Mel was not a fidgeter. She never let the world make her nervous. Or wiggle around. She knew who she was. She’d known who she was when she’d gotten pregnant at age 18. When she’d raised her boy as a single mother. When she’d fought and scraped for every last penny. She’d done all of it without a single apology to anybody and screw ‘em.
So instead of unpacking her things or playing with her hair, or getting up to check the views out the windows of her little Airbnb, Mel sat, one leg crossed over the other, and tented her hands.
Ike was four blocks down having a pizza party in the Marriott, happy as a little frickin’ clam. And she was sitting in a tiny living room while the Oracle was strewn across the sofa, shirtless, one leg over the back of the couch, perusing an old issue of Cosmo.
What the fuck was her life?
“Have you ever had a professional bra fitting?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” Mel untented her hands and laid them on the arms of the lazy boy recliner she sat in.
“Well, did you know that if you’ve never had a professional size you, then there’s an 80% chance that you’re wearing the wrong bra size right now?” He flipped through the pages of the magazine. “Although it looks like your bra fits you pretty well, so I think you’re probably in the clear either way.”
“Excuse me?” she asked again, unable to come up with anything more intelligent at the moment.
“Oh,” the Oracle said and lowered the magazine. “Was I supposed to be pretending that I hadn’t been looking at your chest?”
Mel opened her mouth but couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
She cocked her head to one side and studied him. His lazy pose, his hair flipped off to one side, the ends sun kissed and golden. His light eyes. He looked utterly relaxed, comfortable.
"You're not an evil genius, are you?"
He looked up at her, amused, intrigued. He fluttered his eyelashes like a southern debutante. "Come again, darlin'?"
She looked out the window as she spoke, collecting her thoughts as she went. "The way I figure it, this whole thing shoulda played out a lot differently. Most people would have probably played the whole 'oracle' thing pretty close to the chest for as long as they could. Probably till I fell in love with you. Then it would all come tumbling out and the whole thing would blow up. But here you are, lazy as a daisy, stretched out on my couch like you couldn't be less concerned whether or not I'm keeping up with all this." She gestured between the two of them.
"So the way I figure it, oh wise Oracle, is that either 1. You're an evil genius who has figured out the exact right way to put me at ease before you, I don't know, suck my brains out my ear. Or 2. You’re crazy like a fox and you know exactly how insane this is. But you also know if you keep things honest but light-hearted I'm much more likely to come around. Or 3. You have no plan whatsoever, you're just doing whatever you want and are, in fact, unspeakably dumb."
The Oracle threw his head back and laughed.
"I think most people would say it was number 3."
Mel flipped her hair, still damp from the shower she'd taken after dropping Ike off. "I'm not particularly concerned with popular opinion.”
“Well.” The Oracle scratched his stomach and stretched. “I could tell you that’s it’s probably a little more 2 than 3. But there’s a little 3 mixed in. If we’re being honest. But then, I could always show you.”
“What do you mean show me?”
From across the room, the Oracle held his hand out to her. The sun was setting over the ocean, turning their room orange, but dusky blue in the shadows.
Mel studied the hand. Studied the man holding it out to her. “You mean that if I touch you, I’ll get some kind of vision again?” she asked, her voice full of curiosity.
He shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly. Last time caught me by surprise and it kind of got away from me. But if I concentrate, I think I can show you who I am this time. I’ll show you exactly what’s in my heart. Who I am.”
The thought of doing that for somebody was horrifying to Mel. The vulnerability. Ugh. “Why on god’s green earth would you ever do that?” she exclaimed.
“Because I don’t want you to be confused by me. I want you to know me.” His eyes were guileless, clear, honest. Kind.
She was sunk.
Mel walked across the small room like a woman on her way to the executioner. If the executioner was a beachy babe with a lion’s smile and pecs to die for. And she was in serious danger of tumbling over the lust cliff for her executioner. She knelt next to the couch with a deep sigh.
He grinned at her as he reached out with his hand and she couldn’t help but grin right back. It was like he pulled it right out of her. She laid her palm against his and immediately braced for the rush and whirl of image and color. But it didn’t come this time. He must have been really taken by surprise last time, because this time, there was a controlled rising of feeling, not a tornado. He kept his eyes light and on hers, but she turned her own inward. Feeling what he was showing her.
There weren’t images or memories, but somehow she was inside his life. She felt a childlike, intense love for someone. A father. She felt a full-bodied missing feeling for a mother who wasn’t there. She felt his fear when he’d realized how different he was from everyone else. She felt confusion and power as he grappled with his first prophecies. She felt him growing, noticing girls; she felt him making friends, annoying people and getting a kick out of it. She felt worry as he started to learn more and more about the fates of people he loved. She felt the low, constant hum of outrage at injustices of the world he lived in. She felt him gear up for battle. What battle she had no idea. But she felt his fear, determination, courage. She felt what it felt like to protect his friends. To fight and fall. She felt him soaring through the air in a way she could barely comprehend or imagine. She felt pain, frustration, and fear and more fear. She felt his pain. And then she felt determination again. She felt calm. She recognized her own energy entering the scene for him. She felt how she made him feel. Calm. Happy. Impossibly aroused. Safe. Protective.
Her eyes fluttered open and she focused on the here and now again. “Never anger,” she whispered. “You never really feel anger, do you?”
He said nothing, and through their linked hands she could feel him decide to answer honestly. “I don’t know.”
“Holy SHIT!” Mel stood up and traced her hands through her hair. She wandered briefly. She stumbled away from him and toward the bedroom. Falling backwards she landed on the bed. “HOLY SHIT!!!!!”
“What?” he chuckled, tumbling onto the bed next to her and playing with her hair again. “What are you holy shitting about?”
She rolled over so that they lay on their sides facing each other. “Holy shit, am I in love with you?” she asked him, half exclamation, half genuine question.
He laughed and painted the ends of her hair over her forehead, down along the line of her nose. “I don’t know,” he said again. “But,” he tossed her hair aside and went on all fours over top of her. “How about I kiss you and you kiss me and we just kinda see what happens?”
“Yeah,” she said, her feelings whipping out of her chest like a flag in the wind. She’d never know how clearly he could feel what she was feeling. That she was throwing it out into the world like heat from an open oven. That most people never threw any feeling into the world with that much vigor. “Yeah, let’s try that.”