Page 99 of Clinically Bewitched
I smiled.
Everyone gasped.
“Both sides of his face moved!” Nathan yelped.
“It’s symmetrical!” Gabriel added.
“Not a stroke,” Hayden confirmed, looking genuinely disappointed.
“Then what,” Fitz said, his voice climbing, “ishappeningright now?”
I leaned back in my chair—another thing the old Julien would never have done; I usually sat with perfect posture, spine straight, feet flat on the floor—and smiled wider.
“I had a good weekend.”
Silence.
“A good weekend,” Nathan repeated slowly.
“Yes.”
“That’s it? That’s your explanation for”—he gestured wildly at all of me—“this?”
“HAPPY!” Fitz shouted, pointing at my face. “You lookhappy! It’sunnatural!”
“I am happy.”
More silence.
“But you’re never happy!” Gabriel said. “You’re competent! Precise! Professionally satisfied! But nothappy!”
“I am now.”
“Why?” Nathan demanded. “What happened?”
“I stopped fighting.”
“Fighting what?”
“Everything.”
Quinton was watching me with a small smile, his fingers drumming on the table.
Winnie was definitely suppressing laughter now.
“Right,” Fitz said, setting down his coffee cup as if it might explode. “The weekend. With your wife. Yourwife,who showed up here and talked for forty-five minutes about chakras and—”
“Athena,” I said, and even I could hear the warmth in my voice.
Everyone’s eyes widened.
“He said her name like a human person,” Nathan whispered.
“Withaffection,” Gabriel added.
“I’m scared,” Fitz said.
“How is that... situation... progressing?” Hayden asked carefully.
