Anthony returned soon after. What exactly did Manaphel have to know about the situation? In all truth, nothing, nothing at all. I could get away with making Anthony swoon for me without her having to know a thing. It was as simple as never confirming it.

Who was I to think that would work for long?

It would all be mere things. Giggly things. Shy things. Things that don't really matter enough to mean anything on a larger scale.

It was almost like that.

Lazy rooftop nights spoke otherwise. I couldn't help it, and neither could he. It would just be the two of us up there. Nobody knew about us. It was one of those nights, just one of those nights. The moon was as bright as the sun. He couldn't sleep because of it, but he couldn't sleep because of other reasons too. It was almost like he knew what was coming.

Of course, I invited him to sit out with me. He smoked a tobacco cigarette outside. The scent of it was too strong to be pleasurable, but he liked it, so I let him. When he offered it to me, I accepted. Anything to make him happy after all, even if it caused me to suffer.

The tobacco didn't help much. I still had that fluttery feeling in my stomach. That damned big ball of emotion. It deserved to be thrown out and forgotten about. I figured there was only one way to do that, and that was to get the truth off my chest.

"Anthony, was it worth Hell?"

He hummed for a moment before responding, "I suppose it is. Why ask now?"

"I think I've figured out that odd feeling. Do you understand?"

He glanced up at the sky as if Heaven was judging him. Maybe Heaven was judging me too. He was human, and I was me. I never understood why he was punished like he was supposed to be pure. The universe lets nobody go without punishment however. Knowing he was heading towards suffering was my punishment. I just wanted to carry the weight of his world on my shoulders.

"I understand," he whispered as he grabbed my hand. Both our eyes seemed to drift down at out intertwining fingers -so wrong, but so right. A little gasp of air escaped my lips as I glanced back up at him. To tell him no then would have been a crime, but I should have. It would have been simple to pull my hand away and stuff it under my jacket. It would have been simple to keep him safe. I could have thrown away all those feelings there.

Saying no in that moment was impossible.

His eyes begged yes. If we were anymore secluded, he probably would have been down on his knees begging for me. Giving it to him would be so simple. Everything about his face was so beautiful in that moment. The glorious moonlight on his flushed skin. The little freckles that danced across the bridge of his nose. The way his doe eyes begged me for more.

I pulled my hand away and laid it on his knee.

"Good. You should go back to bed now. You've had your tobacco fix. Go. Back to bed."

There went that sparkle from his eyes. He jerked back a little and his eyebrows knit together.

"W-what?"

"Go to bed, Anthony. Just go to bed, please."

He pushed himself to his feet, then looked down at me. His lips, sweet rose lips, parted, like he was going to say something. No words were spoke between us. There was nothing left to say right now. Simply, he went back inside, and I stayed with the moon till the sun's next dawn.

The next morning we couldn't look each other in the eye. It was sickening the stay near each other. He had no more radiancy, is cheeks were less pink than usual, and most concerning he was wrapped up in a quilt while moping around. As for me, I spent the day in bed. The pounding in my head was like I was living in somebody's heartbeat -his heartbeat.

There was something I could have done. Anything I could have done but that. Why was I ever so stupid? Human daftness was getting to my head more than the day dreams of Anthony. It felt like God's eyes were down upon me again. Every knot in my stomach clenched tighter. It's impossible to run from the world when all eyes are watching.

Only Anthony's mattered to me.

I flung myself out of bed around noon. He was in the common area reading a copy of the Bible.

"Do you think that's going to save you?"

He mumbled, "You're sure not."

"I'm trying to save the both of us. Can't you see that?"

He closed that book. "Maybe I don't want to be saved. Maybe what I wanted was you."

"No. I'm not meant for you."

His lip was pulled between his teeth and curtains closed over glossy eyes. Two little sniffles tickled his nose. The muscles in his forehead were clenching as hard as they could.

"Let it out," I whispered, "I need to hear it."

The stage play began. Tears ran down his cheeks. His bottom lip trembled. He threw the Bible at me, but I didn't flinch. His palms went into fists because of that.

"Who fucking cares about what's meant? There's lots of things that aren't meant! You're not meant to be here, yet you're standing there! I'm not meant to be like this! Yet here I am! I'd be damned like this anyways! I can sit here and pretend all day long! I can lie to myself and act like nothing ever happened! I'm not going to do that though! Do you have any thoughts in that oh so holy brain of yours as to why?"

