Nate's arms circled around me when I stirred awake. I was comfortable and didn't feel like moving. I got the message that he was already awake when his lips kissed the top of my head.
"Hey, good morning, beautiful."
"Is it really morning? We slept the afternoon and night away?" I asked as I stretched and yawned.
"Yup, it's six o'clock. We slept for over twelve hours. I can't remember the last time I did that and I know the last time you did, you were knocked out on pain killers." He moved and ended up climbing over me. "I have to use the bathroom, but I'll be right back."
"I have to go too, so I'll follow behind you and make a beeline to the second bath."
When we were done taking care of the necessities, we convened in the dining room to determine how many hours of our Sunday were going to be spent doing clean up. From the sight I saw, I didn't think a single day would be long enough.
"Wow, this is a mess," I said, taking in the platters of crusty, dry food.
"Yeah, I'm tempted to just throw it all away and start from scratch," Nate said as he picked up some hunk of food I couldn't even identify anymore. Maybe we slept longer than a day, because usually food didn't look that bad so soon.
"Let's just grab a garbage bag and scrap all the stuff in it. Once the plates have the majority of the food off, just throw them in the dishwasher. In a town like this, it has to be industrial strength."
I found the garbage bags and we went to work. As we finished up, I thought about how grateful I was that we'd used disposable plates and silverware. If we hadn't, we would've been doing dishes for weeks.
"Thank God that's over," Nate said, leading me back to the sectional. "If we ever have a party again, we'll make someone else clean up after us."
"I vote for never having a party again. So what do you want to do today?" I asked. "It better include hiding from everyone else in this community."
"As bad as it sounds, I'm with you. I say we draw the curtains and turn all the lights out. Did you get any feelings off the people you met yesterday? We were hoping to have a better idea of where to invest our time, but I didn't get anything from anyone."
"I didn't either, which is weird. Everyone felt pretty genuine. There were some people I didn't really like as a person, but no one seemed to be who we're looking for. I can't decide if that's because they're a good actor, or if the person wasn't here."
"I'm guessing one of those people you didn't like was Chloe from astrophysics." The teasing in his voice made me grind my teeth together.
"You know she's at the top of that list of not liking. She shouldn't be rubbing all over an engaged man, even if our engagement is fake. You're lucky I noticed you trying to escape from her every chance you got. So you really didn't get any vibes? Your magical mind reading didn't point you right to the person?"
He stroked my hair as I moved my head into his touch. "You're so cute when you're jealous. No, I didn't get anything I'd consider useful. Let's hope when you go in tomorrow that your program will have had more success."
"I'm ignoring your jealous remark. Did we meet everyone from the tank yesterday? I stopped counting pretty early on."
"I think there were a few people missing, but I don't know that meeting them would make a difference. I could read their thoughts, but unless they were thinking about stealing secrets and selling them, it wouldn't do much good."
"So, how do you do that, read someone's mind?" I asked. If we weren't going to make any progress on the case, learning more about Nate's abilities sounded like a good plan for the day to me.
"It's not a lot different from when we were talking to each other. Just concentrate on a person and you should be able to read what they're thinking," he said as he touches my forehead.
He made it sound so simple. If it was as easy as concentrating on someone, I knew it wasn't something I'd been able to do. There'd been too many times where I'd looked at someone and wondered what they were thinking when they got dressed in the morning. The way Nate made it sound, I would've dived right into their mind to see if I could pick up an answer.
"How far away can you be for something like that to work?"
"We could probably have conversations across town, but reading another person is something you should do in the same room, where you can see the person. If you don't, you can get interference from other thoughts. I know I said you had to concentrate on a person, but once you do, things tend to open up around you."
"How can I practice? If you determine the crazy notion of me being an undercover agent is a good idea after we finish up here, I could see mind reading being a useful skill."
"I can assure you it is very useful, and you were made for undercover work. Let's just start with you and me. Maybe tomorrow at work you can give it a try."
"Okay, what do I do?" I loved learning new skills, usually when related to computers, but I was willing to go outside my normal comfort zone.
"It will be easier with me, because we've already touched minds. Close your eyes and think of me, without projecting your own thoughts."
"I doubt this is going to work, but promise no dirty thoughts," I said as I prepared to try.
He laughed. "Alright, I promise, but you're taking all the fun out of this."
I closed my eyes and started thinking Nate's name, like I'd done with the orange before. I sat there for five minutes thinking it and nothing at all happened. The house was absolutely quiet, which annoyed me. In my apartment there would've at least been the sound of traffic to occupy my mind.
"I can't do it. I'm not getting anything," I said as I sighed like I was exhausted from my attempt.
"You just keep chanting my name over and over. Try picturing me, think about things you know about me. Above all else, relax. This isn't a test; you have all the time in the world and nothing will happen if you find you can't do it today. You have forever to relearn your skills." He was so calm about it that I hoped it was contagious.
I shut my eyes again and focused on what Nate was to me. I thought of the time we first met at the hockey game, about our food fights in my kitchen, waking up in a hospital room to find him lying on the couch. As I was concentrating on the moments we'd shared, there was something else that added to the mix.
