thinking about him, or wondering what his middle name was.
I sat up with a groan, turned on my reading light, and took the copy of SkyMall out of the seatback pocket in front of me. If anything could distract me for a while, it was SkyMall, where you could find just about anything you could possibly want, from the perfectly practical to the unbelievably ridiculous. I was reading the description of the Portable Boot and Shoe Dryer, when someone walked up to the end of my row.
“Can’t sleep?”
I looked to my right and saw a man with slightly rumpled honey-blond hair, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt grinning down at me. It was Alex. I smiled, suddenly feeling warm and jittery inside. “No, my pillow sucks. You?” I asked, keeping my voice down so as not to disturb the rest of the passengers whose pillows seemed to work better than mine. I closed the SkyMall, and shifted in my seat to face him.
“I was, I just woke up,” he said, sitting down in the empty seat next to me. “Trick is to bring your own pillow.”
“Woke up? Isn’t it a little early for that?”
“Maybe for you, but for those of us who run on Ireland time, it’s about six in the morning.”
“Oh, right. Still, too early for me.”
We sat in a comfortable silence for a few moments, which was odd considering how much time I’d spent thinking about him since we had last spoken. Moreover, it made me realize how stupid I was being, letting this “crush” thing go to my head.
I decided I needed to change my game plan. I couldn’t just decide not to have a crush on him, as I didn’t really decide to have a crush on him in the first place. However, what I could do was treat him just like I would any other guy. I would be his friend, figuring that the sooner I had friendly feelings for him, the sooner the other feelings – whatever they were – would go away.
Armed with this new attitude, I looked up at him and smiled. “I’m glad you came over. I was starting to think you were going to bail on your end of the deal.”
“Sorry,” he said as his eyebrows furrowed a bit, “I’ve just been… it’s not that I didn’t want…” He paused and rubbed his hands over his face.
“If you’re tired we don’t have to do this now,” I offered.
“No, no, I’m fine. I’m not tired, it’s just been… a weird few days,” he finished with a smile that was somewhere between wry and sad.
He didn’t explain, and I didn’t ask, assuming if he wanted me to know he would have said. Besides, that wasn’t what I was most interested in knowing right now anyway.
“So,” I said.
“So?”
I turned and crossed my legs on top of the seat, propped my right elbow on my knee, rested my chin in my hand, stared directly at him and smiled, in a somewhat blatant ’I’m listening, so start talking‘ gesture. He chuckled – which was good, as that was the point – and turned in his seat, bringing one knee up under himself so he could fully face me.
“All right,” he said, looking thoughtful, “where to start?”
“The beginning is usually best.”
“Yes, but somehow I get the feeling that if I started by saying ‘In the beginning’, you’d laugh at me.”
He was teasing me. I liked it. “Yeah, probably,” I said smiling.
“So what then?” he asked with a smirk. “Once upon a time?”
“Mmm…” I pretended to ponder. “What else you got?”
“A long time ago, in a galaxy–”
“Yeah, OK,” I giggled, rolling my eyes, trying to remember to keep my voice down, “how about we stick to ‘A long time ago’.”
“All right then,” he said clearing his throat, “a long time ago, thousands of years ago actually, there was a race of people living in Ireland called Cumhacht Coinnigh or Power Holders. They were like regular humans in every way except that they each had what they called a beannú an bandia, a ‘blessing of the Goddess’. This ‘blessing’ was actually a special power or ability. Some Holders could read and control the thoughts of others, some could heal the injured or sick, some,” he gestured to himself, “could conjure false images, while others could change their appearance right before your eyes. There were people who could make charms and spells, some who could read and measure the powers of others, and a few who could actually walk