Lunangelique (The Lunangelique Series) (3 page)

I follow mom upstairs with all our stuff and go into my room to start put everything away. After several minutes, Alex knocks on my door and peeks in. “Will you come downstairs? The guy at the door is our new neighbor from across the street.” He comes in and shuts the door, talking in a whisper he confides to me, “He’s nineteen and lives all alone in that big house. Can you believe that?”

“That’s weird,” I say, more interested in folding my new shirts.

“Come on. He’s waiting at the door, stuck with mom and dad. I told him that he should meet you too,” Alex tugs at my hand.

I plop my shirt on the bed and follow Alex downstairs. When the front door comes into view, I almost lose my composure. What are the odds that two incredible hotties will come into my life in one day? But this one is the total opposite from the last one. This one can only be described as dark, while Ollie can only be described as light.

The new neighbor has olive skin, dark hair that curls at the tips and eyes so dark they could be black, with really full lashes that make him look like he is wearing eyeliner and dark stubble along his chin and upper lip. He is dressed in all black attire; a black, body-hugging tee, dark jeans and black boots.

When I come into view, his eyes lift up to meet mine and a much more genuine smile creeps across his face than the one he had been using on my parents. I can tell my parents were asking with concern about his parents. I don’t doubt they are worried about a teenager living alone, across the street from their teenagers.

“This must be Alexis,” the dark hottie asks no one in particular as I finish walking down the stairs into the foyer.

“Yep. Lexi, this is Cole Astaroth. He happens to be a musician and is going to be working alongside Mrs. Senett at our school. He’s been touring with the Virginia Symphony for the past year but is taking time off to teach and will be playing regularly at the Chrysler Museum,” Alex tells me as he steps back up to the new neighbor. He sure has gathered a lot of intel in a short amount of time. I hope the new guy doesn’t like to boast his exploits. That is a turn off.

“Isn’t that impressive,” my mom gushes. Warming up to him quickly now that she knows he isn’t some delinquent.

“That is wonderful,” I respond. We haven’t taken our eyes off each other yet. My heart is beating a mile a minute and I can’t think of anything to say. He is making me speechless.

“Alex and Lexi are musical,” my dad tells Cole. “You guys should get together and practice sometime.”

I finally turn away from Cole’s eyes to look wide-eyed at my dad. “Dad, no. I hardly doubt someone as accomplished as him would want to play with us. He would put us to shame.”

“Nonsense.” My dad looks back at Cole and boasts, “Both the kids are superb.”

“I look forward to hearing them,” Cole holds my eyes once again and smiles broadly.

“Lexi,” Alex directs my attention to him. “Cole wants us to come over for awhile and hang out. Do you guys mind?” he asks mom and dad.

Both our parents shake their head enthusiastically with, “No, go ahead,” and, “don’t stay out too late.” I guess Cole has extremely won them over.

*

The interior of Cole’s house is impressive to say the least. I’ve been in this house numerous times since I was a baby when old Mrs. Kitch used to babysit us from time to time. She passed away about a year ago and the house remained empty until now.

Cole has already had the house entirely remodeled. Most of the walls have been torn down, creating a huge open floor plan on the first floor. From the front door you can see the kitchen to the left and back of the house, a music room on the opposite side, in front of that is a living room and in front of the kitchen is a dining area. The only characteristics that divide each room are pillars instead of door frames and a step down into the kitchen and music room. The floors are all mahogany hardwood with beautiful oriental rugs. And the furniture is elegant. There are no family pictures or anything resembling mementos lying around. And the walls are all bare, painted in wine red and gold.

“Your home is beautiful.” I don’t point out my curiosity on the lack of family photos. I don’t need to find out his parents are dead too and having reminders of them are too much to endure.

“Thank you. It’s been awhile since I’ve lived in one place long enough to actually buy a house,” he answers while directing us to the kitchen.

I laugh at his comment. “You’re only nineteen, how long must you have waited.”

There is a couple seconds of awkward silence before he laughs too and says, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Sorry, I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen.” He turns toward the refrigerator. “Do you guys want a drink? I have cokes, water, juice, beer, wine…”

“We don’t drink,” Alex responds. Cole gives him a sly grin. “I’ll have a coke.”