I nodded my head and sighed, "Tell me though. Go on."

"Because damn it Ollie, damn it, I really love you! I give a fuck about you! I want you!

He let his fists fall loose. His lips went back to trembling.

"I want you," he sniffled, "Just you. I don't want to be holy, I want you. You make me holy."

I turned away from him and glanced into the mirror propped against the wall. "I don't make you holy, and if I do, then you're confused. It feels like all I'm doing is making you hellbent. Don't say you love me, not when you'll hate yourself for it."

There he was behind me, all dew eyed and red-cheeked, like he got slapped across the face. And there was me, with my tired eyes, powdered face, and disappointment. Who was I anymore? The reflection in front of me was something more than human, but less than holy. It was a mask I was hiding behind -everything from the powder, to the body I was kept in, to the heart that kept my secrets.

I put my hand over my chest.

"I think I need to let it out too," I grumbled as I walked to the kitchen. I grabbed a wet cloth and scrubbed the makeup off my face. Then I glanced back at the mirror. There I was again, with my tired eyes, freckles that glowed like stars, darker complexion, and my natural self.

"I'm sick of hiding things," I mumbled as I turned to Anthony. "You know who I am. You know what I am. You know I'm suffering too. Don't you? And don't you know how badly I want to take you in my arms and have you as my own? Do you not think that I would say yes if I could? Anthony, don't you think?"

His eyes were open wide. He was staring right at me, and I could stare right back.

"Don't you know how selfish you are? You want me to be less and less holy by the day. If I go through with this, I'm not going to have a chance of being allowed back in the gates. I don't want to fall, and if not that, I'll walk the world alone. And you'll be stuck in Hell. Think about that."

He folded his hands together as if he was about to speak a prayer. "I have thought about that. Where's your selflessness? Where's the angel whose supposed to sacrifice himself for me? Where's my dear friend who has spent countless hours drawing me to him? I miss him. Don't you miss him too?"

"Anthony, you have no clue what you're talking about."

He stood up and approached me. He stopped when he was about a foot from me. "Maybe we need to do less talking. Much less. You're hiding behind your words. Sometimes you're all talk. I know how you act. That's what I know."

I glanced down to the floor and noticed his palm open. "Anthony, please I can't. Anthony, just listen to me."

"Will you let me suffer now with no content, or suffer later and be at peace with it?"

"Stop."

"What will you do?"

I closed my eyes. "Enough! Please, I'm begging you. Please, please, please... Please. Stop acting like I'm at your mercy. You're acting everything is about you. I'm not your slave, I'm your angel! Get that through your thick skull for once. Can you even hear me in there, or did you sell your sense of thought away with your soul?"

He put his fingers under my chin, tilting my head up. "From the way you talk, it seems like you believe that I never had a sense of thought. Stop acting like I'm just some stupid man. Stop acting like once you throw me away, I won't matter. Maybe once you do that, I'll behave to your standards."

I opened my eyes just enough to make out the details on his rosey cheeks. "Do you really think I feel like that?"

"It's obvious. I'm just a bug to you. I bet if you could, you'd smash me, clean up my guts, and then forget about me."

His fingers began to shake under my chin. I moved my cheek down to be cupped by his hand. Then both dams broke, and rivers poured onto the floor. Every salty tear was well spent, buying my sympathy. Every drop that ran down his still boyish cheeks, that I adored so much, fed life to my aching spirit.

"I don't feel like that, Anthony," I whispered, "I really don't. I love you, I really do. I want to love you. I want to give you the love you deserve. But you know I can't."

He was my voice of temptation. "Can't, or won't?"

"No."

"Can't or won't!"

I pulled away from his hand and turned to look at the mirror again. There we were. I wanted to shatter that damn mirror into a thousand pieces. "Won't. I won't. I absolutely will not. You know why. I have nothing else to say. That's all I have to say."

"You've probably committed a thousand sins, yet I still think you're holy."

I crossed my arms and closed my eyes. I couldn't stand to look at the fowl beast in the mirror for another moment. The relationship between Anthony and I was much like a mirror. He was right, I had became a sinful creature. My sin was equal to his, yet I could be forgiven, and he could not. It was a perfect mirror image, but that's what it was, just a reflection. Standing side by side we could never line up right. It would seem backwards. Everything felt backwards. He had control over me. I was giving into his urge. We were supposed to do what the other was doing, like a perfect mirror image. We had to look to each other to see ourselves, and he was something I didn't want to see at the moment.

