The Ascended Read Free

feelings for me still remained—or maybe I was wishing for the impossible.
    My chest began to heave as my emotions finally got the best of me. A lone silent tear welled up and escaped beneath my closed eyelid, followed by a cascade of tears streaming fast and warm down my cheeks.
    Pull it together Krista , I thought, trying to calm down.
    I knew I needed to get a grip on myself. Joan could walk in at any moment, and explaining my torrent of tears was just something I didn't relish doing. Of course, knowing I needed to get a grip and actually doing it were two different things, especially while sitting here listening to the words of this stink'n song…"You left me all alone in love, and now I desperately long to feel your touch."
    I need to stop torturing myself like this , I thought again.
    The song came to a close and I swiped the last of my tears away. Pushing the chair back, I stood up reaching to turn the volume back down so it was merely background noise. I turned around, intending to hit the bathroom to do damage control before Joan caught a glimpse of my swollen face.
    I gasped when I saw the tall imposing figure standing in front of me.
    "Holy crow Haniel, you scared the crap out of me!" I said, trying to calm my racing pulse.
    He raised his eyebrows at my words, but remained silent.
    "Well sheesh, if you don't want me to swear you need to stop sneaking up on me like that!" I said, embarrassed that he had most likely caught me crying. Like most things in life, crying in front of others had always embarrassed me, especially in the presence of someone like Haniel. Besides, girls that used their tears as a tool had always annoyed me, and I shuddered at the idea of being lumped together with them.
    "You are sad," Haniel said as more of a statement than a question.
    I sighed trying to think of how I would explain to someone outside the human realm that the music had initiated my tears.
    "The music just made me think about him ," I said, deciding to give it to him bluntly.
    "I see. Well, music is a powerful force," he said, obviously understanding who him was.
    "Yep, it is," I said, thankful that he didn't push the matter further. "Why are you here? And how did you get in here without Joan seeing you?" I asked, puzzled that he had sought me out at work.
    He raised an eyebrow at me, which looked silly on him, but was something he and I had been working on to help him appear more humanistic, as Sam and I liked to put it. We had made it our pet project to give him lessons on hand gestures and facial expressions, which he was starting to use appropriately. Joking, on the other hand, still fell flat with him, and Sam and I finally gave that one up as a lost cause.
    I knew Haniel only indulged in my efforts to modify him as a means to keep my mind occupied and keep me moving forward each day. He wasn't the only one though that worked to keep me busy. My friends were equally guilty with the activities they had implemented, like Sam's sudden fascination with rollerblading or Lynn's new fetish with the mom-and-pop music store we had discovered downtown. Every other day or so, Lynn would drag me there to listen to countless new and different artists, which ironically, was how I had stumbled onto the country song I had just cried my eyes out to. Shawn had even gotten into the action by deciding that it was almost sinful to live in California and not fly a kite at least once every couple of days. He now had a growing collection of brightly colored extravagant kites that he and I would fly on the beach when the wind was blowing at its most optimal condition.
    Even though their ploys were obvious, I was still grateful that they all cared so much that they would come up with ways to occupy me. I valued the alone time I got with each of them. Group outings were nonexistent now, and I knew it was because they didn't want me to feel like the odd man out. I appreciated their consideration though. Moving on was tough, and seeing my friends