Arjun Read Free

n’t
    Not human.
    * * * *
    “Yes, Mother. No, I couldn’t get the tree,” I huffed and watched Arjun struggle into a pair of Michael’s spare flannel pajamas. “Look, you’re my mom and all, and God, I do love you, I really do. But, Mother, let’s face it. You’re driving me completely insane.”
    Over the line, she clucked, and I was sorely tempted to hang up. But then she’d just call again, and I didn’t want to deal with that. “That’s not fair, Evelyn. You promised me a tree. A good tree. I absolutely refuse to get a tree from those common lots. Do you have any idea how the trees from those horrid places look? They’re almost hacked into bits! If you really think I’m going to allow something looking like that to pass my doorstep….”
    The gorgeous man almost pitched head-first into the fire, trying to balance on one foot to slide a slim leg through the pajama bottoms, and I knew it was time to go.
    “Mother, I’ll get Michael to do it, okay? He’s so much better than me at that sort of thing anyways. You know how he’s got an eye for that kind of stuff. With my luck, I’ll probably end up sawing my own leg off. You know how clumsy I can get sometimes.”
    “Now, see here, Evelyn. You know your brother’s not going to be home until three days before Christmas, and I’m afraid that—”
    Time for drastic measures. I knocked an inexpensive vase I eyed for just the occasion off its perch next to the phone and even pulled the receiver down so she could hear it shatter on the hard wooden floors of my tiny living room.
    “Evelyn? What was that?”
    “Oh heck, that must be the new cat someone gave me. Anyways, I love you and I’ll be by to see you soon. Tell Herbert I wish him happy holidays. Bye now!”
    I dropped the phone back on the hook with a relieved sigh, glad to not hear the screeching tone in my mother’s voice that had got worse ever since Dad died in that car accident.
    “These clothes, they are very restricting.”
    A Nordic god stood on the tatted rug in front of the fireplace, and I had to look away for a moment so he wouldn’t see the way I bit my lip, trying to suppress myself from laughing my head off.
    “You are smiling. You think this is funny,” he said, his tone almost accusatory, and I tried to wipe the grin from my lips, even though it was easily one of the hardest things I’d ever done. “This is my first time wearing modern human clothing. You cannot expect me to wear them perfectly the first time. I am not a God.”
    Oh, wasn’t he? For a moment, he’d almost had me fooled.
    The buttonholes were lined up with the wrong buttons so the pajama shirt hung off his shoulder at a crazy angle, and the pants scrunched on the left side of his body. All in all, he looked very, very foolish, and I found myself wishing that I had a camera handy.
    “Here, you’ve got the buttons
ouge of my in the wrong holes.”

Adjusting the shirt and his pants took a lot more effort than I thought. He smelled fresh, fragrant, almost similar to balsam. Yes, he was like something out of a dream, and while I wanted to throw myself on him, no questions asked, the rational part of me knew that would be the most stupid thing to do. And I was not a stupid woman.

He sniffed at the sleeve of the green-and-white pajama top and wrinkled his nose distastefully. “This has another man’s scent. I do not like it.”

I busied myself with straightening out the embroidered pillows on the small sofa Herbert, my stepfather, had bought for me as a house-warming present.

“Yes, well, considering it’s my brother’s, of course it would smell like another man. And it’s the only thing I have, so you should quit complaining, unless you’d rather go around naked.”