Chapter 22

22

O nce again, God had made my life awkward and uncomfortable. The only difference was that God Himself was involved this time, not just His purported worshipers. Thanks to Him spilling the beans about my little crush (okay, and Stefan's, but that was beside the point), we were now awkward and nervous. By the third day after the meeting, I almost felt like Stefan had started avoiding me since I ran into him a lot less than I had the last couple of days, but again, it had just been a handful of days, so maybe he was busy. Doing his actual job, which I had never seen him doing.

"I think he's just nervous," Stan told me when I asked him what he thought about the situation. I'd gone into the office with them and was spending time on Stan's laptop playing games. I thought it was ironic that the guy in charge of Hell had a life simulator of all things on his computer, but it was a fun game that kept me occupied. I kind of understood why Gabe had said he'd never see me again once Stan got me playing. Then Gabe had to go and tell me that some people would take out their frustrations by creating characters that looked like someone who'd made them mad, toss them into a room with no windows or doors or furniture of any sort, and let them pee themselves and pace and pass out on the floor until they died of starvation.

I'd looked at him in horror. He'd thought about it for a second, then immediately called someone to tell them he had an idea for a new restitution area.

"Why do you think he's nervous?" I asked, getting my brain back on track. "I mean, he's Stefan. He's amazing. He doesn't have anything to be nervous about." Seriously, who in their right mind would say no to him?

Stan chuckled and shook his head. "Why do you only call him by his full name?" he asked, curious. "Is there an actual reason behind it? Or was Yahweh just grasping at straws?"

I had a feeling we both knew Yahweh better than that. "Well," I said, embarrassed, "everyone calls him Stef. And I don't want to be everyone."

Stan rested his elbows on his desk and put his face in his hands. "Oh my god, you're adorable," he mumbled before pulling his hands away. "I've known Stef a very long time," he told me. "Long enough that I changed his diapers when he was a baby."

"Was he a cute kid?" I interrupted.

"He was...precocious," Stan said delicately. "If you could talk to Tempest, I'd tell you to ask him exactly what Stef was like when he was little."

I narrowed my eyes as I considered his words. "You know why Tempest wants nothing to do with him," I guessed.

Stan grinned. "I have my suspicions. As I was saying, I've known him his entire life. Undeath? Whatever. His entire existence. He's never really been interested in someone before until he met you. And I mean that in general, not just in a romantic sense. Sure, he's got friends, but?—"

"There's a wall. He said something about that with Dev and Alec but also said others were intimidated by him."

Stan nodded. "There's a wall. For the record, I knew someone had astral projected into his kitchen because that's the kind of thing we have to report, but I had no idea it was you. I think if you hadn't popped in to say hi like you did five years ago, Stef might not have let himself bond with Gabe the way he has. Something about that visit with you helped him open up. I don't know why, and I don't need to know why. Just know that you're the reason he started making an effort with people. So when I see him suddenly acting like he is, all I can think is that Yahweh was right about his feelings for you, and he's probably embarrassed at being called out in front of an entire group." He sighed, drumming the fingers of one hand against the top of his desk. "I'm used to his meddling, but he needs to learn that there's an appropriate place and time for that sort of thing, and it's not with witnesses."

I nodded fervently in agreement. I definitely could have done without that whole thing. I would have rather told Stefan myself if I'd ever gotten up the guts.

"Have you tried sending him a text?" Stan asked.

"I...kind of forgot I could do that," I admitted, suddenly feeling very stupid as I pulled out my phone. I unlocked it, then hesitated. "What do I say?"

Stan waved a hand in a 'gimme' gesture. I hesitated, and he smiled. "I won't send any messages without your say-so," he promised.

I felt kind of bad for doubting him, even if it had been for just a moment, and handed over the phone. He swiped and tapped a few times, then handed my phone back. "There," he said. "How's that?"

You still need to teach me how to make cookies. No serious talk, just baking.

"What, no 'please'?" I asked with a grin, then added a 'please' at the end.

"Edit as you see fit, but does that work? Baking is kind of his stress relief, even if he's sort of a lazy baker, so that along with the promise of not bringing up a subject he might not be ready for yet..."

"Using mixes isn't lazy. It's efficient," I corrected as I hit send. "He just enjoys the creative part more than using the labor involved to make something completely from scratch. Plus, it's nice that he can show me easy things so I can show Abby since neither of us has cooked before. I should maybe have someone show me how to make actual food and not just dessert, but I'm okay with the thought of having cake for dinner."

