Free Night Betrayed by Joss Ware Page B

vision without him having to move to look at Selena. He could sneak peeks without even turning his head. Convenient.
    And interesting that I should care.
    He turned that thought over in his mind for few moments, considering.
    Something bumped Theo gently in the ribs and the warmth of a body sliding next to him pulled him back to his grassy seat. Jen had walked away from their little group a few moments before the story began, and now she’d returned to take her place between Theo and another young woman.
    Jen’s long bare leg slid along his calf as she settled on the grass next to him. Bare toes, ringless and painted pale pink, burrowed into the cool green blades. She carried the scent of some flower that he couldn’t identify and didn’t really care to—he just knew it was a nice, girly smell. Then she giggled and whispered something to her girlfriend, bumping her arm against Scarlett as she did so.
    About two hours before, Theo and Jen, along with Sam and Frank, had ridden in a horse-drawn wagon to Yellow Mountain. They’d arrived early enough for dinner and to join a collection of about twenty young people. Theo assumed he fit right in, at least visually, with the twenty-somethings, two of whom were pregnant and all of whom were looking forward to tonight’s social activities. Several bottles of wine and beer had passed around while they ate, and now all had the makings of a good, warm buzz.
    Life was pretty good, considering the fact that he’d been dead days ago.
    “Cotton candy was like pink or blue clouds,” Vonnie was saying, spreading her hands to demonstrate. “And it melted in the princess’s mouth, so sweet and sticky! In the hot sun, it colored their fingers so that they turned pink and blue, and when she gave her mama a kiss, she left a sticky blue lip-print on her cheek.”
    Jen whispered something about her hair to the friend next to her, smoothing her hand along its blondish brown length. She lifted it in a bunch, twisting it high at the crown of her head, then draping it over her shoulder as she laughed softly. Then she leaned back to say something to the young man behind her, something about his “bang” jeans, which were torn over one knee and stitched with bold black at the hems. A little bit of knot work hung from the edges of the tear in the denim.
    She bumped against Theo again; and, whether by accident or design, she managed to slide her arm along him too. Her long hair, now loose, cascaded over her shoulder and gleamed in the sunlight as it slithered briefly over Theo’s arm.
    Subtle, she is not.
    But she was young and lithe and she smelled good. She might be able to make him forget about Sage.
    In fact, Jen reminded him more than a little of Sage, although Jen wasn’t as quiet as the redhead. Perhaps it was her young age that did it. He noticed the same youth and ingenuity in Jen’s eyes, the free smiles and laughter that came easily. The giggles, the talk about clothes and hair . . . Simple things.
    While the things that were on his mind were always so much bigger and broader.
    “And so, the princess climbed into a large teacup,” Vonnie said, lifting a palm-sized china cup and saucer that had somehow remained intact through the violence that had ravaged the earth. “It looked much like this, but it was wayyyy larger. In fact, it was so big, six people could fit inside it! It was pink with red swirling designs painted on the outside.”
    “Was it made of glass?” piped up a tiny voice. “Or plastic?”
    Vonnie pursed her lips, pretending to think, and then she looked at the cup in her hand and leaned forward to respond. “It was made of something magic,” she said. Then she lifted her face to look around the entire crowd, and repeated: “Magic.”
    “What did the magic do?”
    “It made the cup fly, around and around and around . . . so fast that the princess giggled and laughed. The wind brushed her face and tickled it, and tossed her hair. And inside her tummy she