“And a good fight always leads to …” Jane chewed her lip, as if she wasn’t sure I was ready to hear that.
Andrea sighed dreamily. “Makeup sex.”
I chewed my lip, tinkering with a blue embossed Specialty Books napkin. “Technically, we don’t make up; it’s more like declaring a ceasefire.”
“Does he make you sign a treaty? Is that your twisted form of foreplay?” Andrea asked, her perfect brow furrowed. I tossed the frayed napkin at her. She snickered and danced out of the way.
“Now I’m curious,” Jane said conspiratorially. “I never had sex with a vampire as a human, and I refuse to hear any details from Little Miss Disturbing Penis Nicknames over there.” She jerked a thumb toward Andrea. “What’s it like?”
“I’m not telling you that!” I exclaimed.
Jane whined, “Oh, come on, be a sport.”
“Why are we friends?”
“Do it, or she’ll talk about her first time with Gabriel again,” Andrea grumbled.
I ducked and hopped off the stool to avoid answering. My eyes landed on a glossy soft-cover book featuring a gaunt, weary-looking vampire sprawled across a Gothic four-poster bed.
“Hey, what’s this?” I asked, pulling a copy from the pile. “The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires. A comprehensive guide to safe, loving treatment of the injured undead.”
I flipped through the book and found nutrition guides, feeding schedules, an appendix on skin care after minor sunburns. “This would have been useful a week ago,” I muttered.
“Wait, he’s injured? Your vampire is injured? Iris, you didn’t pick this guy up while he was hitchhiking or something, did you?”
“Yes, Jane, I did. In fact, he was holding a sign that said, ‘I need a ride, and I’m probably going to end up draining the moron who stops for me.’ But I figured, hey, what’s the harm?”
“All right, all right,” Jane grumbled. “I’m used to mothering now. I worry about Jamie constantly. Suddenly, I have a whole new respect for Mama.”
Behind her, Andrea gasped. Jane whirled on her, eyes narrowed. “If you ever tell anyone I said that, I will deny it, and then I will tell Dick all of the access codes for the adult channels on your cable box.”
“You wouldn’t.” Andrea hissed. “We’d never see him again.”
I turned to the redhead behind the bar. “Jolene, how do you put up with these two?”
Jolene yawned and turned a page in The Drama of the Half-Were Child. “I’m just here for the comic relief.”
—
Armed with enough books to keep me busy for weeks, I stopped by the Dairy Freeze on the way home to pick up the traditional Tuesday-night cheeseburgers. Joe Brooks, who’d been manning the grill for almost forty years, was sure to put extra grilled onions on Gigi’s, just as she liked it. That, combined with the crispy Tater Tots in the bottom of my grease-spotted brown takeout bag, guaranteed a happy evening at home.
“See you next Tuesday!” I called over my shoulder. Joe Brooks grinned and waved his spatula at me.
I hurried toward my car. I had about twenty minutes to get home before the cheese on the burgers lost ideal elasticity.
“Iris!”
I turned to see Paul jogging across the parking lot from his truck. Damn, there went my guaranteed evening of domestic felicity.
“Hi,” he said cheerfully, kissing my cheek.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, making the expected smacking noise, without any real enthusiasm. Paul hadn’t darkened the Dairy Freeze’s door since he’d gotten sick on a bad chili cheese dog in high school. He was about as likely to try his luck at snake handling as ordering one of Joe Brooks’s specials. Paul’s light hair reflected a corona of sea-green light from the streetlamps. His eyes twinkled as he nodded toward the greasy bag.
“You’re always here on Tuesday nights,” he said. “It’s cheeseburger night. How are you? Are you OK? I’ve been calling.”
“I know,” I said, wincing. “I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy.”
“With your new guy?” he asked, and although his tone was bright and even, there was a tinge of hurt around his eyes, an unhappy turn to his mouth.
“Sort of,” I said, awkwardly opening the door and shoving the takeout bag onto the passenger seat.
“So, where did you and Cal meet?”
“Through work,” I said.
“Is it serious?” he asked.
“He’s usually pretty serious, yes,” I muttered.
“Wait, you met him through work? He was so pale, and his eyes … Aw, man, he’s a vampire?” He groaned. “How’s a guy supposed to compete with that?”
“It’s not a competition,” I reminded him gently. “You and I don’t work, Paul, remember? Not in the long term.”
The corner of his mouth tilted. “And I guess dating somebody who won’t die is pretty long-term, huh?”
“Paul—”
“Iris, I think we should give it another try. I miss you. No one makes me laugh like you. No one understands the way I think like you do. I think we can make it work long-term. We could get married, have kids, the whole deal. We could, Iris. We just have to try a little harder.”
“I want that. I want that just as much as you do, but we shouldn’t have to try so hard, Paul. It should just happen. We don’t have that … spark. That thing that makes you want to scream at someone one minute and kiss him the next. The thing that keeps life interesting.”
“OK, what if we got back together and we didn’t try at all?”
