Chapter Twelve
PAXTON
*
Once the shock of the initial realization wore off, I found myself filled to bursting with a million questions. Fortunately, Alex seemed to know what I really needed.
"There," he said, watching as I quickly twisted the ice cream cone in my hands to catch an errant drip before it dribbled down to my fingers. "At least now you can't talk all the time, or else you'll get yourself dirty."
He'd driven me just down the block, over to an upscale little ice cream shop tucked away between a drug store and a tall apartment building. On the drive over, he refused to answer a single one of my questions, just telling me that he'd talk once we'd arrived at the destination.
Now, with us both holding ice cream cones, we sat down at a little table outside the shop. I tried to lick down the ice cream cone as quickly as possible, so that I could let out some of the dozens of questions burning in my head.
"Easy – don't choke on that," Alex commented, watching with mild concern as I demolished the dessert.
"You ought to know better, trying to keep me distracted with something sweet." I got the cone licked down to the point where it wasn't likely to drip – and then suddenly looked up at him, feeling a blush suffuse my cheeks. In the startling aftermath of his reveal, I'd completely forgotten the fact that he'd asked me out, that we were on a date. Slurping at an ice cream cone like a dog with a bone probably wasn't the sexiest choice I could have made.
To cover that burst of embarrassment, I quickly asked my first question. "Okay, so have you had these powers forever?"
He shook his head. "Nope. And that's probably a good thing – I couldn't imagine what I'd wish for as a kid." He paused for a second, his eyes drifting out of focus. "Scratch that – I can imagine what I'd wish for as a kid, and trust me, it's good that I didn't have this ability back then."
"So when did you first get it?"
"College." The smile faded from his face, replaced briefly by a frown before that cleared. I guessed that there was more to that story of how he got these powers, something that he didn't feel willing to share.
That was alright – I had a million other questions. "So what sort of things can you do? Or what can't you do?"
"Pretty much anything I can imagine." He shrugged, looking disturbingly nonchalant for a man who'd just confessed to possessing godlike power. "I've got a door in my bathroom that leads right out onto a beach, a couple thousand miles away. I once gave myself the power to read minds, although it gave me a hell of a fierce headache. I don't need to work at a job, since money just appears in my hands whenever I need it – and I haven't even gotten a call from the IRS."
"Man, that sounds like a fantasy," I said, and then stopped as another question came to me. "Which, by the way... do your powers work on people?"
"Remember the waiter at the restaurant?" he asked, but it wasn't the kind of answer I wanted.
"No, not like that. Like, can you make people do what you want?" Could he control me, turn me into his puppet? Suddenly, a chill swept through me, one totally unrelated to the ice cream filling my stomach.
He winced. "Yes."
That was it? Just a blanket yes? I hadn't previously believed it possible, but I suddenly wasn't interested quite so much in my ice cream cone any longer as I stared at him. "So have you used it on me?"
"No, I haven't!" This answer came right away, at least, and he sounded earnest – but how could I know for sure? "And that's why you're so interesting to me."
"What, you want to see how far you can get before you have to cheat and use your powers to make me do what you want?" Bile rose up in my throat, disgust making me physically sick at the thought of how horrible this man might truly be.
He reached up and ran a hand through his thick, curly hair, and I tried to block out how the gesture left his hair adorably mussed. "No, not like that at all. In fact, you're the strange one, here."
I wanted to cross my arms, but the ice cream cone got in the way. I settled for trying to stab him with the flattest, sharpest glare I could manage. "What?"
He sighed, looked down at his own ice cream. He'd gone for a smaller size than me – understandable, since he wasn't the one dealing with this huge revelation – and he only had a bite or two left. He popped it into his mouth, chewed and swallowed as if he didn't even taste the sweetness or the cold.
"Look, I try to be a good person," he said, slipping back a little lower in his chair across the rickety little table from me. "But I use this power that I have to make things easier. And the night that I met you, I was pretty drunk, and so I used my power to push a bit of suggestion at you." He looked up from beneath lowered brows at me. "Remember?"
It took a second before it clicked in my mind. "When you asked me to flash you?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows climb. "But I didn't do it!"
"That's right."
I didn't understand his point. "So?"
"So..." he said, drawing out the word. "So, out of everyone I've met in my life, everyone I've ever encountered, you're the only one who doesn't seem affected at all by my power."
He stopped, and I tried to wrap my hand around this new revelation.
"Your power doesn't work on me."
"No."
"But it works on everyone else in the world."
"Everyone and everything." He glanced up at the tree that spread its branches over us, growing up from the narrow strip of land between the sidewalk and the street. "Bloom," he commanded, and white blossoms of flowers erupted along every branch. A second later, the sweet smell of their pollen filled my nostrils.
I looked up at the hundreds of little flowers, and then back down at Alex. "Oh my god," I said faintly.
"See?" He narrowed his eyes at me. "You're suddenly feeling insanely happy, huge waves of pleasure flooding through you and making it impossible to focus on anything else besides how sexy I am."
I braced for the waves of pleasure.
They didn't come.
"Anything?" he asked after a second, sounding almost hopeful. "Even just a little bit?"
"Irritation," I answered. "And a growing urge to smack you."
"Yeah, figures." He slumped back again, held up his hands helplessly. "See? You're the only one like this that I've met. I didn't understand it in the club, and I don't understand it now. That's why I was so obsessed with you, why I had to find out more."
