Gods & Monsters

His chest rumbles with his laugh. “Yeah, this is much better.”

“I…” I hiccup and look up at him. “Can I… be your friend?”

He’s surprised; I can see that on his face, feel it in his fingers that twitch in my hair and on my back. “You wanna break your rules. For me? The town’s monster?”

I fist his shirt; somehow my hands find the silver necklace and clutch it right along with the fabric. “You’re not a monster.”

He cups my cheeks in his big palms, almost drowning them. “That’s not what they think.”

I growl, “They are stupid. All of them are stupid, okay? And I hate them.”

Abel’s lips twitch into a smile. “Remind me never to mess with you.”

“Duh, I’m dangerous.”

Shaking his head, he laughs. But then his eyes get dark and even more liquid as he runs his thumb over the apple of my cheeks, tickling my skin. “It’s not gonna be easy, Pixie. They’ll make it really hard for us.”

My heart is beating really fast and butterflies are flapping their wings inside my tummy. I’ve never felt more excited and more scared in my entire life.

“Doesn’t matter. My dad says all good things in life are hard.”

“I wonder what he’ll say about this.”

“Maybe one day we can tell him. He’s much cooler than my mom. So? Can I be your friend?”

His smile makes my heart pound harder. It’s lopsided and I can already tell that it’s his signature smile. He presses our foreheads together, our noses almost bumping into each other.

“Fuck yeah.”

Abel and I have been friends for about twelve months.

He said it wouldn’t be easy and they would make it hard for us. They have, in a way. I can’t talk to him where people can see us. Like, at school. I see him outside his building at lunch, but I can’t go say hi to him.

He’s easily the tallest guy in both schools combined. He always sticks out and more often than not, he’s alone. There are a few people who talk to him and sometimes they hang out together over lunch, but mostly, he’s by himself. Usually, the meanies talk about him but never to him. Some of the popular gangs pass him by, giving him glances, being rude, and I want to jump across the fence and punch them. I never realized I was as bloodthirsty as Sky until I met Abel.

Abel doesn’t care though. His eyes are always on me. It doesn’t matter where we are, at church or in school or on the street. If I’m close, he’s looking at me. The weird phenomenon that happens when we’re around each other has only grown. It’s like our senses are fused.

Well, even without the weird phenomenon, it’d be hard to look away from him. It seems like every day he grows a few inches taller and a few inches broader. His eyes get richer and more maple-syrupy, and his lopsided smiles have only managed to make the butterflies in my stomach crazier. Lately, I’ve found myself studying the shape of his lips. How they stretch when he smiles and how they circle and curl around words. It’s actually embarrassing, the way I’m fascinated with his mouth. I’m a certified weirdo.

I should not be staring at my friend’s lips like that, right? You don’t constantly think about your friend like I do. I definitely don’t think about Sky that much.

But something makes Abel Adams different. Maybe it’s the way he keeps staring at me from across the distance. No one exists for him but me.

“Did you see Josh Anderson? God, I hate him so much. He was so rude to you. Like, hello? You bump into someone, you stop and you say sorry. Where are the manners?” I huff one day, referring to one of the meanies.

“Who the fuck is Josh Anderson?”

“The guy who deliberately pushed you. Today? This morning? At school.” When Abel still gives me a confused look, I swat his bicep. “You don’t remember, do you?”

Smirking, he shakes his head.

“How can you not remember?”

“Because I was looking at you.” He says it so simply, like it wouldn’t make me hyperventilate or blush.

I clear my throat. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be looking at me, but paying more attention to the world.”

“Yeah. I don’t think that’s happening.”

“Why not?”

“You just have that kind of a face.”

“What kind of a face is that?”

“The kind that’s hard to look away from.”

Right. Cue hyperventilation.

So yeah, Abel isn’t anything like Sky. He’s in a whole ‘nother category.

Even though my mom picks me up every day from school and she has spies all over, we’ve found ways to be creative. Mostly we sit far apart at lunch, me on my side of the fence, with Sky and a bunch of other girls, and him on his side, leaning against a tree, biting into his favorite fruit, an apple. Still, we pretend to be eating together. Or I make it a point to wait for him to arrive at school, at the start of the day. We stare at each other from across the dirt path and sometimes luck’s on our side and there are only a few people around, and I give him a little wave and a smile. His answering lopsided smile makes my heart race. I even made him an apple pie for his fifteenth birthday. Got the recipe from my mom and everything, saying that I wanted to learn how to bake. Mom was super happy.