“Dude, it takes more than one glass of wine to inebriate me. Remember what I am?”
“Annoying.”
“That’s so uncalled for.”
He sat beside me on the sofa and stretched out his legs. He’d slipped on a pair of jeans, but his feet were bare. They brushed up against a pile of books. I didn’t even know Swopes could read.
“You’re having problems sleeping?” he asked.
“Kind of.” I leaned nonchalantly forward to check out the titles. “Not really. I want to know why you’ve been avoiding me.”
He put his feet on the carpet and sat forward, too, clasping a beer in his hands. He scrutinized the carpet a good minute before he said, “I haven’t been avoiding you.”
The books he had were all on the spiritual realm, heaven and hell, demons and angels. His near-death experience must have affected him more than I thought. “You haven’t been to see me in two months.”
“And you haven’t been to see me in two months. That’s not avoidance on my part, Charles. That’s self-preservation.”
Crap. “I knew this was because I keep getting you shot.”
He sank back into the sofa and sipped his beer. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s not like I can blame you. I’d steer clear of me, too, if I kept getting myself shot.” I took a sip of wine. “That didn’t come out right.”
He took a huge gulp, downing the beer in three seconds flat. When he stood to get another, I stayed him with a hand on his arm. But I did not get the reaction I’d expected. The one I’d grown used to. He stepped back emotionally. Almost cringed inwardly at my touch.
The emotion shocked me. I didn’t realize I disgusted him now.
That was an eye-opener if I’d ever seen one. “I’m sorry,” I said, putting the wineglass on a side table. “I better go. We’ll talk later.”
“No,” he said, but I was already headed for the door.
He rounded the sofa and slammed the door the second I opened it. Standing behind me, he released a slow breath. “I’m sorry, Charles. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I forget that you feel things, that you glean emotion off other people.”
I turned to him in askance. “So, what? You’re going to try to control your emotions around me? Pretend I don’t disgust you?” A hitch in my stupid breath gave away the fact that his reaction had hurt. He’d never hurt me before, not like that, and we’d had some doozies. Why now? Why should I even care?
But I knew. He’d always thought I was crazy, but I’d never disgusted him before. The realization brought tears to my eyes.
“Disgust?” he asked, his brows drawn sharp in consternation. “Is that what you think?”
A breathy laugh escaped me. “Please, Swopes. You can’t hide your emotions. I felt them like a punch in the gut. It’s okay. I just need to go.”
“You may feel emotions, but you suck at reading them if you got disgust out of that.”
“Garrett, please let me leave. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Hell no. Sit down.” He pointed toward the sofa while keeping the other hand planted firmly on the door.
Fine. He didn’t need to get all huffy. I sat back down and only then did he take his seat again. I got the feeling he didn’t trust me.
“Now, why do you think that you could ever disgust me in any way?” he asked.
“You’re avoiding me, for one thing.”
“So that means I’m disgusted by you?”
“You don’t want to talk about what happened,” I tried again. While I didn’t want to talk about what happened to me, I was all for talking about what happened to him.
“Okay. What happened?”
“You died.”
He stared at me unblinkingly.
“You died and you came to see me. Do you remember?”
“I need another beer.”
I let him get up for a beer but followed. He opened the fridge, popped the top, and downed the whole thing without stopping. After tossing the bottle, he took out another and sipped it more slowly. I sat at his pint-sized kitchen table, and he strolled over to join me.
“Can you tell me what you remember?” I asked when he sat down. When he just stared at the bottle in his hands, I said, “Do you remember anything?” I knew he did. He had to have. If not, he would never have reacted in such a way.
“I remember everything.”
I blanched at the thought. “Like what?”
He inhaled deeply and said, “I remember being drawn to your light. I remember that little girl crossing through you. I remember Mr. Wong and the dog.”
“Is that what bothers you? What you saw me do?”
“No.” He looked at me point-blank. “Nothing about you bothers me, besides the fact that you knock on my door at three in the morning. There’s other stuff you don’t know about.”
I frowned at him. “Like what?”
“After I saw you, I went somewhere else. I just figured I was going back into my body since I wasn’t dead anymore.”
“How did you know you weren’t dead in the first place?”
“My father told me. He sent me back. I haven’t seen him since I was ten. He was an engineer for a U.S.company in Colombia. He was kidnapped. Normally they just want a ransom, but something must have gone wrong. We never heard from him again. He just disappeared.”