Page 17 of Hopelessly Teavoted

He’d insisted on Tuesday. For his schedule, he had told her, but it was really because he didn’t want her to have a late night unless it lined up with the day the shop was closed. He had arrived a little before closing to help her, a few snaps here and there to clean counters and restock.

Az was trying not to be a pervert now, walking behind her up the stairs to the apartment above the shop.

He focused on the hardwood of the stairs, and the bat-patterned coffee cup he’d swiped from downstairs, almost empty.

It was hard for him to be near Vickie without touching her.

The brightly printed sweatpants were flattering, and he had always had a soft spot for that beaver T-shirt.

Az loved her enough to have done her the favor, years ago, of making sure she wasn’t burdened by any strings.

By the weight of his useless, unrequited love.

Hadn’t someone brilliant once written that it was like bitter almonds?

Vickie was tart berries bursting on his tongue, and the knowledge that she would never love him turned the sweetness to dry dust. The bitterness had always been the feeling, not the flavor, he realized, finally understanding one of his favorite books a little better.

When they walked in, he saw that she had not been lying about only organizing in small chunks. He had the sudden urge to ask if he could stay over, since the shop was closed Wednesdays. Spend the night and help her sort things out.

He’d be lying to himself if he pretended not to be interested in more than just home arrangement. But lying to himself had worked out before.

Though less dusty than it had once been, the apartment looked like it hadn’t been rearranged, other than the bedroom and an overflowing bookshelf.

A gray couch with a few cardigans thrown haphazardly across it sagged comfortably against the wall facing a television.

Her shut laptop on the coffee table suggested that she curled up like a cat in the corner of that couch streaming things rather than watching them on the bigger screen.

Az smiled, ran his fingers over a fleecy throw, and glanced over to the kitchen and the door to the bedroom.

Her eyes followed his, and then widened.

Vickie sprinted across the living room to pull the blue door shut, but not before he caught a glimpse of a clothesline spanning the bedroom and drying out some very sexy underthings.

Pinks and yellows and purples, reds in many shades, all festooned in a way that made him bite back a groan just thinking about her hands slipping those delicate lace monstrosities on and off.

Az tried not to be jealous of whoever was lucky enough to see those.

He tried, even less successfully, to banish the lust from curling, warm and fog-like, in his stomach, and seeping lower into regions that could cause physical consequences.

One ought not to sport a raging erection in the midst of an important conversation with someone who was very decidedly just a friend.

He dragged the hand aching to touch her down his own face instead, trying to think of anything sobering. His awful former boss. His old landlady’s litter box. The time he’d accidentally trod on Emily Lickinson’s tail and she’d clawed his foot viciously in return.

He drained the last of his coffee, as though he needed the additional caffeine coursing through his veins along with lust and the magic of her closeness. He set the empty cup down on her counter.

“Hey, Vickie. What do you call it when you steal someone’s coffee?”

The corners of her mouth twitched. She had always laughed at his jokes. Even the bad ones. “What?”

“Mugging,” he deadpanned.

She threw her head back and laughed, a tinkling, familiar sound that made his chest ache. “Your humor still sucks, but I missed that.” Her green eyes relaxed now, looking at him. “I missed you. When you were gone, I missed you.” His heart beat louder, so loud he was pretty sure she could hear it.

“I missed you too,” he said, swallowing. Reminding himself not to get lost. Not daring to hope, but wanting to, a little; the joke was bad enough that he wanted to believe her laughter was for him. “The shakers,” he said, swallowing down his wishes.

“I have them,” she said, walking over to the cream-colored island and setting down her bag before rummaging through the navy cabinets. “Go on and look. I don’t have anything embarrassing in the kitchen,” she said.

Azrael wondered what embarrassing things were tucked away elsewhere that he could convince himself not to fantasize about.

But opening one of the cabinets, all he found was a blue box of macaroni and cheese and a family package of ramen noodles next to a sleeve of crackers. “Healthy eating over here, huh?”