I saw the moments from his point of view. His utter joy in finding me sitting at that hockey game and how hard he had to try to hide that joy from me. His attempt to get me to smile and laugh during our toppings war and how again he felt joy by just being near me.
Finally, I witnessed his fear as I was lying in the hospital bed. He was so afraid he'd lost me after just getting me back. I could tell that he still feared that if I went to the fire, I wouldn't resurrect correctly again and he'd lose me forever.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. "I won't leave you again. I don't share the love I see you have for me, but I promise I won't leave you to wonder if you'll ever see me again."
I didn't know how I could keep that promise, but I intended to try, and hopefully that meant something.
"It does," he said as he picked up my trailing thoughts. "You did well, but my thoughts went pretty sad there. Next time, maybe you won't ban the dirty ones. They are so much more fun."
Wanting to test my new found powers, I projected, "You sir, have a one track mind."
He chuckled out loud and returned, "And you miss, have a mind that doesn't follow that track nearly enough."
Just to prove him semi-wrong, I leaned in and gave him a solid kiss on the lips. No tongue or anything like that, just a nice comfortable meeting of the lips.
"What do you think about me now?" I asked as I pulled away.
"I think you are turning into a little tease and I'm happy to report I like it."
"So, we've determined I'm capable of exercising my brain, but I don't want to strain myself too much. What else can we do today?" I asked.
"I don't think you'd like any of the ideas floating in my mind right now."
I smacked his arm. "You're bad, and I'm a little frightened to r
emember just how bad you can be. I'll make sure to keep my kisses to myself, if they have anything to do with the way you occupy your mind."
"I think the only cure for my naughtiness is more kisses. I've promised to be a good boy though, and wait for you to make any moves in that department and I plan to keep that promise."
"And hopefully one day you'll be rewarded for all your efforts. If not by me, I'm sure I can give Chloe a call and she'll take care of any needs you have."
"You know I only have eyes for you, so it'd be a wasted call. It's only ten o'clock. What in the world do you want to do the rest of the day? I doubt there's really anything good on TV to watch this early, other than cartoons." He moved to pick up the remote, but I stopped him.
"How about you fill me in on our children. You said we have five total. I know of our first, Mirari, what about the others?"
"I'm not sure you're ready to hear all the details, but about five hundred years after Mirari, there was our second daughter Aliya. Then seven hundred years later our first son Omar. The last two were only a hundred years apart from each other. Currently, our youngest daughter, Sana, was born four hundred years after Omar. Last but not least is Zain."
My head hurt trying to calculate the centuries. I needed a piece of paper to try to figure out the different connections.
?"If there weren't hundreds of years in between each child, I'd think we never left the bedroom," I said. Even as I spoke, I knew it was the wrong thing to say to Nate.
"I'm not going to say anything to that, other than just wait until you get your memories all back. Then you'll know exactly how much time we devoted to the bedroom. I believe I've mentioned before that it's actually very difficult for us to reproduce. Usually couples only have one baby, maybe two if they're really lucky."
"Do you know why that is, or why we're supposedly different?"
"No, not really. I think our ability to have more children than most comes from you, but I like to believe everything that happens that seems impossible is your doing. Something about you seeing the future helped you know when we could have children or something. Like I said before, you told me in this lifetime we were going to have a child. Not to put any pressure on you or anything, but you were always right."
"Yeah, well, according to you, this lifetime still has over nine hundred years to it, so there's plenty of time to get to know each another."
"Don't worry, I got the message. We're taking things slow, even if you feel I'm pushing things."
"That's right. One thing I thought about a little bit ago, when we were on our blind date you mentioned you had divorced parents. Was that just a tale you made up?"
"As I mentioned, I was the first of our kind born, so I've never had parents. You'll find that we tend to change cities and identities every twenty years or so. We can usually pass for anywhere between twenty and forty. If we stay in an area too long, people start to ask questions. For example, your parents are getting ready to move. You'll be happy that I talked them out of New York, but they are moving to Philadelphia next month."
"When were they going to tell me this? I need a little warning, so I can make my own plans to move to Alaska."
Mom being as close as Philadelphia was not a good idea. Knowing that she was supposedly a phoenix and didn't even have to wait for plane reservations to get to me was very unnerving. It took Nate convincing her to leave New York after the shooting to get her out of my hair. I'd thought that task an impossible one, but if he somehow outranked her, it made a little more sense.
"Your mom thought it'd be a nice surprise for you. It's one of the reasons when we get back I think we should move out of your apartment. If she drops in for a visit, she won't be able to immediately find us."
"I still hate leaving the apartment, but I won't fight if it means Mom avoidance. Of course, you knew I'd give in if you played that card. Why don't you tell me more about your time in Chicago? Did you spend all of your time after turning back in that one city?"
"Not all, but most," he said as he went into his tale of signing up with the FBI and what some of his cases were like. Before we knew it, it was supper time, so I made us up a couple bowls of soup. We were pretty full from all the snacking we'd done the day before.
After we ate, we settled in to watch a movie. A movie about mutant crime fighters was something I could relate to. When the movie was over we called it a night and headed to bed, hoping Monday would be a productive day for our mission.
CHAPTER 16
When choosing between evils, I always pick the one I've never tried