Losing Her Wings

Chapter 21

Skylar was caught off guard when Pepper called her over from Niles’s side not five minutes after she had persuaded him she was feeling better. He had let her rest with him upstairs for a good fifteen minutes until the residue pain from her vision was gone. It was the most upsetting and yet relieving vision she’d had yet and for some reason the mix of emotions she felt over it were making her headache worse than it had ever been before. And when Pepper explained that she wanted to introduce her to someone, only for her to see that person walking towards her, holding hands with a tall, American jock guy, both smiling, she felt that she couldn’t handle any more. The one person she didn’t want to see, except Ryan of course, was walking right towards her with a happy smile and an engagement ring that shimmered in the disco lights above them. “Skylar, this is my friend Paige. And her boyfriend…oh, sorry, fiancé, Danny.” Pepper explained with a smile, introducing both of them, making Skylar almost choke on the word ‘fiancé’. It was the last thing she had expected but considering the fact that she knew the very same girl had turned down Angelo, a perfectly handsome, smart man for five years running, it was obvious she hadn’t done so for the fear of a commitment. She certainly couldn’t use the excuse now anyway, since she had clearly committed to marrying her bodyguard, Danny.

“It’s nice to meet you. Pepper’s told me so much about you.” Paige smiled at her, but as much as she knew she had to be polite back she could only grit her teeth and fake a reply and a smile to match the welcome she’d received. She knew too much about the truth nature of the girl, knew what she had done and what her motives were and she couldn’t forgive her for them even if she had wanted to. So she listened intently to Pepper telling them all what they had in common and nodded and ooh’d and aah’d in the right places until the conversation got interesting. The two had just moved on to a catch up discussion while Joachim and Danny talked about football and cars, and when she heard Pepper ask how Angelo was, she couldn’t help but butt in and have her say on the matter in a delicate and cautionary way that would allow her to carry out her tasks efficiently.

“Sorry, are you talking about Angelo D’Angelo?” She asked innocently, surprising Paige with the very fact that she knew him. Danny hadn’t been happy about her suggestion of attending the party Pepper had actually invited her to but when she had seen that it was on campus, in Pleasant Creek, she couldn’t help but accept for the same reason Danny objected. Angelo had just moved there. Permanently, semi-permanently no-one was sure but her new fiancé certainly knew that she was secretly hoping to see him while she was there. To his relief they hadn’t but only because neither of them realised that as they got out Danny’s car on the corner of the campus square, in the only parking space left at that time of night, Angelo and Jacob had just passed by there two minutes ago on their walk around the village to see the sights before they had to get to work the next morning. And Skylar knew fine well everything that had gone on from her vision. Though it wasn’t like her other visions, it was more like a video on fast forward. There were events that made sense, some that didn’t and others that were a mixture of two different people’s lives intermingled into one blurred and fast moving scene that made absolutely no sense since the two people didn’t even know each other. And neither she nor Danny were oblivious to the bite in Paige’s tone when she asked how she knew Angelo. “Oh, he and I go way back…he probably wouldn’t remember me now but we had fun at the time.” Skylar lied through her teeth, knowing that although she was supposed to be better than that, she was only human and it bothered her that Paige was so selfish and heartless as to treat a wonderful man like Angelo the way she had. The flirtatious smile that went along with her words made Danny laugh and hope that maybe Angelo had moved back to be closer to Skylar, if they really had a history together. Paige on the other hand was less than impressed, pouting to herself unconsciously, in the thought that she had been so sure that she was the only girl Angelo had ever looked at.