My phone beeped, and I immediately looked at the message I'd received.

Absolutely. Where are you?

I wrote back that I was in Stan's office, and not five minutes later, he was poking his head into the room. "Cookies," he told me.

"Cookies," I said in agreement as I closed Stan's laptop.

"Have fun," Stan told us with a smile as we left.

Gabe was less cheerful about it but not as obnoxious as he'd been fresh out of the meeting with Yahweh. "Let me know if you'll be late," he told me.

Tempest huffed something, and Gabe scowled at him.

"I will," I promised him. "I have my phone with me, so if something comes up, I can reach you, or you can reach me.

Gabe nodded, then narrowed his eyes at Stefan. I stiffened, half-expecting a shouting match to break out, but instead, he grumbled, "You're lucky you're cute."

Stefan snorted a laugh, which thankfully broke the room's tension. "I am," he agreed. "Cute, that is. Pretty sure you're the lucky one since I'll send your brother home with cookies tonight."

Gabe thought about this for a second, then nodded. "Okay, you can continue to exist." He paused, gave a sigh that was half irritation, half defeat, and said, "Stay for dinner tonight. We're making lasagna."

I was pretty sure the beaming, toothy smile that graced the vampire's face was more out of relief that Gabe still wanted to be friends with him than it was out of a love for lasagna. I supposed I could have been wrong, and it could have all been because of Italian food, but somehow I didn't think so. "Thanks," I told my brother.

Gabe narrowed his eyes and pointed at me. "Make sure he behaves," he told me. "You, I don't have to worry about. But him? He's a troublemaker. He'll try to feed your socks to a man-eating plant."

"I only did that because you dared me to," Stefan protested. "And the plant spit them back out, so it's not like you lost socks over the whole thing."

"That poor plant," I said, making a face.

Tempest let out a barking laugh. "You hush," Gabe told him before turning his attention back to us. "Get out of here," he said, smiling.

"Yes sir," I said back with a laugh, hitting the button for the elevator and sticking my tongue out at him. I could still hear him laughing as the doors slid shut behind us.

The ride to Stefan's apartment was quiet. I was pretty sure neither of us knew what to say, but at that point, it was okay. At least we were still communicating as friends. He probably wouldn't have gone out of his way to make cookies with me if he didn't consider us friends, right? At least the silence didn't feel uncomfortable, just unsure. I'd consider that a win.

When we finally parked in front of the apartment building, Stefan sighed. I looked over at him, but he was staring directly ahead, not even looking at me. "I'm not ready to talk about what Yahweh said," he told me after a moment.

"Well, that's fine," I said. "It's not like I'm particularly looking forward to a serious conversation that was forced on us before it could come about naturally."

Stefan nodded, finally looking in my direction. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping much, and I felt bad for not noticing that sooner. "Soon," he promised. "But not yet."

I nodded. "Let's just worry about cookies today."

He gave me a hesitant smile and nodded again. We were both starting to look like a couple of bobble-headed figures or something. "I wrote down the recipe for the cake from last time," he told me as we left the golf cart and headed for his apartment. "So you'll be able to make it for your sister in the living world."

"She wants me to teach her how to make what you teach me," I told him. "So if I can get the cookie recipe, too, that would be great."

"I can write it down while they bake," he promised. "It's more of a formula than a recipe, though, since so much is interchangeable. That's kind of the beauty of it."

"I was telling Stan I should probably learn to make real food, too," I noted as we tromped up the stairs to Stefan's floor. "As nice as cake is, I don't think it would meet all our nutritional needs."

"Probably not," Stefan agreed with a laugh. We reached his door, and he unlocked it, motioning me to go in first before he followed. "I can help with that, too, but we should tell your grandfather to buy you a decent electric pressure cooker and a few other appliances that'll make your life easier. What about the rest of the house? How is that going?"

"In a couple of days, someone's putting in air conditioning. Apparently, they're just kind of on the wall, and we don't have to have a bunch of stuff installed like we would have with the kind of heat and air we had at my parents' house. I honestly didn't understand much of it, but I also didn't care. All I know is it has to do with the age of the house and it not being modern enough to have the duct system. The important thing is that it'll be taken care of before the worst of summer hits, so Abby and I won't roast."

"Is she doing okay?" Stefan asked as we entered the kitchen. He opened a drawer and pulled out his vividly pink apron, then put it on. "I imagine it's kind of lonely without you there."

I shook my head. "She's okay. Beelzebub is there during the day right now, and she's been busy deciding how to decorate her room. I was there yesterday, helping out. Grandfather may have thanked the powers that be for IKEA delivering."

