Fallen Angel

☼ CHAPTER SEVEN

☼ JT

      IF I HAD KNOWN who I was gonna run into at Pip's, I never would've come. But here I am, face to face with a Fallen Angel from my past, clearly not over my decision to go back to Heaven. Lashin' out at us about his stupid tire? Childish. Besides, my going back to Heaven shouldn't have been a big deal. We'd only just met, and I sure as hell didn't owe it to him to stay. If he wanted to be an outlaw, he could be an outlaw. But I've always been independent. I've always carved my own path. And a part of me wanted to continue doin' just that.

     So I went to Heaven. It was weird at first, like transferrin' to a new school in the middle of the semester. Some people liked me and welcomed me. Others didn't really seem to care. I tried my best to fit in, but it was a hard adjustment after living on earth as a Mortal for so long. I didn't even really know what Angels did. All I knew was that I'd met an Angel in an alley one day, and he'd awoken the Divine piece of me that had been dormant for so long. I owed him a lot of things I didn't — and still don't — give him credit for.

     On the day I finally decided to go to Heaven, a few weeks after the trip to Hell, I realized I didn't know what to do. Like, I didn't actually know how to get there. And I spent a good two hours tryin' to decide if I should contact Luke or not. Eventually, I resorted to pickin' petals off a flower in He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not fashion, except it was I Contact Him, I Don't Contact Him (spoiler alert: I didn't contact him). It took me two hours and a whole flower to realize that I had no way of contacting him anyway.

     Then I met Xavier. I was at the library, scanning the shelves for anythin' even remotely related to the topic of Heaven. As I was leavin' the stacks, a copy of The Kingdom of Heaven for Dummies in hand, he appeared around the bend. We bumped into each other, and I dropped the book. Rosy embarrassment creeped onto my cheeks as we both bent down to pick it up, but he reached it first. He stood up, but didn't give it back to me. Instead, he casually examined the cover, then opened the book to the middle and flicked through the pages. He wore a yellow-orange snapback, backwards, with waves of dark hair escaping from underneath. He had the softest features I'd ever seen; a button of a nose. Delicate, full lips. Dark, round eyes. I was kind of taken aback for a second, which is embarrassin'. He was just, like, really cute, and I'd forgotten how to speak.

     In fact, "Cute as button" was the first thing I thought when I saw him.

     Finally, his eyes returned to mine, and he grinned. "So you wanna learn about Heaven," he said. It wasn't a question so much as a statement.

     "Yeah," I tried to say, but no sound came out, so I ended up lookin' like a fish gasping for air. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Yeah."

     "I can help you with that," he told me, handin' the book back.

     I took it, grippin' it tightly with both hands so it wouldn't fall again. "Oh, uh, it's fine." His stare was intense, like the light of a flashlight burnin' brightly in the dead of night. I looked back down at the book before his eyes could bore holes into mine. "I'll just read this. But thanks."

     "You sure?" he asked. "I'm kind of an expert." Then he leaned in, like he was about to tell me a secret. "I've been there."

     "You've... what?"

     I've seen my fair share of religious nuts. Spendin' time on the streets, you kinda see everythin'. So I'd heard plenty of people's varyin' tales of what Heaven is like. Someone told me it's just church, 24/7 — you never leave. Some people say it's a place where you get everythin' you want. Some people say it's quite the opposite. My favourite, I'd say, is that it's a daily celebration of life. But of course, none of those people really knew what it was like; they'd just taken a few too many pills for the night.