could she think such a thing about him? What lies had her mind told her as she slept?
She glared at him then and said, “Get the hell out of my way!”
“Drew, please, just have a look in the mirror, Love.” He said pleading this time and she thought she saw the gleam of tears in his eyes.
“Fine!” She yelled and turned towards the mirror. So, her eyes looked a little puffy from all of the sleep but other than that they looked fine. They were still in her head anyway and that was a good start.
She slowly walked towards the bed then and began to cry. “I don’t understand. It seemed so real! I remember the pain. She put her hand over her stomach then.” She looked up at him with tears in her eyes.
“How is it that you can make me feel like flying one moment and then the next be gouging my eyes out?” She said crying.
He walked towards her then and knelt before her. He grabbed her hands and held him in his own, kissing them gently. “I promise you that I would never hurt you. I would like to promise you on my life, but ‘tis not possible.” He said, and knowing that she would forever believe that making love was dirty and painful he added, “, and if ever I was lucky enough to have the privilege of knowing you as mine own, I would be ever so gentle with you, darling. You would never know pain, only love.” He said gently.
Somehow she believed him. His hands felt so warm in hers. She didn’t understand how. “Why can I feel you as I did before?” She sobbed, trying desperately to stop the tears. “How is it that I can see you now and not before?”
“I don’t know the answers. I have been in this house alone for far too long. Never before have I felt anything on my skin the way that I can feel your hand right now. Not until you came did I even feel as if I had skin. I was just empty. Sort of like a feather just floating along in the breeze.”
“You know, I have felt the same way most of my life. There was always someone around just not really there.” Drew paused, “Well, I had Liza. She has always been there for me whether she realized it or not, but I always felt like more of a burden than a friend. Besides, she has her own life now. You must have been so lonely and for so long.”
She reached up to push the hair away that had fallen in front of his eyes, there was a glow, sort of a rainbow that followed his hair, then left her hand on his cheek, “You have been wandering around in this house for a century and a half when most people don’t even live as old as eighty or ninety. Lifetimes have passed you by and all you can do is read and play the piano. Why didn’t you let anyone live here before? Didn’t you want the company?”
Her hand on his face made him feel more alive than he believed he may have felt when he actually had been living. “No one that entered this house could have made me feel the way you do.” He said then leaned in to kiss her lips, the lips that had been calling him since the first night that he watched her sleep.
Drew jerked her hand away then and jumped up off of the bed. “Brendan, I…”
She didn’t know how to finish whatever it was that she needed to say. So many emotions were stirring inside of her at that moment. Did she really want her first kiss to be with someone thatcould be gone tomorrow? He really wasn’t even a “someone”. He was a spirit. A dead man stuck in purgatory or in his own personal hell which coincidentally happened to be in her house.
“Drew,” Brendan said and reached for her hand. She let him take it though she was afraid of what might happen. “Please, don’t run away from me…I promise not to hurt you. I won’t try that again until you ask me to.”
“That may take some time, or it may never happen. It isn’t that I don’t want to.” She tried to explain.
Brendan rubbed her chin with his thumb and smiled. “I can wait. It isn’t like I am going anywhere.”
They both laughed nervously then Brendan’s face took