Allegiant (5 page)

My phone chimes, and I reach for it on the
nightstand, still trailing a piece of yarn for LB to catch. There’s
a text from Shel.

How are you enjoying your birthday
presents?

I see my extravagant gifts
have come up in conversation. I drop the yarn and decide to be
facetious.
I’m playing with LB right now.
Enjoying it very much.

Haha. I know about Dane.

Duh.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Classes are rough.

I’ll say.

I look at the clock. It’s
ten after three.
Having a late lunch with
a friend. Call you later.

Anyone I know?

My neighbor, Garrett.

I set the phone down and give LB a good
rubbing with both hands. “See you in a little bit,” I tell her. I
pick up my cell and my keys, and head toward the front door. My
phone goes off again.

????

I roll my eyes at Shel. I
know what she’s thinking. I quickly type
It’s not like that
and hit send. I
look at my phone and decide I don’t need to bring it with me. I set
it on the couch and head out. When I approach Garrett’s door, I can
smell whatever it is he’s cooking and my stomach growls. It smells
delicious. I knock and hear him shout, “Its open!”

When I enter the apartment I find him in the
kitchen, bent over a large pot on the stove, stirring. “I thought
you said you owned a pan?”

He looks over his shoulder at me and smirks.
“I own a pot, too.”

“
What are we having? It
smells amazing.”

“
Fennel soup,” he says.
“Ever had it?”

I shake my head no. Garrett moves to open
the oven door and check what’s baking there. I feel like he’s doing
too much. “Can I help with anything? I’m the one who invited you to
lunch.”

He closes the oven door. “It’s not a big
deal. Besides, I owe you for the couch and the television.” He
resumes stirring the soup. “There are two bowls around here
somewhere. Can you find them?”

I nod and move inside the kitchen, opening
the first cabinet I see. It’s empty. I try the next. It’s empty as
well. I step around him to the next cabinet. Ah ha. There they are.
Two white bowls. I grab them and set them to the right of the
stove, because the left side appears to be covered in flour.

“
We have a couple minutes
left on the biscuits,” he says and turns the stove burner down to
simmer.

“
Biscuits?”

“
From scratch. Southern
style.”

I’m majorly impressed. My best dish is a
grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. “Do you cook like this
often?”

He shrugs. “I make all of my food. I wasn’t
able to cook where I was staying before.”

I lean against the counter. “Where did you
learn?”

“
A little from my granny
back home. But most of it I picked up from the army.” He gives me a
wry smile. “I was a field cook.”

“
Army? How old are
you?”

He opens the oven door, bends down to check
the biscuits again, and sighs. “Older than you think.”

I look at him and determine that he couldn’t
be any older than 25. How long does it take for someone to serve
their term and get discharged from the army?

“
These look about done,” he
says and opens the oven door completely. He reaches for the hot
cake pan without an oven mitt, grabbing it with his bare
hand.

“
Don’t!”

He looks at me confused as he pulls it from
of the oven. He sets it on the stove. “Don’t what?”

I look at him incredulously and grab his
hand. It feels frozen as I turn it over. He’s not burned at all.
“How did you not burn yourself?”

He snatches his hand out of my grasp. “Ah…”
He avoids my eyes and picks up the spoon to start stirring the soup
again. He stares at the pot. “I used to grab hot things all time
while I was out in the field. My nerves are shot.”

I frown at him. He expects me to believe
that? I mean, it is believable, but it doesn’t explain how there is
no mark on his skin.

He turns off the burner. “Let’s eat.” He
picks up the pot by both handles and carefully pours the soup into
each bowl, not spilling a drop. If I had tried this, I would have
been wearing the soup for sure.

“
What is fennel?” I
ask.

“
It’s a vegetable. It looks
like a feathery plant above the ground, but we’re eating the bulb.”
He sets the pot back on the stove.

All right. I’ll take his word for it.

He pulls a biscuit from of the pan. “I
usually crumble these over the top,” he says. “Would you like yours
separate?”

