A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews. I'm so happy this story is so well-liked, it's pretty awesome and I hope that you like the next installment of this craziness and reviews are loved and appreciated. :)
"You're driving me crazy!"
He looks up at me in surprise. It's probably because we haven't spoken in two hours and I can't take it anymore. It's like he took some kind of vow of silence and it's almost as bad as not having him here at all. It's like he's changed over the past week and I can't figure out why he would be acting like this unless something is seriously wrong, but it's not like I can twist his arm and make him tell me. I would too, if it weren't for the fact that he's kind of one of God's personal friends and I don't want the reason I go to hell to be getting into a fight with an angel.
"What?" he asks and looks over at me like I've grown two heads. I don't think he sees that in his future, lucky for me.
"You are different, when you left me for that time, did you get a personality change?" I ask him sarcastically.
"I didn't go anywhere!" he exclaims, laughing a little at my outburst. "Where is this coming from? I didn't leave you. You know that. You know that I'm here all the time whether you can see me or not."
"Well maybe you had a temp come in and you went and asked God for a personality change!"
"A temp? You think that there are temporary angels, that I'm just going to hand you off to someone else for a little while. Stephanie, I don't need vacations, this isn't a job for me, this is my life. My existence is to protect you and make sure your life goes the way that God and you have planned. That is my purpose for being here. I don't leave you."
"Well maybe God beamed at you or something," I tell him angrily. I want the Chris back from before he left. I'm not fond of this Chris, he's not the Chris that I…that I like is all. He's not the Chris that I like. "Do you know what your silence does to me?"
"What does it do to you?" he asks curiously, tilting his head a little. I can see him in the mirror. Funny how I can't touch the guy, but he has a reflection. Sometimes, when he's curious, he reminds me of a little boy, trying to learn and soak up everything around him. There's so much of the world he doesn't understand and so much of the world I don't understand and we're always at this weird crossroads and it's annoying and breathtaking at the same time.
"It worries me," I answer him, grabbing a hairbrush from my vanity and brushing my hair. I'd grown tired of just sitting there looking in the mirror after sitting there and watching the TV and sitting there and sitting there and having him be silent and me being silent and only the TV and he's driving me nuts! I'm clearly going crazy. I thought I was going crazy just seeing Chris, like I'd lost my min, but I know now that this is what is going to make me lose my mind. Falling, as I am, for Chris is going to be my undoing.
"Why does it worry you? I'm still here," he reasons and he just doesn't get it. He must worry though, he must worry about me. His entire life, if you can call it a life, is to protect me. If I'm walking down the street, he must look around and be worried that something's coming. Or wait, no, because he can see what's going to happen, maybe he doesn't get what worry is. Well, in that case, it complicates the entire thing.
"Do you worry, Chris?"
I stare at him through the mirror. It's nice to have this barrier between us but I need to see him so I get up and go sit on my bed. He was lying down on it, well, hovering, again, I don't know, he can't really feel anything, like with touch so who knows what he's actually doing. The mattress doesn't sink when he's on it so he must be hovering or materializing, whichever. I'm cross-legged as he looks over at me. His brow is furrowed a little bit and it's such intense concentration and it's like he sees something in front of him, like his eyes are watching a movie and it's a thinker and it's perplexing him.
"Worry how?" he finally asks.
"Like, do you worry about things in general, anything, me? I mean, you know what's going to happen to me so I guess you don't worry, but do you…can you worry?"
"I'm not sure."
"Well, okay, I worry when you're quiet because when you're quiet it feels like this…oppressive silence or something," I explain to him, but the words are jumbled and they don't make sense to me. Maybe they make sense to him because he understands me better than anyone. "I just…before you were talking to me all the time, making your stupid quips and comments, but now you've gone silent and the change in you is frustrating to me."
"There's no change," he tells me confusedly and he must not get it.
"You know when you read me and you can tell when I'm angry or upset?"
"Yeah."
"Well I can tell there's something going on with you, what aren't you telling me?"
"Well, there's a lot I'm not telling you…"
"That's not what I mean." Sometimes talking to him is like a brick wall. "I mean, there's something that's changed, what is it? Is something wrong with me? Am I sick, should I go to the doctor's? Am I going to be in an accident? I think it's only fair that you tell me because I can see you. I'm special, I can see my guardian angel so that probably means you should tell me what's going to happen."
He laughs at me and it is a pretty ridiculous statement, "Stephanie, I can't tell you what's going to happen to you, that takes the fun out of life. You have what you need."
"Am I dying?"
"You're not dying," he assures me.
"Why have you changed? Are you…" I have an idea in my head, but it's silly and he'll laugh at me and God, part of me is laughing at myself for having such a dumb question in my brain. The other half, the irrational in love with an angel half wants me to ask because if I ask and there's some inkling of feeling within him, I know that I can cling to that small piece of him that I can have, like when he called me the prettiest girl in the world. I only have words that I can take with me. I can't touch him or hold him, but I can have his words.
"Am I what? Are you going to ask me if I go to the bathroom or something?" he joked.
"No," I say while rolling my eyes. That's the Chris I know and love, which makes this question seem even stranger.
"Then what is it? I'm not taking off my clothes to show you what's underneath."
My cheeks start burning and I can feel that burn going all the way up to my ears. I look down, trying not to picture that and trying not to insert myself into that picture. That's unlikely to happen. Unless I die and then we can be together. Wow, that's way too morbid to think about, dying just so I can be with my angel? Could I be any more pathetic? Nobody should want to die so they can touch something. I can feel Chris leaning in closer. It's a bit strange that I can feel his presence when he doesn't really have anything solid to be present. I look up and he has that warm look on his face, the one that draws you in and makes you feel like this isn't some demon or ghost in front of you, but an honest-to-God angel.
