning around, she didn’t want to see whatever honesty his face would betray. “I was hoping you might be able to help me with an odd thing that a ghost told me.”

If the declaration startled him, he didn’t say so.

“Was it ‘long time, no see’?” he called from the other room. “You know, because you can’t see a ghost—well, most of the time, anyway?”

Shaking her head, Vickie laughed awkwardly. The hinges protested as he pushed through the swinging door behind her. She could feel his longing for things to be normal between them. Friendly. It mirrored her own. Well, almost.

“Hey, Vickie, why are ghosts so lonely?”

“Why?” She sat down in front of the desk to unbuckle her heels, propping them one at a time on the surface and rubbing at her ankles a little after removing the snug straps.

One of them had dug an awkward line through the flowers tattooed on the inside of her leg, and she spent a few extra moments kneading the skin there.

Azrael looked away, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

Great. Now she’d made him uncomfortable. She didn’t allow herself to entertain the possibility that the look on his face was something else.

“Why are ghosts lonely, Az?” she tried again.

He cleared his throat.

“Because they, well, they’ve got no body to lean on.

” His voice had cracked a little. A crooked smile snuck up the side of his serious face as she groaned at the joke.

A nervous hand scrubbed through his hair.

She wanted to act normal. To put him at ease, the way he was clearly trying to do for her with ghastly wordplay.

“That was awful.” Vickie pulled tie-dye sweatpants out of a bag under her desk and shrugged them on, still seated, and slid her feet into green Chucks.

Slipping the silky robe off, she folded it and placed it in the bag, taking out her favorite T-shirt, faded yellow with pink roses and a cartoon beaver on it.

She stood up and tugged the shirt over her head.

Azrael was studying a spot on the wall as though it held the secrets to the universe, his throat working. If he had any more ghost puns, they were dead on his lips at the idea of her changing.

So he was just as tightly wound about nakedness and bodies as ever.

That tracked.

“Listen, Az,” she said, washing her hands and moving to measure out tea into containers for tomorrow morning.

He moved, without instruction, to do the same for the pastry dry ingredients, following the little laminated signs Persephone had kept taped on the cabinets without even needing to read them.

“Thanks for doing that,” she said, and he nodded.

“It’s like second nature, really, Victoria. It’s nothing.” Azrael’s voice was rough, and she wondered if it was the memories of his mother filling it with ragged emotion.

Vickie tensed. “Don’t. I know things haven’t been the same, but don’t use my full name like we aren’t even anything anymore. We’re friends, however distant. Full names are for, like, weighty confessions. Breakups. Vows of eternal devotion. Please.”

Az’s face softened. “Vickie. Sorry. I thought it might help with, you know…” He finished with the flour and ran a nervous hand through his hair, leaving traces of white in its wake. “With making it feel normal between the two of us.”

“Az, you’re a witch and I see dead people.

We won’t ever be normal.” It was unfair, really, because normal men couldn’t even look like that: cheekbones chiseled from marble, peppered with a five-o’clock shadow, and hair tossed into a smooth perfection of curls that his fingers twitched over, again.

If only Azrael had ever been a little less pretty, this all could have been easier.

“I’m a high school English teacher,” he corrected. “And you run a tea and pastry shop. We’re normal,” he insisted.

“Sure,” she said. “There’s that. Though, truth be told, it’s kind of magical on its own without the powers. Okay. We can play normie if you want. What do you want, by the way?”

“I wanted to ask you a favor,” he said. Vickie’s heart fluttered traitorously. “I know you don’t like to use the flames without good reason, but I never got to say goodbye.”

Ah. That made more sense than the romantic declaration she had, for a moment, expected.

Hoped for? But she was soon distracted, looking at him.

Misery wrote itself in lines across his forehead, and she ached for the depth of his sadness.

Kicked herself for her errant, inappropriate thoughts when he’d clearly matured enough not to make every hour sexy time in his mind.