"I lost part of myself when you sold your soul," I sighed as I wrapped my arms around myself, "You make me who I'm supposed to be. I'm not holy —not like before. You're not who you used to be either."

He put both his hands on my shoulders and whispered into my ear, "You're still my angel. I'm still your human. I still have my soul. I'll have it till the day I die, like what you said. I don't think you've lost anything. Perhaps you've found yourself instead, as have I."

He then placed a tender kiss on my cheek, and let his lips hover there till I opened my eyes. His cheeks were the full, red apples of August. It was a good look on him. It complemented his crisp jawline well. It was a beautiful apple in the garden that was Eve's temptation, wasn't it? And that serpent had her voice of temptation. Anthony was both to me.

I was sure that the temptation from his lips had demonic influences behind it, just like in the garden. He was Manaphel's marionette —just a puppet on a string. A play thing of hers. She could throw him away. I couldn't. I wouldn't. Humans fell due to temptation of the sweet apple. They were told don't eat it. They did it anyways. Every moment since then led to this. Anthony and me standing together, side by side not quite right. It felt so wrong, yet so right. The eyes of God, or they eyes of anyone except Anthony, seemed to matter less to me.

"I want to know."

He tilted his head. "Know what?"

"What it's like to love," I muttered, "It's tempting. You're a temptation. I want to keep you from suffering, but I'm suffering myself. I love you, and I'm so dirty for it."

I sat down on the couch and put my hands to my face. My head was beginning to throb. "I want to know what it's like. It's a feeling I don't understand. I want to learn it like everything else. Some knowledge is forbidden. I'm sure you read in that book of yours about forbidden knowledge and the problems it's created."

"You can't say that it hasn't created good things too."

I closed my eyes, then ran my forefingers over them. "You're right, but in the end, those things don't matter."

I felt the couch sink down next to me. "To me it's not about the end, it's about now," he said. That was painfully obvious, and a foolish thing to think. Of course a fool like him would think that. After all, what kind of person sells their soul just for love? A fool like him who was focused on the present instead of the future.

I looked up at him. "The end is inevitable. That's how time works, Anthony, you can't just ignore things all the time. I'm trying to stop you from being damned."

"What if there didn't have to be an end? Would you?"

I folded my hands together in my lap. There was no prayer to save him. I could beg on my hands and knees, but I'd be ignored. I felt ignored then, so why would anyone have a reason to listen.

"There has to be an end," I groaned, having enough of what he was going on about. It made me wonder if all humans were this frustrating.

He propped his feet up on the coffee table. "That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking what if? It would be nice to think about."

"No end. Well I suppose if there were no consequences I would."

I glanced over at him. He had a smug smirk on his face. What was that boy thinking? The last thing he needed to be doing was thinking. That one horrid experience should have taught him that. Humans never learn — not like they should at least, but that's to be expected. He's only human, sadly, he's only human.

"Anthony, whatever you're thinking, give it up. You know there's always going to be consequences, even on an earthly level."

He tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"Anthony, dear boy, for the sake of human simplicity I'm more or less of the masculine type, and you are definitely a man of your own. If I were able to love you, we'd be at such risk. You could be killed or arrested. We'd lose everything," I huffed as I crossed my arms. I then rolled my eyes at him. So frivolous, he was so frivolous.

He leaned a bit closer to me, "I could be happy."

"Enough of this. I've had enough of this daydreaming. There's no way. I'm not giving up holiness. Some of us can learn from other people's mistakes," I groaned as I stood up. I looked down at him and sighed, "I'm going for a walk."

"Will you be back later, angel, or are you leaving me forever?"

I paced to the door, then glanced back at him. He had a cigarette in his left hand and a lit match in the other. Of course he was playing it cool under pressure. The flame was shaking back and forth. He was beginning to crack from the pressure. I was winning.

"I guess we'll just have to see," I hummed as I opened the door. I glanced back at him one more time.

Was this really how I wanted to remember him? I didn't have to come back, but I'd have to live with leaving him. That seemed too cruel. He didn't deserve that. He was only human. Maybe I was expecting him to act more than human. Maybe I was asking too much of him, or maybe I wasn't asking enough.

