“No. No. No,” he interrupts with rapid-fire speed, waving his hands in front of him. “I didn’t mean to sound so, er, surprised. I was, uh, reminded of something that… well, that doesn’t matter anymore.” He sighs and then gives a hard nod of his head. “I want to go to the beach with you.”
“Good, because that’s where we’re going.” I laugh and hope he doesn’t notice how my tumultuous emotions cling to each innocuous word.
He once again looks up at the blue sky broken by thick greenery that refuses to relent to the winter months. In a warm tone, a little deeper than his voice used to be, he murmurs with wonder, “I can’t believe you did all this for us.”
I love the way he says “us.” It slides off his tongue as both natural and special, as if we were always meant to be and it’s something to cherish. I want to pull over right now and confess how I’d do anything for him because I love him, and because I don’t want to imagine my life without him, but that seems a little intense for the early morning, so I settle back into playful Callie. I flash him a wink and my smile turns wicked. “What’s the point of having magic if I can’t make the day perfect every once in a while?”
“You’re so amazing,” he confesses on an exhale, then stutters a correction. “I mean… that, as in magic is amazing. Which, you know, makes you amazing because you can do the amazing magic. I keep saying amazing, so I’m gonna stop now.” His cheeks turn a bright red while he sandwiches his hands between his thighs and shrinks into a nervous hunch.
Giggling, I pat his shoulder in comfort that kind of turns into a stroke down his upper arm, drawn to his new, heavily muscled form. He freezes under my caress, neither leaning in nor sliding away while watching me out of the corner of his eye. Tingles shoot up my arm and dance along my skin, causing a small shiver. Immediately, I’m aware of him in a completely new way—a way that has me wishing there wasn’t fabric separating my fingers from his skin, and my touch didn’t keep itself restricted to just his arm.God damn it, hormones. We don’t need you as part of this emotional rollercoaster we’re on.
It’s true that I’d love him no matter what he looked like, but I can’t deny that I’m extremely attracted to his new body. Guilt makes another appearance, because to appreciate him for the body that wasn’t originally his feels like a betrayal of the cute, skinny nerd he was. Who knew bringing someone back from the dead in another person’s body would be so complicated?
Clearing my throat, I quickly put my hand back onto the steering wheel and pretend whatever that moment was didn’t happen. In a way too bright tone, I chirp, “Don’t worry. I know what you meant.” Time to change the subject. “So, uh, I know I have to get on the highway heading west, but I think I’ll need your help navigating to the exact spot.”
“Sure!” he replies in the same cheery pitch, plucking my phone from one of the cupholders and focusing on the directions. He’s clearly self-conscious, but luckily he appears oblivious of my inner feelings.
For the rest of the two and half hour drive, we keep to lighter topics and our hands firmly to ourselves. He jokingly complains about how he doesn’t miss having weekend homework and shares the story of how he almost got detention for the first time in his life.
“I knew James was bad at math,” he remarks with a heavy sigh, “but apparently he was skating by on a C. Then I come around and get a hundred and four percent on the test. The bonus was super easy.” He shakes his head side to side, his short hair making ash-blond fans against the headrest, and grumbles, “Probably because the whole class is so easy. I passed it in middle school.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he gestures with one hand as he continues, and I do my best not to check him out. “Anyway, Mr. Harris accused me of cheating—I know, such a surprise—though doing the arithmetic in my head probably didn’t help. Of course I denied cheating and told him I’d prove it by taking next week’s quiz on the spot.”
“I’m sure he took that well,” I reply with sharp sarcasm, remembering how many times he tried to bust Donovan for cheating and failed because Donovan doesn’t need to cheat. He has his perfect nephilim memory instead.
“Yeah, not so much. I was so mad. I’ve never been accused of cheating in my whole life,” Felix replies with a hard press of his lips. “He made me miss lunch so he could sit in front of me and watch me take the quiz. No calculator. No scratch paper. I did it all in my head, again. After examining my arms, hands, backpack, and anything else he could think of where I could hide the answers, he admitted that I really didn’t cheat.”
“That’s why you weren’t in the cafeteria on Tuesday,” I comment, hoping I don’t sound like a stalker who needs to know where he’s at every moment of every day.
He nods in confirmation. “I will give Mr. Harris one thing. After seeing how easy it was for me, he set up a math assessment test after school,” he relents grudgingly like he chewed on something sour. “I placed into honors precalculus. It’d be too hard to rearrange my classes this late into the school year, so he’s teaching me separately after instructing the rest of the class. That way I can take calculus my senior year.”
“Wait, Harris ishelpingyou?” I’m shocked. He might as well have said that Mr. Harris showed up in a pink tutu and performedSwan Lakein front of the whole school.
“Wild, I know.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Guess he’s more fascinated with jock turned genius than Donovan’s smart-ass genius.”
“Fair.” I chuckle and adjust the air-conditioning. I may have done too good of a job with all the sunshine.
Closing his eyes, Felix leans back and tilts his chin up. The light crests along his sharp, bold features, highlighting his all-American, Abercrombie model good looks. A fluttering sensation forms low in my belly, and I’m once again tingling with an overwhelming awareness of him and how close we physically are on this long drive. It would be easy to pull over to a shady part of the road and entice him to touch me and I him.That’s one way to get his attention.
“I haven’t told James’s parents yet,” he confesses quietly, throwing cold water on my growing lust. “They may not take the news well, considering it’d be one more thing to add to the list of how much I’m not like the boy they remember.”
“Or they’ll be relieved to find out something good has come out of the accident,” I counter, back to whole-heartedly focusing on the road and not my awakening libido. “They probably blame themselves for what happened, even though none of it is their fault. There have been stories of people becoming sudden savants or having behavioral changes for the better after head injuries. You might not betheirJames, but as of now, you are their son, and they are lucky to have you. Let them get to know the real you.”
“It sucked, but life was much simpler when I was dead.” He groans, dragging his hands down his face.
“It might have been, but I’m glad you’re alive,” I confess, flexing my grip over the steering wheel and chewing on my bottom lip.
He looks over at me, and with one of my favorite smiles, he agrees, “I am too.”
∞∞∞
Turns out Pacific Northwesterners don’t look a sunny day gift horse in the mouth, choosing to run outside and enjoy the weather rather than question why it’s happening in late February. I picked a little beach spot that appeared only to be visited by the local village, but it turns out to be quite a busy place when the sun invites everyone out to play.
Felix helps me track down an open space in a small, all gravel parking lot. Once parked, he immediately gets out and stretches, raising his hands high over his head. Still in the driver’s seat, I’m eye level with his stomach and get a framed peek of his sculpted abs when his shirt rides up with the motion. There’s another fluttery sensation low inside me as memory and reality overlap. When he was a ghost, I’d get these same flashed peeks of his body, and though the view has changed, the boy inside hasn’t.
Before he can catch me gawking, I swiftly get out of the car and head for the trunk to get our beach supplies. Felix strides up beside me, perusing what I brought—towels, water bottles, and snacks. Tipping his face toward the sky, he pulls on the collar of his shirt.
“Did you, um, bring any sunblock?” he stutters out, sounding oddly self-conscious.
“Oh, right. Beach. Sun. Duh,” I answer with a thunk of the base of my palm meeting my forehead. “Yeah, I have some in the center console.”
