AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Will you just—” Raziel huffed. “Anyhow. Matthew, why don’tyougo flirt with the cashier?”
Both Cory and I choked on our food.
“What?” I sputtered. “Flirt with—are you serious?”
Cory had to put his container down on the coffee table, and he took a swig of beer in between coughing.
“I’m…” I shook my head. “I’m not going to cockblock my friend.”
“Cockblock?” Raziel asked, truly confused.
“For fuck’s sake!” Andras flew forward a bit, probably so he could glare at Raziel, and he sounded beyond exasperated: “Ya really don’t read the briefings, do you?”
“I do!” Raziel snapped.
And… off they went. Arguing. Again.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, covering my face with one hand. “Will you two—enough!”
They both shut up, and I realized Cory had jumped. Shit, maybe I’d said that louder than I’d intended.
I exhaled. “Sorry,” I said to Cory. He shrugged and continued eating. To Andras and Raziel, I said, “Look, I’m not going to go after someone Cory wants. That would—it’s not cool, okay?”
I had no idea if they understood why it wasn’t—if that was included in the “briefings” Raziel apparently didn’t read—but they let it go.
“All right.” I gestured at the coffee table. “Can you two, like, sit there for a bit? I’m going to give myself a headache trying to look at you.” That, and just having them moving around right at the edges of my peripheral vision was… weird. With them in front of me and less annoying—sort of—I jabbed a fork into some of penne in my container as I said, “Now. What exactly is the… plan, I guess?”
Andras, who’d sat on the edge of the table with his legs dangling, peered up at Raziel. Raziel looked down at him and shrugged. They had one of those exchanges only two people—or, well, beings—who’d known each other forever could, where an entire conversation was tucked into expressions and gestures.
Finally, Andras rolled his eyes, sighed, and shifted his attention up to me. “Well, obviously you suck at finding a man.”
I blinked. Beside me, Cory wheezed with laugher, and when I cut my eyes toward him, he tried valiantly to school his expression. I flipped him off, and he snickered. “Dick.”
“What?” he said through his laughter. “Act like you’ve never been that blunt before.”
I shot him a glare, but his smugam-I-wrong?smirk just made me laugh, and I shook my head. To Andras, I said, “Okay. Fine. So I’m… not great at connecting with people.” I poked at my food with my fork. “And you two are?”
“We excel at guiding people,” Raziel said.
“Right,” Cory said, “but what about making those connections yourself? Or is this one of those, ‘people who can’t, teach’ things?”
Raziel cocked his head, and I was genuinely surprised an actual question mark didn’t appear above his puzzled face.
Andras sighed. “It’s an expression, Razi. Just—” He looked up at us. “No, we don’t have partners, but we’ve been working for Bridget for centuries. We know what the hell we’re doing.” He paused, then added with a smug look that rivaled Cory’s: “More than you do, evidently.”
I sat back, exhaling in defeat. “You know what? Fuck you all.”
“Oh, come on.” Cory nudged my foot with his. “You love it.”
I once again tried to shoot him a look. He met me with a smile that somehow toed the line between snarky and fond. Yeah, he was being a little shit just like he often did, but there was no heat behind any of it.
There was some heat of an entirely different variety in me, though. God, what I wouldn’t have given to be able to connect with him the way I hadn’t been able to connect with anyone else, and not just because that would mean Andras and Raziel were gone.
Do you have any idea how bad I want you?
I pulled my gaze away from him and returned it to the winged matchmakers on the coffee table. “So we’ve established you guys are better at this than I am. Fine. Now what? What exactly do you do?”
Raziel stood straighter, pushing his shoulders back. “Quite simply, we offer guidance while—”
