Page 19 of Cerulean Truth
"Senses and emotions," I mumbled to myself. So what, if I encountered an unpleasant smell, I could transmit the scent to someone else? I grinned at the idea. That could actually open up a world of amusing possibilities.
I glanced at James’s contact information. One thing was for sure, the number he'd given me appeared perfectly ordinary. Deeply sighing, I realized I was losing a very important battle against my own mind.
When they had inquired whether anything unusual had happened to me in the past, I’d had no intention of sharing my experiences with them, but as I’d walked back to my office from the coffeeshop, my mind had been racing, and it had unearthed all those memories I’d buried.
By the time I went out for lunch, the "unusual events" which had occurred throughout my life came flooding back to me with such vivid clarity…as if they had unfolded only the day before, even though they both had taken place over a decade ago.
There was the fall over a cliff at sixteen, an incident I had miraculously survived by clutching onto some branches sticking out. However, deep down, I had always known there had never been any branches. I had somehow…hovered. To be completely honest, I’d fallen off the cliff in the first place because I had been under the influence of ecstasy, so I had dismissed the whole hovering incident as some sort of drug-induced hallucination and promptly forgotten about it.
Then, there was the highly traumatic incident a year later, where Lisa and I had been held up at gunpoint, when miraculously, all the bullets had seemed to disappear into thin air upon being fired. I had brushed it off as pure luck, assuming the guy had mistakenly fired blanks or something.
I still pondered the possibility Stephen and James might be completely off their rocker. But my accident... I had known from our very first meeting Stephen had been spot on about it. The car never hit me and I distinctly recalled jumping. And no ordinary person can jump over a car. But to label it as magical? What would it even mean?
If what they were asserting held any truth, if I did indeed possess some form of mystical abilities, which I was still highly hesitant to accept, it had only manifested itself on those three occasions over the course of more than a decade. It would be absurd to relinquish everything I had worked for just to prevent something which solely occurred when I was in a life-threatening danger and only happened once every few years.
Was I spiraling into madness? If anyone had told me a week before my accident I was a maga or whatever they called it, I'd have laughed right in their faces. Yet here I was, genuinelyconsidering it. There was no denying it, I was heading down the path of complete insanity. But darn it, I couldn't help but be intrigued.
As a child, I used to read Harry Potter like most kids. And, naturally, I'd wish for something like that to happen to me. Especially during high school, I yearned for someone to sweep me away. But now, I was on the brink of making a name for myself in an exclusive world, one where I would rise to the top through connections, education, intelligence, and unwavering dedication. Why was I allowing myself to become distracted?
I tried to go about my day as if nothing unusual had happened, as if I hadn't crossed paths with two magi. However, my feeble attempts at normalcy turned out to be absolute failures. After hours of incessant overthinking, I came to the conclusion I had to numb and dumb things down. Which meant turning to the bottle.
To stop thinking is to start drinking.
So that evening, against my own better judgement, I went out with some of my colleagues.
Everyone at the firm frequented the same bar every Thursday, aptly named "Thirstdays."
Really, who comes up with this stuff?
I typically refrained from going out with them because a, it was lame, and b, I was still an intern who didn’t want to overstay her welcome. But if one cannot drink away their magical troubles, when does one drink anyway?
Which is how I found myself in the dreadfully trendy Thirstdays, surrounded by pompous drunk lawyers, who were mostly also high on coke. If they weren’t full of themselves yet, the coke would certainly up their capacity for it. The bar itself however didn’t look all too bad. It was a small bar, illuminated by tasteful green mood lighting at each individual table. They served everything from sweet cocktails to expensive whiskeys,and every drink was accompanied by one or two small tapas, as befits any chic place. The bartender winked knowingly at me and I noticed he was good-looking, but he had nothing on James, who still remained on my mind despite my best efforts.
I shot down my first whisky, which burned my esophagus.
“So Emma, how are you finding our small firm? Feeling at home already?” Some guy from corporate was sliming his way through conversation, while trying not to stare at my boobs too obviously. He failed epically at both. Though I always tried to convey my intelligence through my big blue eyes, most of the male attention went straight to my big pale breasts. I smiled back dryly and skipped happily away to some other colleague of mine.
James’s face came to mind and I wondered how it would feel to kiss him. I shook the idea out of my head; that was certainly never happening. No reason to dwell on idiotic fantasies.Why did he have to be so hot?
Second whisky down.
Every time my thoughts started wandering toward James, a whisky warmed my insides. After the third, my head was starting to feel more than a little fuzzy.
A few of the firm's lawyers attempted to strike up conversations with me, and I made a genuine effort to engage in conversation with them, but honestly, I couldn’t stop thinking about James the whole time. Well, James and the small insignificant existence of magic of course. It’s not every day someone tells you, “You might have magical abilities,” and to be completely honest, I found myself continuously wondering about their world. What would it look like? What would other magi be like? Would they be as hot as James or was he an extraordinary specimen? Where there others more like Stephen? Did they wear pointy hats and long robes? Was there whisky?
I was annoyed with myself for being so captivated by it—geez, how many glasses of whisky does it take—but the idea of magic…it really stuck with me.
The notion of giving up anything, let alone everything, terrified me. Then again...if James were there with his strong arms to guide me, to mentor me... I rolled my eyes at myself. I was beginning to sound like a thirteen-year-old groupie. I decided to order a shot of tequila, as the whiskey clearly wasn't doing its job.
After that first shot of tequila, I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. Not too enthusiastic about the foresight of emptying my stomach in the less than cozy bathroom, I started a search for food. I noticed some jars behind the bar filled with salty nuts. My second shot of tequila generated just enough courage and annihilated just enough shame to steal one of the jars while the bartender wasn’t looking.
Like a pathetic monkey, I opened up the jars and stuffed myself with quite a few peanuts.
The whole rather unattractive peanut debacle aside, I started talking to a guy from a competing firm. He wasn’t vile and was nice enough, but sort of slick. He sniffed through the entire conversation and left at least twice in half an hour to go to the bathroom. Charming.
As he began piling on the compliments, I realized it was high time for me to make my exit. I glanced around and couldn't spot anyone I knew anymore. Checking my watch, I realized I had been talking to coked up dude for over forty minutes. Damn, I really didn’t want to stay alone with him.
I hadn’t failed to notice his stares were getting increasingly harder to avoid, his eyes were permanently locked on my chest and his conversation was getting harder and harder to understand. It was definitely time for me to go. But I was drunk and in no state to drive. I walked to the bar and asked thebartender to call me a cab. Coked up dude, or Kevin—if that was his real name—frowned at me. Crap. It seemed like he was taking my leaving personally. Which meant I had to get out of there even more quickly.
