Page 14 of The Prince and the Double Shot
What would he think? What would Petra say if he could see me getting turned on by someone just because he resembled him?
He won’t say anything? He has gone into the green like everyone who dies. His energy has intermingled with all the other energies in the world that feed the plants with their sustenance. The energy that makes things grow and flourish.
He was dead.
I was alive.
I could hear my mother’s voice telling me that I had to learn to live again. I had to try to thrive in the best way that I could.It was why she sent me here, wasn’t it? I had to forgive the past and try to find some semblance of a future, or I would wilt away in the shadows.
I had to try.
But Zane, no matter how hot he was or how much he looked like Petra, was not the right choice. That was easy to see. His pompousness was…
There were glimpses, though, of something real underneath. Barely perceptible, but underneath the surface, if you looked hard enough, you would find them. Moments of actuality instead of bravado and smoke… But what, if anything, did it mean?
Nothing.
Zane could be nothing more than a dalliance. Mother would not be unhappy if I dallianced a lot on this trip. I knew her. When I had fallen off my bike and scraped my knee, she put me right back on it and demanded that I ride until she told me to stop. Life was full of bumps and bruises, and we needed to learn to cope with them – to move on from them.
Life had definitely bruised me. Maybe even broken a few bones with its harsh realities.
She would also laugh at the fact that I’d been surviving on frozen burritos all this time. It took me three tries to microwave one that was actually edible. You would think that I had used a microwave before, but… Princes rarely cooked, at least where I was from. We had staff for almost everything. Our job was to rule and to lead, not to nuclearize a frozen bean burrito in a contraption that even the kitchen staff would turn their noses up at.
I deserved an actual meal. All of the hard work and energy that I gave to the plants was tiring. I needed to replenish my own if I were going to continue to give so much. The plants here were fairly healthy, but their placement had caused hardships that I needed to correct. Ripping a plant out of the ground and shovingit back into the earth was not the way to successfully transplant. I wish more gardeners understood that. Plants were as alive as any other living thing on Earth. They were made of the same energy that every living thing was made of. But humans tended to treat them with little to no respect. My people understood the proper order of things.
Every living thing goes back to the green from which it came. A pool of energy that fed this planet, maybe even the whole cosmos, was not without limits, even if it did sometimes feel that way. The energy of life was rarely created – it had always been here. Everything had a limit – even the green of creation.
I grabbed my wallet and walked out of the hotel room that had become my home. It wasn’t what I was used to, but it had a bed and a bathroom. It was enough, and I was grateful for having it. I knew that my mother had paid the bill and had probably asked for the most functional but not stylish room that they had. The work I was doing… Well, that was to help me find myself again. My people believed that your hands in the dirt was the cure for almost anything and everything, and they weren’t wrong. When you give your energy to another, the symbiotic relationship fills you with something else – something that could never be measured – purpose.
“And where are you off to?” The judgmental voice stopped me dead in my tracks. “I thought I saw you down in the bar just a little while ago with Zane.”
I turned to find Sheena standing there with her arms crossed. She reminded me of my mother, and I was terrified of her.
“I was, but… I left.”
“You did? Huh?”
“Zane and I appear to be like water and oil.”
“I thought you two might get along. He’s a very nice man once you get past all of his bullshit.” She laughed deeply. “AndI know how full of it he is, trust me. But underneath all that bullshit is something else if you’d just look for it.”
“You thought we’d… You asked him to ask me out?”
“I nudged him. I only gave him a little push to do what was already there, Phillipe. Someone had to try to break both of you out of your funk.”
“My mother put you up to this?”
“No. That was my own doing. It doesn’t take a seer to see your struggles, hon. You also have this… You’re easy to like, and I want to see you succeed. Don’t you?”
“Succeed? What does that even mean? To forget him? To move on?”
“Moving on? Yes. But you should never forget him. How could you? A man who captured your heart the way he captured yours will always be with you. If you close your eyes and listen, I am sure that you can still hear his voice guiding you. What would he want?”
“Not to die.”
“True. But you’re being flippant, and I hate that. You’re as full of your own bullshit as Zane, but you’re too stubborn to even know it – much less admit it. You’re hanging on because you're scared to let go.”
“You barely know me.”