I paused for a moment to consider this. On one hand, this meant that my suspicions had been correct all along! Alex wasn't after me because he strangely found me attractive, because he'd fallen head over heels for me and we were meant to be together in the true proof that opposites do attract.
No, he'd chosen to pursue me because I was the only one that he couldn't have. His powers didn't work on me, and he just wanted to find out.
"The questions," I suddenly exclaimed. "At dinner, you were asking me all those probing questions – you were trying to figure out why your powers don't work on me! You weren't interested in me at all!"
"Not true!" he immediately fired back, once again sitting up as light flared in his eyes. "I was interested, and I also wanted to figure out why my powers don't work – I can have more than one motivation at a time!"
I didn't know exactly how to counter that argument, and Alex capitalized on my momentary pause. "And now, you need to promise me that you'll keep this a secret," he went on, fixing me in place with the intensity of his gaze. "Promise, on your heart, on everything in your life."
I stared back at him for a second. "Who am I going to tell?" I finally got out. "Who's going to believe me, when I tell them that some thirty-year-old-"
"Twenty-eight," he murmured. "And I don't look old for my age, I would know."
"Some twenty-eight-year-old," I corrected, glaring, "secretly has the power to... to alter reality!? No one will believe that!"
"Doesn't matter. If the military finds out, or someone else, they might try and lock me up, do experiments, take me apart. They'll kill me, just to figure out how I work."
"So what? Just use your power to get out of it!" I tried to figure out why he might be at all bothered by this. "I mean, it sounds to me like you're basically God! Why does it matter who knows about your power? Heck, can't you just make them forget?"
"I could," he agreed softly, "but I don't want to do it."
And just like that, the fire left Alex's eyes. His body slumped back once again, losing the energy that had lit up his limbs. He suddenly looked half a decade older, tired and sad. "Sometimes, I hate it," he whispered, almost too softly for me to hear. "I hate having it all on me. I wish that it would just go away and leave me alone."
And although I wanted to keep on hating him for this, for having power greater than what I could imagine, for not fixing the world and making things better, for just being goddamn better than me – I couldn't do it, not any longer. He looked too sad, too dejected.
"Okay, okay, I promise that I'll keep it a secret," I said.
He glanced up, still suspicious. "Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die." The childish words somehow didn't sound out of place. "Have you really never told anyone else?"
"My best friend, Tommy – but it's not the same," he answered.
"Why not?"
He looked into my eyes again, that intensity suddenly back and crackling in the air between us. "Because he's not immune. If I want him to forget about everything I've told him – hell, if I want him to forget that he ever knew me – I could make him do it, without even saying a word. Everyone I've ever met, I've always known that I could get them to do what I want."
"Except me," I said after another minute, realization dawning.
He nodded. "Yes. Everyone except you. I can't do anything to stop you."
We both sat in silence after that. My ice cream cone had dripped down onto my fingers, and I finally licked them clean, eschewing Alex's offer of napkins. He watched me, not even the hint of a smile dancing around the corners of his downturned lips.
"So what else can you do?" I asked, more to distract him from his gloom than any other reason.
He shrugged one shoulder. "You name it, and I can probably do it."
"Okay." I cast my mind about, looking for inspiration. "Magically refilling box of chocolate."
He reached under the table, and his hand came up holding a small, gold-colored cardboard box. He lifted the lid to reveal a plastic insert with four indentations, each holding a chocolate truffle. Without breaking eye contact from me, he turned the box upside down – and chocolates poured down from it in a stream, quickly piling up on the table and dropping down to land on the concrete sidewalk beneath.
"Alright, alright!" I quickly grabbed the box and turned it back upright before someone noticed the impossible feat. "What about a bottle of wine?"
His eyebrows twitched slightly, as if he was holding back a smile. He reached again beneath the table and brought up a tiny little bottle of wine, one of the travel sizes given out to first-class passengers on airlines. He unscrewed the twist-off cap and poured a never-ending stream of red wine out onto the tree beside us.
"Stop showing off! A yes would have been enough." Still, I couldn't help smiling as I snatched the bottle from him as well.
"And what are you planning with those?" he asked, looking at the box and bottle now in my hands.
"I'm keeping them," I answered, trying to sound confident. "Think of them as your payment to me for holding your secret close to my chest."
He started to object, but then – suddenly – laughed instead. "How pragmatic of you. Anything else I can conjure up? A vibrator that never runs out of batteries?"
I couldn't keep back a shocked laugh as twin spots of heat bloomed on my cheeks. "Alex, shut up!"
He didn't say anything more, but the smile remained on his face. I didn't mind it – it looked more normal, more natural, than that expressionless frown he'd worn earlier. "You've given me a lot to think about," I said. "Maybe you should take me home."
"Sure. Car's right here." He waved a hand at the parking spot beside us, and – even though I knew for an absolute fact that he'd handed the car off to the valet at the restaurant – it was here. Parked beside us, as solid and immobile as if it had been here the whole time.
My mouth must have fallen open, because he laughed again. "Magic powers, remember?"
"Still freaky as hell," I muttered as I headed around to get into the car. "Why not teleport us back to my apartment?"
"Want me to?"
"No!" I slammed my car door, waited for him to get in. I had no idea what I'd tell Anna-Claire about this date. It was, without a doubt, my strangest one ever.
And technically, I considered with a sudden surge of heat, it wasn't over just yet...