“Shut up. It’s like college again, opening a business, but without a meal plan or my parents’ credit card. I haven’t even had time to go through all the kitchen things here, and I mostly eat the pastries downstairs.”

Smiling, he could picture her existing on nothing but dessert and instant noodles.

She didn’t seem upset about it, so he wouldn’t be either.

But he did want to clear the air of any lingering weirdness.

He might still have feelings for her, every so often, but there was no way she ever had to know about them.

This way, they could at least be friends, and, hell, he would take the agony of her closeness over never seeing her again.

“About college,” he began. They’d both been direct enough in that moment, but letting it sit for years, unaddressed, made it feel unresolved.

Turning around, she held up the box with the small black raven and a white skull. “Found them,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “We’ll talk about the college thing later. First, your parents.”

He needed to talk to his parents, and it sounded like she also had more pressing matters than rehashing their dramatic past. He sighed. What were his midtwenties if not an unresolved checklist of parts of his life that had almost, but not quite, fallen into place?

“Ready?” She was looking at him now, her bright green eyes earnest and worried under the loud eye shadow. He wanted to wipe the slate clean so that no awkward memories lingered, but he also couldn’t bear to lose even the sliver of happiness that had been that night.

And besides, memory magic wasn’t just illegal, it was wrong, and he should never fuck with magic around Vickie without her express permission.

Well, never again.

He needed to focus. He reminded himself of his father’s ridiculous three-piece suits, and the coordinating pocket squares the man had loved so much.

“It’s just five minutes,” warned Vickie. “They can see and hear you, but you won’t see or hear them, and then the object burns, and they disappear. We can probably find other objects, but still. Think about what I could tell you later, to make the most of it.”

Part of him wanted to tell her he had changed his mind.

To avoid his emotions. It was the same tactic he had tried to use years ago for the sex talk, but Benedict had been clever.

Speeding car, on a freeway, fast enough that Azrael couldn’t duck and roll out even with magic.

This time, Az was behind the wheel. He could stop her from summoning them, and run away from his issues like a child, or he could accept and address the grief weighing on his mind.

“Do you want to do this?” Vickie’s voice was gentle.

Fuck. He did not . He wanted to get in his car and drive away into the woods, or pull her down into its spacious back seat, and convince her to make him forget everything. But he couldn’t, because they had just started to be friends again, and because he couldn’t run from his grief forever.

And, also, he did want to talk to his parents.

He missed them. His mom with her eccentric, dramatic flair, and ridiculous, loving heart.

His father with his three-piece suit and his wordless grunt, as though Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia had been crossed in personality with the style and comportment of Gomez Addams. He missed his father’s staunch, unfailing support of his children.

Like the time that Viola Ravenscrow claimed it was unnatural for Priscilla to date women.

Benedict had shadow-hexed the woman so quickly that the invisible stitches holding in her words lasted weeks.

She had to go around writing out requests without her voice and magicking her food, premashed, into her esophagus.

When her ability to open her mouth and speak finally returned, he had a stern talk with her, and she ended up writing a check directly to the town’s shelter for displaced LGBTQIA+ youth every year since.

Azrael knew he had his father’s reserve and shyness.

He hoped he had his mother’s heart. But after leaving, he had struggled in his career as much as he had with witchcraft in his youth.

Except this time, he didn’t have Benedict to patiently help him with shadow craft until his witchery was smooth and powerful.

This time he didn’t have Persephone to take him aside for private lessons on herbs and plants and flowers.

He needed his parents. This was the only way to reach them.

“You’re sure?” Vickie repeated it gently. She was not going to force him, and she would understand if he backed out.

Swallowing, he nodded again. He’d been preparing since he first asked her. Since before that, really. His throat felt like it was made of sandpaper, and he wasn’t sure he could talk, but he’d have to find the words. It had been a long time since he’d watched her speak to the dead.

“Please. I need to talk to them.”

She nodded, and reached for the salt and pepper shakers, bird in one hand and skull in the other. Traces of flame licked around her fingers, though the objects were not yet consumed, and from memory he knew the flame would not hurt her. She just had to keep contact.