Lloyd's Angel Ch. 14

Lloyd's Angel: Goodbye, Angela

November 2010

I wept silently, waiting for her to push me away and complete the destruction of my breaking heart. Instead, she hugged me tighter.

"Lloyd, what you did was wrong. But it's in the past; you can't go on beating yourself up over it forever. Look at me." I met her eyes, which looked wet, too. "I forgive you. You're a good man, one of the best."

I started to object, but she placed a fingertip against my lips.

"Hush. I know what you're thinking; you see a trail of collateral damage and high-handed decisions made unilaterally and often in the heat of the moment. I see a fundamentally decent man who loves those around him and who is willing to sacrifice himself for them; who will make judgments nobody should have to make, in order to leave things better than they would have been."

I snorted and asked, bitterly, "Do you see yourself as 'collateral damage'?"

"Of course not. But think, Lloyd; you can't always intercept that necklace before it makes it out the door, or head off a brawl before it starts. There are losses you can't make up or undo, like the death of a loved one or the loss of innocence. There's no replacement; you soldier on and hope to draw something positive from the experience."

Angela, or Angel, paused and stared intently into my eyes, and I started to feel calmer as I tried to view things from her perspective.

"We've discussed it, Angela and I, more than once," she continued, instantly destroying my fragile sense of balance, "and there are days when we wish she had never met you. I'll admit I wondered what it would feel like to masturbate myself to orgasm when I'm horny and you're off on some errand, or to dissuade some creep by just lying there like a corpse when he spends himself inside me. Would Angela have met somebody at school or after work? What might her life be like if we hadn't struggled for two years to come to grips with ourselves?" She shrugged expressively, still not releasing me.

If this was supposed to be making me feel better, it wasn't working.

"But that's all water under the bridge, and it would be stupid not to be thankful for all the good things that have happened, too. I've learned things about my body and my mind Angela would never have discovered, and if I had a few nights I'd trade in, I had far more I want to do over again just the same way. Angela's pretty sure she's learning far more in her classes since you took over. It's not about the money, but we have far more than we spend. We have exciting opportunities ahead of us we'd never have individually. But most importantly, we both know we have a man who loves us and would move Heaven and Earth to keep us safe from harm." Angel ruffled my hair affectionately.

I was struggling with information overload. I hadn't expected any of this and felt like I'd been run over by a truck.

"Imagine how I felt," she teased, reading my expression.

"How?"

Angel understood me well enough to grasp the full scope of the question. "A year ago, actually," she confessed, stunning me. "That's why it's so appropriate you wore this tie. Angela bought it, you know."

I was dumbfounded. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. She wanted to get you something for your birthday, but was too nervous to give it to you; she didn't remember anything concrete about the previous year beyond a feeling she'd tried something and it hadn't gone off well, and you'd already withdrawn at work." Angel smiled. "I just found myself holding the box that night, and was so pleased because it looked just like what I would have picked out, and I'd never thought of giving you anything besides myself."

"But I was really curious about the 'from Angela' on the tag -- in my handwriting!" she laughed.

"I don't remember that," I blurted out, engaged despite myself.

"I removed it," Angel said, still laughing. "I wasn't going to give you a present from some other girl, when I didn't even know who she was!" She turned serious again. "I thought about who this 'Angela' could be, and was shocked when I realized I knew everything about an Angela who seemed to be my twin, right up to a year before, when she just -- ended. I couldn't understand it."

"I might have left it there," she admitted, "but the next evening I had the strangest feeling that Angela was happy you liked the tie. After that, I couldn't leave it alone. We struggled, but finally we could communicate telepathically when I was riding in the car and Angela was out walking. It was quite a shock to realize our initial short interactions actually spanned days and that we never independently observed the same events, even when we knew we must be quite close to each other."

I shook my head, marveling at the conundrum she must have faced and surmounted.

"I think we both simultaneously realized we shared the same body, which makes sense in retrospect. In a way, it just made it more frustrating because we didn't have any control over it. I started making Jeff drive me here every time I had a free shift, so we could work on it."

I remembered the surge of mysterious car trips. "I thought you were Christmas shopping," I confessed, "which sounds remarkably stupid of me, now that I think about it."

"Men!" Angel laughed, hard enough to draw tears. She gasped for breath. "Shopping, me? What kind of store would you have let me into, alone?"

I laughed too, imagining Angel at work, or heaven forbid, a Victoria's Secret. It would have been like chumming for sharks. I'd created her as a sexual creature, with inexhaustible desire and no restraint beyond my own.

The shared laughter felt good, releasing a tightness within me I hadn't realized was there. Angel released her grip on my shoulders, but wriggled until we were more tightly nested against each other than ever. "Okay, I admit it, that was a dumb thought," I told her. "I take it you figured it out?"

She nodded. "We did. Don't ask for the trick, because I couldn't explain it if I wanted to, but we were able to flip back and forth whenever we wanted. Like a were-slut, I suppose." She giggled. "It was disorienting at first, but we're both pretty unflappable now. It's been useful."

"I imagine," I nodded.

Angel confessed, "That was me patting down the sock guy. You'll never know how hard it was to keep my hands off his package, but I knew you were going to screw with him and he deserved it; I think he would have popped if a chimpanzee had pulled out those socks. You should have done more; I don't think she told you, but Angela saw him following her home once."

"I knew he was a punk," I muttered. Making a guess, I asked, "That was Angela reading Snowden the riot act the other night, right?"

"Got it," she agreed. "I told her she shouldn't have used so many polysyllabic words."

"Polysyllabic?" I echoed, raising a brow. "Am I talking to Angela now?"

"Nope. I didn't get to the end of the story. At first, we still communicated by flipping back and forth really quickly; most of our conversations occurred while we were in the car. But after a while, we found that more of each other's memories were becoming naturally accessible, as if they were our own."

"We might have left things there, but last night's talk wasn't just a wake-up call for you, Lloyd. Angela and I had a long heart-to-heart afterwards. We've realized that letting things go on this way is hurting all of us, and that we'll never finish healing until we let go and move forward. You're flogging yourself over something that doesn't matter anymore, and we've realized we can only get what we want together, not apart."

"What exactly does that mean?" I asked.

"Our memories were already identical. Our skills and aptitudes are basically the same; we were, after all, the same person. The biggest difference was that I have certain hardwired needs and desires, and Angela didn't. So..." she shrugged.

I felt a pang of loss.

"Don't mourn her," Angel consoled me. "She isn't really gone; she's just grown -- differently -- than most people."

"So; Angela, then...?" I surmised.

"Angela, to the rest of the world." She turned towards me and pulled my hand up to her breast; it didn't feel like she was wearing a bra under the knit top, and her nipple was hard against my palm. "I'll always be your Angel, Lloyd."