Page 40 of The Troll’s Summer Flame

It hurts to drive, but the pain is dull. The disbelief is sharp. Huge. All-consuming.

Gordon is a troll. There are gargoyles. Other fairy tale creatures.

I shove all of those thoughts away. Crazy as it is—those things are not important. What does matter? Gordon was dead. Should have died. I saw him on the floor, a still form with flames around him, gray, ash-like exterior catapulting me back to my horrified fascination when I first learned about the victims of Vesuvius.

Panic. Grief. An all-consuming sense of loss and missing out that makes missing my cruise seem like a glorious gift.

It felt like someone had physically crushed my heart with guilt and anguish—because I knew in that second that I’d missed out and lost him. The one. The one I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to. The one I’m never supposed to say goodbye to.

I barely recognize my own voice when I start speaking. “I don’t care that you’re a troll. I care that you almost died. I care about losing you. When I thought you were gone, even for a few minutes, it made one thing super clear.”

“What thing?” Gordon asks. He’s squashed into the seat beside me, shoulders up around his ears.

We should take his truck from now on.

Because, by some miracle, there will be a “from now on.”

“That I want you in my life for a long time. That I like you, and that everything is better when I know you’re just a phone call away. Or better still, sitting next to me.”

Gordon gasps a little, shifts in his seat, and his head clonks against the roof. “Oops.”

“You can throw my car off a cliff, and I wouldn’t care. Tonight, I just care that you are alive, and still with me. Don’t you get that?”

Silence. “No?” he says, slowly, a hesitant question in his voice.

My face feels too tight, like the skin is sunburnt, and I’m more aware of it when I smile.

Gordon makes me smile.

“I care about you. I want you around. You said most people can’t see that you’re a.... That you’re—” Okay, as shock wears off, the reality I’m living in doesn’t feel smooth, and it definitely feels like something I shouldn’t just blurt out.

“That I’m a troll. No, most people can’t. You saw a man walk into a building and survive by turning to stone. Your brain can’t accept that, either. The Mist parts, and the eye opens.”

“So... Like, it’s not a problem for us to keep seeing each other, though. I won’t tell people, which protects your secret and the supernatural community, I would guess? And I don’t have to tell my parents or nosy relatives, who would put me in the loony bin.”

I’m getting used to my statements being met with long silences before Gordon says next to nothing, or something deep and moving. As I pull into my parking lot in front of my apartment, I wait and wonder which path the conversation will take this time.

“You only care about how others would see me?” Gordon asks.

When he says it, it sounds shallow. That’s not how I meant it. I shake my head and place my throbbing hand on his huge, smooth one, my reddened tan skin against the cool gray-green smoothness of his knuckles. “I only care about how you and I see each other. I just don’t want you to worry that I’ll let outside things influence me. My heart was screaming tonight. That’s something I can’t tune out, Gordon.”

Gordon raises my hand slowly, carefully. Presses his cheek to it in a way that melts my heart. “Don’t you want a human man to love you?” he whispers so softly that I can barely make it out.

Love? It is suddenly harder to breathe, and not simply because of the rawness of my throat. “Are you able to turn into a human man?” I ask. Maybe he can. Who knows? It doesn't matter, but now I’m curious, and hey, my Gordon almost died. Every time I close my eyes, I see the orange inferno and smell the stench of ignited gasoline. I have to ask things when I think of them, because I just got one hell of a reminder that there may not be another time.

“No, Andrea. That’s something I’ll never be able to do,” Gordon admits.

“Then, no, I don’t want a human man to love me, because that man wouldn’t be you,” I say, tone so firm that even Tita Carla might flinch. “If anyone is going to love me, I... I mean, I know it’s soon.” I trail off, suddenly unable to put so many intense feelings into words. I push my hair back, wincing when I hear it crackle. “If someone were going to love me, someday, I hope it’s you,” I blurt, and then heave myself out of the car, feet screaming when I put weight on them. “Come in?”

Gordon is already out of the car, first aid bag in hand. “Coming,” he murmurs.

“If someone were going to love me, someday, I hope it’s you.”

Andrea’s words are repeating in my mind, and each time, I feel my heart lift higher.

Then I think of all she doesn’t know about trolls, about my past, about the way I was raised, or how my parents lived until my father forced things to change. I think of how near-death experiences change people... For a while.

I try to keep the elation and blooming, bright feelings buried.