Discovery by Radclyffe

Author:Radclyffe [Radclyffe & Seaman, Stacia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602824386
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
Published: 2008-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Claiming the Angel - JD Glass

JD GLASS lives in the city of her choice and birth, New York, with her beloved partner. When she’s not writing, she’s the lead singer (as well as alternately guitarist and bassist) in Life Underwater, which also keeps her pretty busy. Her novels include Punk Like Me, Punk and Zen, Red Light, and American Goth from Bold Strokes Books.

Claiming the Angel

JD Glass

These are the things that go down hard. In these last few weeks work has been changing, home has been changing. We’re working the same shifts, we’re working split shifts—it seems like we’re never not working. And something else is changing, too: you. In these same last few weeks, I see the way they look at you, our coworkers, our peers, the way everyone responds to your smile, their gazes lingering as you walk by. And I see too what they want.

They want you, and you don’t know it. You’re mine, but others want you. I hate that the only thing I have for you lately is snappy jokes or sharp retorts—because in these last few weeks of overwork and undersleep, of not enough “us” and too much of everything else, I’ve forgotten how to speak.

But Shannon hasn’t—and she makes you smile. Oh, it’s not the same smile, not the one you had for me, but all the same, it’s something I can’t seem to do lately.

What I can do, what I’ve been very successful at, is eliciting the surprised snap of shock and hurt in your eyes before you shrug it off. I think you’re turning off to me, I think I’m pushing the buttons to do it.

The other day at dinner with your family you said something, the sort of thing you’re likely to say, and I shot you down, another quick joke, another bitter smile.

Your cousin’s dark appraisal under raised eyebrow said more to me than a thousand words ever could—and mute again, I couldn’t even apologize. I wanted to.

I think your family hates me.

Even mine has noticed—I ran into my brother Pat today after that call, outside the ER entrance where so many emergency vehicles parked it seemed like a tailgate party.

“So how you guys doin’?” he asked after the usual catch-up are-you-okay inquiries and the squaring away of details that always follow these sorts of incidents. “Anything, uh, going on?”

We’d been so busy, I’d forgotten about even that, and the combination of concern and awkwardness in his question seemed to me the perfect reason to make yet another one of my dumb jokes, at my expense, at yours, about the whole thing. That’s a lie—I didn’t even think about it—I just answered.

Pat stared for a moment, as shocked at me as I was. “Baby girl, you’re fucking up,” he told me quietly.

Anger and remorse made something squirm painfully under my ribs. “I know.”

“You’re gonna lose her if you keep this up.”

“I know,” I answered again. “I’m handling it.”

“You better,” he warned, “because”—he nodded, and not twenty feet away where

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