“Are you okay?” Eric asked.
I rubbed my forehead. “That was stupid.” I forced a smile. “I thought I saw … an old friend out there.”
An old friend. Huh.
I thought I saw Alex. Alex Grace, angel: fallen from grace, destined to walk the earth until he made his peace with heaven, buns of steel, lips that made my mouth water just thinking about them. Alex Grace who had walked out of my office and disappeared into thin air.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Eric asked again. “You look a little glazed.”
I hoped the heat radiating through my body wasn’t apparent, and I clamped my knees together. “I’m fine, thank you.”
I glanced over my shoulder out the window again and sighed when the man I thought was Alex turned and grinned a toothless, definitely not-Alex smile.
It had been six months since Alex left San Francisco, and I had been mostly fine until about two days ago. Suddenly, I saw Alex everywhere. He was the barista at the Starbucks on Geary. He was eating a ham sandwich at Mel’s on Lombard. Folding laundry at Wash’n Royal on Fillmore. Walking a three-legged beagle on Chrissie Field.
I turned to Eric and forced a smile. “So, Eric, tell me a little about yourself. We’re neighbors, and other than the fact that you read the New York Times, I don’t know anything about you.”
Eric smiled, and I liked the stern set of his profile. “I get the New York Times,” he said. “I rarely have time to read it. I’m a resident over at UCSF. Um, I’m from Pacifica, on the coast, originally. I like long walks, puppy dogs, and thunder showers turn me on. Now you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Thunder showers, huh?”
He waggled his eyebrows.
“Okay, well, I’m not particularly turned on by weather patterns, but puppies are all right. And I’m originally from”—I pointed toward the red glow of the towers on Twin Peaks out through the front windshield—“over there.”
We drove in uncomfortable silence for a moment until Eric tried again. “So, what is it that you do for a living, Sophie?”
Oh, right.
Well, Eric, I considered saying, I work at a demon detection agency. My boss—recently gone missing—is a werewolf. There’s blood in the office fridge, someone brought eye of newt to the office potluck, and I know, firsthand, that it is nearly impossible to get hobgoblin slobber out of linen.
“Oh,” I said instead, “administrative. But you’re a doctor—that sounds way more interesting. Tell me about that.”
I listened to Eric describe his medical career all the way to the restaurant, and pasted on a smile as he continued while the maitre d’ showed us to our table. I tried to keep my eyes focused on Eric’s shiny, disheveled hair while a guy, who looked very much like Alex Grace, bussed the table over Eric’s left shoulder.
“Could you excuse me for a moment?” I asked Eric, breaking into his breathtaking description of the cyst he had lacerated yesterday.
When Eric nodded, I crumpled my napkin and hurried to the women’s restroom, my stomach in knots, my palms sweating as I rubbed them against the Banana Republic sheath dress I had borrowed from Nina.
“You’re not here, you’re not here, you’re not here,” I muttered as I sank down on the toilet seat, my index fingers making manic circles against my temples. “You’re a figment of my undersexed imagination.” I clamped my eyes shut. “Figment of my imagination …”
“Are you through?”
I opened one eye, and my heart dropped to my knees as figment-Alex, now in the women’s restroom stall with me, raised an eyebrow.
“What?” I stood up, the backs of my calves ramming against the cold toilet, the automatic flusher going crazy. “You’re not here,” I tried, jabbing a shaking finger at figment-Alex. “You’re not here….”
Figment-Alex grinned and took my index finger in his hand, kissing the tip. His lips were warm, moist, and they felt very real.
“Alex?” I asked, my heart starting to thump.
“Hi, Sophie.”
“What are you doing here?” I rose up on tiptoes in a halfhearted effort to look over the stall wall. “You shouldn’t be here. And you really shouldn’t be here, here.”
Alex looked unfazed.
“I have a date out there,” I hissed.
Alex shrugged, looked nonchalantly over his shoulder. “Shall I tell him you’ve been detained?”
“No! No! You can’t tell a guy that I went to the bathroom and never came back. He’ll think I have explosive diarrhea or something.”
Alex leaned an elbow against the stall door. “So tell him you have to end your date because you ran into an ex-boyfriend.”
I could feel my eyes bulge, feel the color rising in my cheeks. “Ex-boyfriend? Look, buddy, you were not my ex-boyfriend, let alone any kind of ex—”
“Buddy,” Alex chuckled, stepping closer to me.