Jakira had never felt so many different emotions at once in her life.
She was overjoyed and relieved that Night was still alive, even if she didn't know how, and had practically floated home and sang the good news to her mother. Only moments later, however, she'd been overwhelmed with horror and fear upon hearing that Alex had just suffered a heart attack and was on the verge of death for the second time. She'd gone straight to the hospital and had been at his side when he'd woken. They'd talked, and when the subject of romance came up, he'd teased and playfully pressured her into telling him who she was crushing on. (Thinking about it, that'd been a weird thing to talk about right after a near-death experience.) She'd ended up telling him, but it had seemed to put him in shock. The last she'd seen him, he was lying back down to rest.
Now, the evening of the next day, she was at home.
"Are you not hearing me?" Synthia poked her head into her room, startling her out of her thoughts. "I've been calling you. Time for dinner."
"Oh . . . sorry. Yeah, I'm coming." Jakira rolled off her bed and followed her mother to the dining room.
"You've been distracted all day," Synthia complained as they sat down together at the table. "What's going on? Boy trouble again?"
She shrugged. "Kind of. Alex keeps scaring me and weirding me out."
Her mother seemed genuinely bewildered. "Sounds like the norm," she pointed out, then started eating.
Jakira groaned. "I mean more than usual."
"Alex is a different kind of person," her mother said with a half-shrug. "Sometimes he acts like a regular teenage boy, like when he raids our kitchen, plays pranks on you, thinks it's a good idea to climb on the roof with a pizza box, yada yada. And other times he's downright depressed and gets too scared to even call us. He's got a different mind than most people. You're not going to be able to understand his every move."
"I don't expect to," she protested. "I just . . . don't . . ."
"He's also going through a lot right now," Synthia added. "You can't expect him to just go right back to normal . . . or, what's normal for him, anyway, so soon after whatever he went through."
Jakira sighed in frustration, but didn't reply out loud. Alex is unique. Yes, I knew that. She and her mother ate the rest of the meal in silence. But why was he acting like he knew something I didn't?
-
Late in the night that evening, she lay on her back in bed gazing at the ceiling. She couldn't fall asleep, and wondered if this was how Alex felt every night.
She couldn't keep her mind off him. Him and Night both.
Had it been a bad idea to tell Alex about her feelings for Night? Maybe he found it strange, since he didn't know how well she knew the dark guardian.
But wasn't it almost . . . stereotypical? Citizen girl falling for the hero? She knew that Night wasn't comfortable with talking to civilians— he'd expressed it many times before, and on occasion would even disappear if the situation were too uncomfortable— but his job alone spoke some things about him. He protected total strangers from both Preciser and regular criminals, and was willing to risk his life for his partner and city. He was selfless. Even though he had his flaws, and would rather battle a giant than talk to strangers, the public did love him. So did she.
In a distracted daze, she sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. The digital clock on her nightstand read 11:34.
This is ridiculous. She swung her legs over the side, stood up, and changed back into her clothes. Her light still off, the only illumination moonlight from her window, she arranged her braided hair into a bun. Finally, she slipped her shoes on, grabbed a black sweatshirt, and left the house.
YOU ARE READING
Where Light Meets Dark
Teen Fiction[COMPLETED ~ TO BE PUBLISHED... eventually] Sunray was the light, lonely and shining. She was a beacon of hope to the public, but quiet in her own life. To everyone else, anyway. Night was her shadow, sworn to protect her just as much as his home. H...