Cole directs his attention to me. “Coke is good. Thanks.” I grab one of the cans he hands me and Alex grabs the other. We move to sit on the bar stools while Cole pours himself a glass of red wine.

“How did you get that if you are only nineteen?” I ask him before taking a chug of the soda.

“Fake I.D,” he responds.

I want to say that will come in use when we want to throw a party but Alex will just chastise me for saying that. On occasion I will drink at a friend’s party but I don’t get belligerent. The room has never spun on me and I don’t want it to.

“So what am I in for with the students?”

Alex answers since I can’t think of anything not stupid to say. I feel very shy around him. Like I want to be impressive and sound mature but don’t know how to do it. I zone out while the guys talk and start to wander around the first floor, wondering how he can afford this place if he is just going to be a teacher’s assistant. Not to mention how he is only nineteen and living in one of the upper scale neighborhoods in the area. Our parents are a lawyer and a psychiatrist and all the other neighbors have their own law or medical practice, some own their own business or are CPAs. All Cole supposedly does is tour with the symphony and he can’t make that much money at it because I have never heard of him.

“My parents were wealthy and left me their estate,” Cole whispers into my ear. I jump at his closeness and throw my hand over my chest as I try to catch my breath. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he tells me sincerely. “I could read the questions on your face.” I look at him confusedly. “Were you not just wondering how I could afford this at the ripe young age of nineteen?”

I feel blood rush to my face and I know that I am blushing. I turn away from him and toward the massive grand piano, hoping I can hide behind it, embarrassed that he knew what I was thinking. How many more young people out there don’t have parents?

It seems like a funny coincidence that two people I meet today had parents pass away when they were young. I don’t want to mention my curiosity of his departed parents. I already hurt Ollie’s feelings today by mentioning how I’m looking for my second set of parents.

I run my fingers over the keys of the piano and strike a few to hear that it’s in tune. I love the feel of ivory against my fingers. So silky, yet strong, like glass.

“Do you play?” Cole smiles, his question shows in his eyes.

“Maybe,” I flirt with him. “My dad did say I was superb.” I laugh at my own joke and Cole’s smile widens, reaching his eyes.

“What do you play?”

I don’t answer him. I sit down at the piano and start playing ‘Chopsticks’. He laughs at me and comes over to help play. I feel more comfortable around him when I play the flirting game. It gives me a sense of control. When I first saw him at the door of my house I didn’t feel in control and it made me nervous. But now that I’ve hit the switch that turns on the flirtatious side of me, I can feel more relaxed with him.

Alex walks into the room then, reminding me that he was here. I stop playing abruptly and ask, “Where were you?”

His face is lit up like a Christmas tree. He talks in an excited rush, “Cole has an awesome telescope. The magnification on it is like five times better than mine. You got to check it out. You can see the moons of Jupiter so clearly.” I’m a little impressed, Alex has a really good telescope, and we use it all the time for our astronomy club. “Come on, you got to see it.” He waves his hand for me to follow him.

I look at Cole a little embarrassed for my brother who is acting like a kid in a candy store. “I’ll show it to you,” Cole says. He stands up and holds his hand out to me to help me up. I feel smitten towards him. No guys our age would hold their hand out to help a girl. I always wanted someone to, but most guys are just in a rush to go, go, go and they don’t wait for the girls.

I give Cole my hand and he leads me to the backdoor. Alex is already ahead of us and back at the telescope.

“Do you like astronomy too?” Cole asks.

“We
are
twins,” I tell him as an answer.

“I think you will really enjoy this,” Alex says as he steps away from the eyepiece. I come to a stop in front of a huge telescope with more gears and switches than I have ever seen on one before. I look into the eyepiece and see the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. They are much clearer than I have seen before. In Alex’s telescope they’re only fuzzy lights. I can also make out the eye storm on Jupiter, almost as clear as a picture.

“That’s amazing,” I say as I watch Jupiter and its moons slip out of the telescope’s scope. I step back from the telescope and smile at Cole and then Alex.