I pick up a soup bowl and hold it out to
him. “Crumble away.”

He mashes the biscuit over my bowl and then
does the same to his. “This way.” He starts to walk out of the
kitchen. “You’ll have to sit on your old couch to eat.”

I follow him. “That’s okay. I’ve missed
her.”

He looks back at me. “Really? With that
Cadillac sitting in your front room?”

Front room? He sounds like my grandmother. I
laugh. “I was kidding.”

I make my way to sit down. He must have hit
up a garage sale in the last day or two, because a small table
stands in front of the couch. I take a seat, and Garrett sits on
the floor.

“
Oh.” He stands back up. “I
guess we need spoons.” He leaves the room and reappears moments
later with two spoons.

Hunger takes over, and I taste the soup. I
was expecting a vegetable flavor, like potato, but it’s
surprisingly sweet. “This is really good,” I compliment him.

He nods.

I want him to feel comfortable around me, so
he will open up about himself. I already found out a couple tidbits
in the short time I’ve been here: he served in the army, and he can
touch hot things without being burned. I’m starting to suspect he
may be a military prototype, like Captain America.

Trying to appear casual, I lift my spoon and
lick the back of it. “I was researching reiki the other night. It’s
funny; nothing I could find came close to what you did the other
day.”

He smiles. “I knew there was a reason you
asked me to lunch.”

“
Well, you did blast a
trauma-induced headache from my body.”

“
Trauma-induced?”

Whoops. I don’t want him to think I’m nuts.
I resume eating.

Minutes pass in silence, and Garrett
finishes his soup first. He sets the bowl on the table and looks at
me expectantly. “Well?”

“
Well what?”

“
Do you want to talk about
your trauma?”

I give him a resigned look. “Not really. I
want to talk about your reiki.”

He tilts his head and regards me for a
moment. “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

I set my bowl on the table. I’m dying to
know what’s up with him, so I concede. “I lost someone recently. My
boyfriend. He…he died.”

This doesn’t seem to faze him. “Life can be
difficult when you lose someone you love,” he says. “It really hit
you hard the other day, didn’t it?”

My shoulders sag. “Yes.”

“
You know,” he says
matter-of-factly and shifts his weight on the floor, “the
connection between the human world and the spiritual world is very
strong. I’m sure your boyfriend watches over you today.”

He’s doesn’t know how right he is. He sounds
like some sort of medicine man. “What are you? Some sort of
shaman?”

His eyes light up and he chuckles. “I can’t
believe you guessed that. The answer is yes. Kind of.”

“
Kind of?”

“
We’ll just say I’m a
shaman. It’s easier.”

I look at him suspiciously. “You’re not
going to tell me about the reiki, are you?”

“
I just told you what I
was,” he says. “What more do you need to know?”

It turns out Garrett is very good at
avoiding the topic of himself. As the late afternoon turned into
evening, he managed to turn every question I asked of him back on
to me. Eventually, he tried to distract me by teaching me to play
poker. I was asking him some questions about the army, and he went
off on a tangent about what they used to do to pass the time in the
field between missions. I told him I was a horrible liar, so poker
probably wouldn’t be the best game for me. He insisted that
learning it would improve my lying abilities and pulled a tattered
deck of cards from his bedroom. We snacked on the remaining
biscuits for dinner and, by eight o’clock, I was still confusing a
straight with a straight flush. That’s when we decided to call it a
night with the promise of future lessons.

After pulling on my pajamas, I plop down on
my couch to think about today. I still have a million unanswered
questions. When I sit, I land on my phone. “Ow,” I say to LB, who
has jumped up to be scratched. I pull the phone from beneath my
tush and see that I have missed text messages. I tap the first
alert.

How was lunch?
It’s from Shel.

Next message.
Are you still out?

Next message.
Text me when you’re done. I’m curious.

There’s a shocker.

I reply to Shel.
Hey. I’m home.

