I put down my mug, and even though it had been years since I’d thought of Charles, I felt my eyes welling up. “No. Well, yes, I guess so. He wasn’t nice. I think looking back that he was abusive, but at the time, I hadn’t dated much, and I didn’t know the signs. I thought he was just trying to improve me, to fit me into his world.”
“Pookas are not revengeful, but I could learn to be, if you’d like me to put him in his place.”
“No. He went his way, and I stumbled off to the library. It was actually a good thing, although I didn’t know it at the time. The breakup made me buckle down and study with an intensity that shot up all my grades. I even earned a scholarship to law school, but even so, I couldn’t pay for it. My grandma’s cancer took most of our money. I barely made it through San Jose State without big debts.”
“I wish I had known you then. I would have . . .”
“No. I was proud of achieving it on my own,” I said, pondering the line that I always spouted when someone got overly possessive of my history. Or perhaps I should admit it was just their pity I shrugged off. I didn’t want to think back to those times. I missed the grandmother who’d been so full of love and life.
I picked up my mug and took a sip. It had grown cold, or rather tepid. I wasn’t a fan.
“Pour it out and get a fresh mug,” Timothy suggested.
I looked around, but saw no place to toss it. Timothy stood, grabbed the mug from out of my hand, and tossed the contents over the balcony. I surged up and looked over the balcony’s railing. Underneath us was a patch of plants. I hoped the coffee wouldn’t stunt their growth.
Timothy trudged over to the pot and poured a fresh mug.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s nice to have someone at my beck and call to empty my cold coffee and bring me fresh.” Of course, I was joking, but his eyes grew serious.
“I would do more than that for you.”
Like make sure that Charles Piermont Montgomery III ran into a streak of bad luck? What would that mean, exactly? How would he do it? What kind of powers did a pooka actually possess? But then it hit me, he’d known Charles’s name.