Cole steps up to the telescope and starts to maneuver a few gears and tilts the telescope to the left. “Here,” he says moving me in front of the eyepiece. He stands so close to me I feel a vibration between our two energies buzzing. His breath tickles my ear as he whispers, “Luna.”

I look in the eyepiece and see a magnificent view of the moon. The light bouncing off it is so blinding it takes my eyes awhile to adjust. The craters are so abundant and crystal clear. I could probably stand here and count every one of them. The moon is clearer than any picture I’ve seen of it. “It’s beautiful,” I express my thoughts aloud. I want to reach out and touch it, it seems like I could.

“Yes, she is,” Cole whispers again. “Do you know the story of the goddess of the moon?”

I shake my head no, too stirred up from his closeness to speak.

“Selene was the Greek goddess of the moon, with hair the color of the moon rays, much like yours,” he says as his hand glides down the length of my hair, “who fell in love with a mortal man, Endymion. Selene was so in love with him she asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep so he would stay eternally young. She visited him every night as she passed by in the sky, and she bore him fifty daughters while Endymion dreamt of holding the moon.”

I look away from the telescope and wait for my eyes to adjust. All I can see is an impression of the moon against blackness. I close my eyes and the impression is still there behind my eyelids. Alex clears his throat and I realize that once again, I forgot he was there. I’m having a hard time with reality when I am with Cole.

I step back from the telescope quickly; embarrassed that Alex was standing there while Cole and I had an intimate moment. When I step back I step right into Cole and almost stumble but he catches me around the waist and holds me there while Alex huffs back to the telescope to catch a glimpse of the moon.

Cole pulls me away from Alex’s path and I break away from him. The feel of his arms wrapped around me is more personal than I care to share with him, yet. As much as it feels right and that they belonged there, I don’t want to submit to them so easily.

We move to some lounge chairs by his pool and start talking about the stars, the planets and the constellations. Once Alex has his fill of the telescope he comes over to join us as Cole tells stories of the constellations. I am mesmerized by his voice and the cadence he speaks with. He sounds so much older than nineteen. I want to ask him questions about himself but I don’t want to break the spell his stories seem to have over the night as he tells the stories of Orion, Taurus, the Gemini twins, and all the other constellations we can point out in the night’s sky.

When Alex and I leave late that night, Cole and I have a ‘moment’ when all we can do is stare into each other’s eyes. Alex walked ahead of me after he gave Cole a, “see ya later,” but I was having more difficulty in being casual. There were so many thoughts running through my head of how amazing he was, would he even want a relationship with a seventeen-year-old, do I call him by his last name because he’s going to be a teacher at my school, should I shake his hand when I say good night?
I don’t know how to act with him.
I feel like my brain is screaming at me.

Finally, I settle with a smile and a “goodnight” before I step up to him to give him a little hug, with one arm stretched out. A hug might have seemed too much but the night felt intimate enough for it. I didn’t just get a hug though. As I stepped up to him, he stepped up to me and our lips locked onto each others.

I was really surprised at first and almost stepped away quickly but my body immediately melted into the kiss and I was rendered useless as I turned into pudding in his arms. I’ve only kissed a couple boys before and they weren’t anyone I was seriously dating. Those kisses were always simple and lacking in emotion. But this kiss has me smoldering. I’ve never felt so consumed by anything in my life. I felt like I would perish if the kiss ended so I did the only thing that felt right if I wanted to continue to live, I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him with more intensity than I ever had.

“Wow,” is all I could say once I finally broke away to breath. I blush at the absurdity of my exclamation. “I’m sorry, I...I...,” I stumble through my words, feeling totally humiliated at myself.

“I’m sorry,” he quickly excuses my apology. “I interpreted your movements wrong… and then… I couldn’t pull away.”

“Yeah. Me too,” I admit. We both smile shyly at each other. “Well, good night,” I tell him as I start walking down his porch steps. A smile is growing over my face as I walk away from his house.

“Wait,” he calls from behind me. I quickly wipe the smile off my face and put on a concerned expression.