I absentmindedly pet LB as I wait for her to
respond back. I think about Garrett. How can I find out how he
became a shaman? LB bumps my hand with her head, and I drop the
phone.

“
LB!” I pick the phone up
off the floor.

After a few minutes, when
Shel doesn’t respond, I text her again.
Lunch was fun. Garrett gave me a poker lesson. I’m not very
good.

My phone vibrates.
Poker? You should stick to Crazy 8’s.

I smile.
Don’t I know it.

So who’s this Garrett?

Good question.
He’s my neighbor. And a classmate. And a
mystery.

Oooo. Sounds sexy.

I laugh. He may be cute,
but he’s not sexy.
Um, I don’t think
so.

Take a picture and let me judge.

Sarcastically, I
respond
I’ll get right on that.

What? You don’t think I can judge another
man’s sexiness?

I roll my eyes.
I’m sure you can.

So why won’t you send me a picture?

Why does she want to see
Garrett so bad?
Because he’s not hot. And
how would I explain taking his picture?

Tell him it’s for research.

I sigh.
I’m not taking his picture.

I think you’re hiding something.

What?
I am not!

Then why won’t you let me see him?

What is the point of
this?
Because.

I’m just curious. What color hair does he
have?

Brown.

Eyes?

Turquoise.

You’re lying.

Am not.

He sounds dreamy.

This is ridiculous.
Are you high? I’m telling Matt!

Why would Matt care if I’m high?

Lord, help me.
Garrett is a friend. That’s all.

Be careful. We all know what you do with
your male friends.

Is she referring to
Dane?
Rude much?

It was supposed to be funny.

It’s not. It should never have happened.

I bet you think about it though.

I decide to confess.
I do.
It’s the truth. I
can confide in Shel.

How often do you think about it?

Why does she want to know
this?
A lot.

Like every night?

No! But a lot.

My phone goes silent for a minute. What is
up with her tonight? I contemplate actually calling her.

My phone vibrates
again.
So do you think I’m hot?

What in the world? She’s
acting all kinds of crazy. I shake my head and decide to play
along.
Yes. Very.

Really? I think you’re hot too.

Okay. This has gone far
enough.
Are you psychotic Shel? I was
kidding. Why would I think you’re hot???

Shel? This is Dane.

Oh my God.
Are you kidding me?

Nope.

I scroll back through our conversation and
blood rushes to my face. The screen must have jumped to a thread
with Dane when LB knocked the phone on the floor! Holy
embarrassment! I just confessed I think about us a lot.

Hello?

I panic.
I have to go.

Of course you do.
He knows I’m running away from the
conversation.

I send him one last
message.
I’ll talk to you later. Good
night.
I flop down on my side and close my
eyes.

My phone vibrates in my hand, and I peek at
it.

For what it’s worth, I think about it a lot
too.

I spend the next week alone, thinking about
Dane, contemplating Garrett, and missing James. On top of homework,
I tried to get in touch with Shel a few times, but she started
volunteering at a local hospital and her hours are all over the
place. When I’m asleep, she’s awake. When I’m awake, she’s
sleeping. Her aspirations are much higher than mine. She wants to
be a doctor.

I did manage to talk to her once, briefly,
after the Dane text debacle. She thought it was hilarious and a
step in the right direction. Me, not so much. I know she hopes
that, one day, Dane and I will permanently make it past the
friend’s stage. It’s no secret how much she likes him. I wish I
could tell her about James being my Guardian and how difficult it
is for me to know that he is tied to my every move; how he can see
what I’m doing. I still feel sick when I think about him watching
my momentary indiscretion with Dane this past summer. Regardless of
his limitations in loving me, my heart suspects that is the real
reason James has stayed away for so long. I don’t doubt that he
feels like I cheated on him. I feel that way, too. Lately, though,
the logical side of my brain speaks up, and asks me if I plan to
stop living all together. I’ve got a good sixty years or so left, I
hope. That’s a long time to be alone, to get over my guilt, and
spare James his feelings. Would he really begrudge me any future
relationship with Dane? With anyone?