"Ask me the question you want to ask," he says, leaning down a little so we can meet eye-to-eye.
That look, it sucks you in and makes you want to give in to anything. If this is how all angels look, heaven help us…but I think it's just Chris. Surely, if there's as big a variety of angels as there is a variety of people, there must be some…homely angels. Whereas he thinks I'm the prettiest girl, I think that he's probably the hottest angel there is and he's all mine.
"Are you jealous?" I spit out quickly as quickly as my breath will allow me.
"Jealous?" he asks. "Jealous of what?"
"I mean…" How do I get out of this, how do I get out of this, how do I get out of this! I need to make a save, but nothing is coming to my mind. I'm a quick thinker, this should not be so difficult. "Of…being human?"
"You think I want to be human?"
"Yes!" I exclaim and then scale it back. "I mean, do you ever want to be human, you know, experience human things, I mean, you must see a bunch of stuff, you know, swimming, wrestling, dancing, having sex, hiking, climbing…"
"I don't need to experience those things."
"But do you want to?" I wonder if he caught the having sex part, I wonder if he wants that. He's had to have seen me, as creepy as that is. He must have seen was maybe curious.
"I don't know," he shrugs and I almost feel like pressing it further, but there's something telling me I shouldn't. "So you think I'm jealous of the living? Have I been giving off that kind of vibe because-"
"Oh no, I mean, I was just, can you feel jealous?"
"I don't know what jealous feels like," he answers. "What does it feel like?"
How can I even explain that emotion? "Haven't you seen me being jealous?"
"Well sure, I've seen you being jealous, but how the hell am I supposed to know what it feels like?"
"Well if you don't know then you've obviously never felt it!" I'm angry. I don't know why I'm angry, but I want him to be jealous. I want a reason for the way he's acting and he's not telling me and I need a reason. I need to know why he's changed!
I get up and storm out of the room and down the hallway and down into the kitchen to get myself a glass of water. I'd rather have a glass of scotch, but I don't even want to know what Chris will say if he sees me drinking alone. He'll probably start spouting off about how drinking alone is a sign of alcoholism or something and that's the last thing I need. I grab a glass and turn to the fridge, pressing down the button for the water. I turn around and nearly jump as he's right there. I forgot he could just vaporize or whatever wherever he wants. Damn him.
"Okay, what was with that just now?" he asks me, tilting his head in question.
"Nothing," I say, taking a sip of my water and acting as nonchalantly as I can.
"That was not nothing. If I had a tangible head, you'd be ripping it off right now."
"Well then it would be my choice, right, not God's, not yours, mine."
"Yeah," he says, rolling his eyes a little.
"Don't roll your eyes at me!" I catch him. "How can you feel annoyance? Isn't it one of the bad things that you're not supposed to feel?"
"Well, I'm pretty annoyed by you right now," he tells me.
"Well, I'm annoyed by you!"
"Because I can't feel jealousy?"
"No…I don't know, leave me alone!"
"I can't do that," Chris tells me and I groan in frustration. I don't want him to disappear again, but I can't take him right now. If I go into another room, he'll be there, if I go upstairs, he'll be there. If I go to the bathroom, he'll be there. If I go anywhere, he'll be there. I take a deep breath to calm myself. I want him to be jealous, but I'm prescribing human emotions on him when he's not human.
"Can you just not talk to me then?"
"Isn't that what got you mad in the first place?" he asks me slowly, like he knows he's treading on very thin ice with me right now. He knows how to handle me because he's been around me so long. I rub my temples a little, willing myself not to blow up at him.
"Are you jealous of Paul?" Where did that come from? I can't escape and now he's staring at me and it's this open, blank look and he must think I'm the world's weirdest chick. How could he not, I'm standing here asking him if he's jealous of someone.
"Paul? Your boyfriend Paul?"
"Yes, my boyfriend, Paul."
"Because he's human?"
"Maybe, yeah."
"Or because he's with you?" Chris asks the million dollar question. "Do you think I'm jealous of Paul because he's with you and that's why I've not been saying anything lately, because I'm jealous?"
"Well, you haven't been talking," I let him know, "ever since I really started dating Paul, you've kind of closed yourself off to me. You said there's nothing to worry about with him or at least that's what I'm getting from the things you've said and the vibe you give off when we're around him. So I'm thinking and wondering if maybe I don't know, you were jealous of him."
"Because he's human? And because he's with you?"
"In general," I shrug, trying to pay this off like I'm not wanting him in a way I shouldn't want a celestial being.
"I'm not jealous," Chris tells me.
"But you don't know what that feeling is, so how do you know? You just asked me earlier."
"So tell me what it is then?"
"It's when you want something you can't have. It's when someone has something you want. It's this burning inside, this fire that you can't just put out and all you want is what that other person has, it's all you want. It can consume you and fill you. And no matter what you do, you can't have that person…or thing that you want. It's like, you would give anything to be with that…to have that."
He listens intently, like we're in class and I'm his teacher. "What an interesting concept," he says lowly, like he's talking to himself and not to me. "What an interesting idea."
He sits there and sits there and I'm staring at him. What is he thinking? Who is he communicating with? Is he processing what I'm saying, looking within himself and seeing if this is something that he feels. I want to reach out and touch him, so badly. I'm jealous of the other angels of anything or anyone that can be with him, touch him. I want those things so much and I can reach out, but there's nothing really there.
"So are you?"
He looks down and I take the moment to really watch him. He looks like he's breathing, but he's probably just mimicking the behavior. But maybe he breathes in angel dust or something, I don't know. It's such a simple gesture, this breathing, this inhalation and exhalation of air. When he does it though, it's like he makes it an art form. Finally, he looks back up at me with that easy smile.
"No."