I still had to leave. I slipped out of the apartment like it was no home at all and made my way to the stairwell. Poor factory boys coming home from the nightshift were trudging up the stairs, I saw a couple on each floor. One had a nosebleed and a black eye. There must have been a fight. I would have helped him, but he was minding his own business and I was minding my own. He wasn't my responsibility anyways. His angel looked just as sad and broken, like a statue that was left in a waste pile. Dark, hollow eyes, perfectly carved lips and chin, hair put up in golden braids, and a body wrapped in linen, also such an empty, still look on his face except for the judgmental glare he shot at me. I was the one getting the odd look.

Of course I deserved it. I was walking amongst the humans, and not watching my own. I certainly didn't look like an angel. I looked like a wreck. While on earth I gained a few pounds and my face became more pouty. There was no telling the last time I combed my hair, which was getting darker by the day. I had also took a liking to cotton. Linen was good and all, but cotton was king, and all the people were working for the fabric empire.

Anthony too worked for the fabric empire. I figured he would be going into work soon. That gave me even more reason to get out of there. I made my way to the bottom of the stairwell, and there was a black and white tomcat with the scent of darkness. There was something familiar about the cat, but I couldn't figure out quite what. I ignored him then, but he followed me. After about thirty minutes I turned to the cat and asked, "What is it? Why are you following me?"

He then started to run the other way. I followed out of curiosity. We walked through town together.

"I feel like I've seen you before. Your markings look awfully familiar. It looks like you had a bunch of powder dumped on your nice black fur."

Of course the cat didn't respond. Cats never respond. He just kept strutting along. All cats think they're too good for everyone except for the person who feeds them.

"I hope you don't mind me talking to you. I really need to get some things off my chest and because you're a cat you won't talk back to me about it. You know I'm an angel. I'm positive that you can see it. You're a cat after all and you see all things that aren't natural to this world. That's probably why you wanted me to follow you. Isn't that right silly boy? You're just a little lost kitty that needed some help. Well while I help you, you're helping me. See, my human is a typical human man, except for how he sold his soul to a demon. He did that because he wants to be loved. Specifically, he wants me to love him. I think that demon set it up or something, but from how it looks, I'm the chosen one. I do love him, but I can't act upon it."

I paused to see if the cat cared. He still wasn't paying attention, so I kept on.

"See stuff like that is considered sinful by my people, but I think being on Earth means sin. This is the one that'll send him to Hell though. That would break my heart if he went to Hell. He's usually so good too. He's a hard worker and good to hang around with. He's helpful too. The only thing I can think of that's wrong with him is how selfish he is. We got into a fight about what we could do. I told him no. I told him that I'd fall for it. I've hid my sin from Heaven, but something like that will be found out the moment Anthony hits the flame. Then I'm done for. I still love him though. I wish there was a way to keep him from Hell. I wish I could reincarnate him. Then maybe he'd have a chance. I don't think Heaven is too big on reincarnation though. Who knows what would even happen with that in times like these? I don't know. I just don't know."

The cat still didn't seem to care. At least I was able to let that out. I stayed quiet for the rest of the walk. I didn't want to stand out to the townspeople, and having a full conversation with a cat was one way to draw attention. We walked in silence till there were no more factories or people for as far as the eye could see. It was easy to miss the little cottage at the edge of the woods that he led me to. How the cat ended up in town baffled me at that time. I was relieved that he was home now, even if that home was covered in moss and the wooden frame was beginning to rot. He kneaded on the front step with his front paws, like he was making bread from the soaked wood. I chuckled as I watched him do that. It reminded me of my own job. This was for sure his home, and as I turned to head back to mine I heard a woman speak.

"Heya, Oridon. Thanks for bringing Jasper back."

I immediately looked up. It was Manaphel. I had told Jasper about the fight. Within the time it took to glance up at Manaphel, Jasper was able to change into his human form. I would have cursed myself for not recognizing him, but I didn't have time for that. He was already running to Manaphel while shouting, "He loves him! He loves him! He really loves him! And he knows he's a dirty angel!"

A smirk came to her face. "I had to find out what was happening somehow. Cats have excellent hearing. Why don't you come inside so we can all talk? Evanora made an apple pie earlier. Why don't you come have a slice, angel?"