“It was good. I can’t really describe it. It was like I could feel everything you felt, your heart beating, your blood moving through your veins, your breath, like we were the same person, and we felt this incredible. joy. Didn’t you feel it, too?”
“I don’t think so,” he admits, glancing away. “I was just so crazy happy to be kissing you. And then you were glowing. And then you were shining so bright I couldn’t look at you.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not,” he says. “I’m glad it happened. Because then I got to know who you really are.”
“Oh yeah? Who am I?”
“A really, really
“Shut up.”
“It’s cool, though. My girlfriend is an angel.”
“I’m not an angel. I don’t live in heaven or play a golden harp or have heart-to-heart conversations with the Almighty.”
“You don’t? You don’t have a big Christmas dinner with God?”
“No,” I say, giggling. “We have our own traditions, but we don’t actually get to hang out with God. My mom says that every angel-blood meets God eventually, though, after our purpose on earth is fulfilled. Face-to-face. I can’t really imagine it, but that’s what she says.”
“Yeah, but that’s the same for everybody, isn’t it? Humans too?”
“What?”
“We all supposedly get to meet God. When we die.”
I stare at him. I’ve never thought of it like that before. I assumed the meeting was like a kind of debriefing about our purpose. The idea has always terrified me.
“Right,” I say slowly. “We all get to meet God someday.”
“So maybe I should keep going to church.”
“Church couldn’t hurt.”
I stroke his cheek, totally loving the hint of stubble under my hand. I want to say something profound, something about how grateful I am that he can accept me for who I am, wings and everything, but I know that would sound cheesy beyond words.
Then I’m thinking about church. Mom and Jeffrey and me in church when I was little, sitting in the pews, singing and praying with everybody else. Falling under the colored light of the stainedglass angels.
We’re bumping along a dirt road in Bluebell and I’m trying to behave myself, keep a Bible’s worth of space between us so that we will actually end up fishing, unlike last time. But then he reaches over to shift, and when he’s done he puts his hand on my knee and I instantly get all quivery.
“Ruffian.” I grab the offending hand and trap it in mine. His thumb strokes over the top of my knuckles, sending my heart into overdrive.
“Sometimes you say the weirdest things, I swear,” he says.
“It’s from having a mom who’s over a hundred years old. And the language thing,” I explain. “I understand every word I hear. Gives me an awesome vocabulary.”
“Awesome,” he teases.
“Exemplary, as a matter of fact. Hey, have you talked to your sister lately?”
“Yeah, a couple nights ago,” he says.
“Did you tell her about us?”
He frowns. “Am I not supposed to?”
I smile. “You can tell her. But I think she already knows. I talked to her yesterday and she was acting all funny.”
“So
“No, I thought that might be weird like, guess what, I’m dating your brother. I thought it’d be better coming from you.”
“I told her,” he admits. “I can’t really keep secrets from Wendy. I’ve tried. Doesn’t work.”
“But—” I hesitate. “You didn’t tell her about — y’know.”
He gives me a fake clueless look and says, “What? Is there something about you I should know?”
“Just call me angel of the morning,” I sing.
He laughs. “Of course I didn’t tell her. I wouldn’t know how to tell her something like that.” Then he adds quietly, “But it will be hard, when she gets back.”
I look out the window. The truck whizzes past lodgepole pines on both sides of the road, aspens here and there that are beginning to turn colors. It’s hot, even by Wyoming standards. The air smells dry and dusty.
Then everything starts to look very familiar. Like the worst case of deja vu ever.
My hand tightens in Tucker’s.
“Stop the truck,” I gasp.
