Today Tomorrow and Always (Phenomenal Fate 3)

“The plan was to compel people into giving you candy, kid.” He was starting to budge! She could feel the thinning of his barriers. “I don’t want to compel my father.”

“I’m a blind girl. I got confused about the date of Halloween.” She pursed her lips. “See? I think I can manage to get candy from a kind old man without employing your vampire magic.”

Tucker hedged. “Mary…”

She felt her way over to his forearm and held. “Do you ever have a feeling about something? Like your bones are telling you…this is important? It’s the feeling I got when we met in Enders. There isn’t always an explanation. You just have to trust your gut.”

A beat passed. “And your gut is telling me to visit my pops?”

“Yes,” Mary said firmly, squeezing his arm. Meaning it. Yes.

They drove for another few moments, before Tucker signaled and Mary felt them traveling downward, as if on a highway off-ramp.

She slumped, but tension remained inside of her.

Please let me be doing the right thing.

“I’m probably going to scare the living shit out of him,” Tucker muttered.

“At least you don’t have to explain the bitch earring.”

“There is that.”

Chapter 13

Lying low while in his hometown was imperative, but Tucker couldn’t help pulling the Impala to a stop outside the edge of a street light’s glow and taking a glance down Main Street. Couldn’t help but recall the last time he’d driven through the main drag of Buckhannon, waving at some neighbors, being laughed at by those kids. A lot had changed since that day.

Instead of advertising prepaid phone cards, the drug store promoted Juul pods in their window. There was a banner hanging high above the street announcing a fall festival, attracting people with the promise of pony rides and a pie eating contest. That was familiar. Except for the social media handles included along the bottom of the banner. Little things that signaled an entirely different world—and yet, the changes meant nothing to him.

Tucker was a part of no human world. Not new or old.

He looked at Main Street now the way people stare up at galaxies through a telescope. It was always there, hovering on the edge of his consciousness, but it would only ever be something to watch and marvel over. Never a place he could set foot.

The heel of his hand lifted to rub at the nostalgic pull in his sternum.

“What are you thinking about?” Mary asked.

He cleared his throat and forced a smile onto his face. “That I’d give anything to walk into the diner and order a stack of pancakes. Bacon on the side.” He tapped a finger against inside of the driver’s side window. “Sign is the same, so I’m guessing the place hasn’t changed hands. Bet their daughters are helping out now, though. Junie and Melissa. They were just kids last time I was here.”

“Did you get into a lot of trouble on this street when you were young?”

“Only the usual kind. Sneaking cigarettes and begging twentysomethings to buy us beer. Burning rubber to beat a red light. Listening to music too loud and getting dirty looks from senior citizens.” The smile on his face felt easy as a breeze, like it had been brought to him as a gift from the past. “When I was a senior, a bunch of us filled our high school principal’s car with rubber duckies while he was in the market doing his grocery shopping. Senior prank. Any graduating class worth their salt tries to pull one off. It felt pretty good to have the laughter directed at someone else for once.” He shook his head. “Anyway, we all hid across the street behind the planters and bushes, waiting for him to come out. When he saw what we did, he just laughed. We came out of our hiding places and tailgated with his groceries. Had them for dinner, right here on Main Street. It kind of turned into an unplanned block party.”

He looked over at Mary to find her cheek leaned against the seat, a silver-blue radiance meandering slowly around her head in the darkness, a dreamlike expression on her face that set off a leapfrog contest in his chest. Lord, she was beautiful.

In another life, maybe he was bringing home Mary to meet his pops for the first time.

They’re coming home for Thanksgiving dinner. She’s nervous, he’s reassuring her. They’ll have to sleep in separate rooms, but they’ll sneak out in the middle of the night. Out to the porch, beyond to the fields surrounding the house where fireflies dance and crickets chirp. Hand in hand, their kisses teasing at first, but turning more and more desperate until he’d have no choice but to wrap her legs around his waist in the shadows and appease their hunger, using his kiss to keep her quiet. But it would all feel like a prelude to their future. Something they’d relive through memories for the rest of their lives. Relatives would stop by for dinner the next day and ask when he planned on marrying the girl and he’d be smug as a son-of-a-bitch, because the ring would be in his pocket.