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She giggles, monstrously, and dares anyway. “These are my mothers! I have two mothers now, Mrs. Role! Mom and Mother!”
I don’t know what’s going on. Not one tiny bit. But the warmth. It’s inexplicable and all-consuming. Unfathomable. Just like when Andromeda scales Zylus like a tree and perches on his arm to battle for the remote. For someone so slender, his sturdiness doesn’t seem physically possible.
Setting his popcorn bowl aside, Pollux rises, towering, and grabs her by her shirt to pluck her off him. Held out like a bag, she writhes in the air while Pollux apologizes. “I’m sorry. She’s incorrigible.”
“As children should be so long as they aren’t hurting anyone,” Willow notes.
Pollux turns his attention toward me, and everything else in the room slows down.
Somewhere in my head, I recognize that he’s holding his daughter like luggage while she scrambles airborne. Somewhere else, I can’t delete the bright balloons and streamers or the laughter circling in this space like vultures. The warmth finds a name, and I realize the reason it’s so palpable.
It’s love.
The warmth is love, and Andromeda is safer and happier than I’ve seen many children be in my time as a teacher. Faerie cult or not.
Pollux puts Andromeda down, and she charges toward the coffee table, distantly squealing about a stack of burritos that Alana seems vaguely proud of. While Andromeda rips one apart, I take a step forward, toward Pollux, toward the heat at the center of the room.
Pollux interrupts my thoughts before I can find the right words. He says, “Do you have any movie suggestions that you consider age appropriate? Suffice to say, we do not know what we’re doing.”
Yeah. I can see that. I think Andromeda has already eaten her weight in chocolate brownies between her bites of burrito. It’s not what I’d allow if I were her parent…but it seems like things are run a little differently here. “I might have a few ideas. May I sit next to you?”
Pollux’s eyes cut toward Willow before he clears his throat, scrubs a hand over his mouth, and says, “Of course.”
After Zylus gives me the remote, I find one of my favorite movies, and we watch Annie.
Chapter 13
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tomorrow is only a day away…
Andromeda is humming “Tomorrow” from Annie while she sits across from me in the main classroom and doodles. Zahra’s busy seeing kids off while I’m looking over budgets for the school board meeting tonight. It’s been four days since movie night. It has also been four days since I decided that maybe some cults aren’t so bad. Maybe. After all, I’m almost positive the maybe vibe is exactly what gets people stuck in cults. It’s only once you’re in too deep that you start to see maybe you shouldn’t have given a cult the benefit of the doubt.
After several minutes, Zahra enters the classroom and arches a brow at Andromeda. “You stickin’ around, small fry?”
“Not done yet,” Andromeda replies.
“What if Alexios is waiting for you?” I ask.
“Didn’t smell like stone earlier. Just rain. And I can be around Zy now. He’s my doting kitty mom.”
Oh, right. Forgive me. I forgot about the rules that constitute letting a little girl walk home by herself.
She’s going to get kidnapped like Annie.
Maybe I should start walking her home… Not as an excuse to see Pollux because I haven’t seen my dreamboy since the first time and I’m going into a few inexplicable withdrawals. No. It’s because I’m a good teacher and I want to make sure she’s okay.
In case anyone asks, it is not beyond inappropriate if I fall asleep thinking about the way Pollux’s thigh brushed mine while we were innocently watching the movie four days ago. I also think about how Andromeda climbed into my lap and cuddled with me throughout most of the film.
Certainly I am not depraved and affection-starved. It was just a very big night, and I’m still processing many details.
Like how the faerie cult leader sat on the floor hugging Alana while she rocked a burrito in her arms as though it were an infant. The most negative emotions he gave off were in relation to that burrito. I’m almost certain he was jealous of it.
So.
Yeah.
Big night.