Stefan laughed. "Well, that's good," he said, pulling a box of mix, a bag of something that was probably chocolate chips, and a bottle of oil from a cabinet and setting them on the counter before going for the fridge. "What about you, though? Have you decided what to do with your room?"

"No," I said with a groan. "I've been too busy to even think about it, but even if I hadn't been, I don't think I'd be any closer to a verdict. How am I supposed to decide anything when I've never been given a choice before? Honestly, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be, and that's just deciding things like what I want to eat for lunch. How do you people do this every day?"

The vampire laughed and set a carton of eggs on the counter before he reached out to pat me on the shoulder. "It'll get easier," he promised. "Maybe we can start by giving you options to choose from so it narrows things down a bit." He opened the cabinet again, pulled out another bag, and put it on the counter next to the other. "Those are your options," he said. "Which do you want? We're making chocolate cookies."

I saw he'd given me a choice between chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. "Both of them sound good," I admitted.

"Well, you also have the option of using both in this case," he told me. "That would also be tasty."

Oh, that did sound amazing. I started thinking about fresh from the oven chocolate cookies full of gooey chocolate and peanut butter and had to check to ensure I wasn't drooling. "We can do both?" I asked, wanting to confirm.

"Of course," he said. "There's no reason we couldn't if that's what you want to do."

"Yeah," I said. "Please. That would be good."

"There, you see?" Stefan asked kindly. "That wasn't so hard, was it? Congratulations, you decided without the world ending. There's nothing wrong with asking that your choices be narrowed down. You can also say you don't like the choices and see if there's something different. You just need to get used to it. We can look at options for your room together later if you'd like. Maybe having a second set of eyes will make it feel less daunting. In the meantime, though, measure out half a cup of that oil, would you?"

The cookies turned out amazing, and I had a huge batch of them in multiple containers on my lap as Stefan drove us to Stan's for dinner. I gave in to temptation and pulled one out, taking a big bite. Stefan snickered. "Really? Didn't we just have a bunch of them?"

"Says the other guy in this cart who's always hungry," I pointed out as I offered a bite to Stefan. He leaned in a little, eyes still on the road, and took a bite so big I was surprised he'd left my fingers. "Hey, watch where you're putting your fangs."

"Blah," Stefan said, in what I gathered from the couple of old movies I'd seen with Stan and Gabe was a terrible Hollywood vampire accent. "I vant to suck your blood."

I snorted a laugh. "You do not . You only use that for restitution."

Stefan thought about that for a moment, his face pinched in contemplation. "Actually, I probably would if you offered," he admitted. "Sure, we don't need it to exist, but we were designed to drink it, after all. Of course I'm curious what yours tastes like." He glanced at me and shrugged. "As far as I'm concerned it's only natural to feel that way. Doesn't mean I'll ever force you to let me."

"I know that," I assured him. "You're not a jerk. I might consider it at some point, but honestly, it just sounds painful."

"That was kind of the point of the whole biting thing," Stefan confided. "Restitution, remember? So yeah, it's not fun. Another reason I would never force you to do that. Or even whine at you to let me. Who does that kind of shit to people they care about?"

"Jerks," I answered, as if that were obvious. "So, um, the day I found out about the house, we were talking about my graduation, and I told my grandfather I'd rather have a party than go to some stupid graduation at a place I don't ever want to step foot in again, and I was kind of wondering if you'd go if we held it at night. So, you know, no sun."

Stefan mused, humming thoughtfully. "That could be fun," he finally said. "I've never been to the living world, and I'd like to see the house I've heard so much about. If we do it at night, maybe it won't freak me out so bad."

"It kind of looks like Hell's black void, except you can see at least a few stars where the house is, and there's no weird swirling motion. Even if it's overcast and clouds are passing by, it's not the same movement. I think that's part of what bothers me about the void. It moves in a way that seems unnatural to me, and even when the rest of Hell is getting brighter during the morning hours, the sky stays the same. Where does that light even come from? Because it doesn't come from the sky."

"Honestly, that's probably one of those things you're better off not thinking about," Stefan told me. "It'll just give you a headache."

I had to agree there. The seemingly total lack of logic regarding random things about Hell would break me if I thought about them too hard.

"But you know what you could do?" Stefan asked.

"What?" I asked in return, curious.

He took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at me and gave me a winning smile. "Let me have another bite of one of your cookies."

I snorted, then opened the container again, wondering if any would make it to Stan's house.