I laughed. “This feels like some sort of relationship trick.”
“I don’t do tricks. I don’t play games. You know that,” he said, squeezing my arm gently. “We may not have a spark, but what we have is the real thing. We’re friends, Iris. I can’t think of any better way to start a life together.”
He was right, of course. He didn’t play games. He was always very up-front with me, even when he knew it would hurt me. “No, Paul, thank you, but no. I don’t want to try again … with or without trying.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go out to dinner some night?” he asked. “Just as friends? I just—I miss talking to you, Iris. I miss you.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I honestly missed my old friend. I missed the simplicity of being with him. No drama. No danger. Pulses all around. I hadn’t been involved in a life-or-death struggle once while dating Paul.
He was there at the Dairy Freeze because he knew me. He knew my habits, my routine, my likes and dislikes, because he knew me. Not some dossier in a file that declared that I was a pruned-up spinster, ear-deep in debt, but the real me. Why couldn’t I make something relatively easy work? Why did I have to be such a personal train wreck?
Height jokes aside, Paul was a good-looking man in a small town, where the dating pool was limited. And there were a lot of reasons he was a viable candidate.
1. He had a steady job.
2. He didn’t expect me to cook for him, clean for him, or be his mommy.
3. He had no problematic tendencies such as drinking, drug abuse, or spending all waking hours playing World of Warcraft.
4. He was generally considerate and remembered my birthday every year without prompting.
5. I could count on him not to take inappropriate pictures of me while I was sleeping and post them on Facebook, which was more than I could say for one of the guys Andrea dated.
I didn’t want to play at relationships anymore. I wanted something I could hold on to, something that held on to me. Even if that thing was sort of dangerous and occasionally, and quite literally, bit me on the butt.
“It’s just not a good idea, Paul. I’m sorry. I miss you, too. But we can’t go on like this. This constant push-and-pull. It’s not healthy. We’re never going to meet the people we can have actual relationships with if we’re pseudo-dating.”
“But we can be friends, right? And friends go out to dinner all the time.”
“Yes, but friends don’t have sex afterward,” I deadpanned.
“Good friends do.”
“Paul.”
“It was worth a shot. But you’re OK, right?” he asked. “You’re not mad at me? Or dating some vampire to try to get over me?”
“I think you should try to get over you,” I shot back.
“That did sound a little douchey, didn’t it?” He chuckled. I nodded emphatically. “OK, go home before your cheeseburgers get cold. Tell Gigi I said hi.”
I bade Paul good night. He shut the door behind me as I started the car. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I watched him in my rearview. In the three years I’d known him, this was the first time Paul had mentioned Gigi without being prompted. Was he growing up or just hoping to convince me that we could still “work”? Why did he only decide to miss me after seeing me with someone else? And why did his hints of jealousy brighten my day?
I sighed, turning the car away from town. “Having feelings for a living ex while wrestling with the romantic stupidity of a potential vampire beau. You’ve got a real wacky sitcom of a life going, Scanlon.”
13
Vampires, particularly older vampires, do not enjoy reminiscing about their pasts. It reminds them of what they have lost over the years. If a vampire voluntarily shares this history with you, you should treat the disclosure with the respect it deserves.
—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
I did not mention Paul’s visit to Cal when I returned home and spread the cheeseburgers out on the table. He was sitting there surrounded by research, frowning at his laptop. I warmed up a bottle of blood to serve him while Gigi and I ate the burgers, because it seemed rude to do otherwise.
“Gigi!” I called upstairs. “It’s cheeseburger night! Come and get it!”
“She’s not here,” Cal said. “She said she had to study with that Ben boy again. She said she called you and left you a message.”
I made an indignant little noise.
His plump bottom lip twitched, and he added, “If we’d taken the boy out of the equation when I suggested it, this wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Yes, murdering a teenager is a far more rational step than imposing a stricter curfew.” I grumbled softly as I checked my voicemail. Gigi had indeed left me a message while I was in Jane’s shop, otherwise occupied. I frowned. Gigi knew the rules. No school-night outings unless approved by me. Face-to-face, not via voicemail. Was she bending the rules because she thought I was too distracted by Cal to watch her properly? Or was she so crazy about Ben that she would risk grounding and sisterly wrath?
Gigi was in for a looooooong talk when she returned home tonight. Or I was going to have to pull some sort of Machiavellian parenting maneuver that kept her guessing about my next move and questioning my motivations. My last effort had involved a dummy Twitter account and a rented pickup truck.
Sigh. I really didn’t have time for Machiavellian brilliance right now. The best I could come up with at this point was sticking her bra in the freezer. I didn’t think that would get my point across.
“Well, now I’m left with an extra cheeseburger and an undead guest who can’t eat it.”
“Would that I could,” Cal mused, sniffing delicately at the wax-paper bundles on the table. He poked one with a fingertip and moved back as if he expected it to move in response. I chuckled, snatching my dinner out of his reach.
We sat at the table together, him with his blood, me with my calorie-laden bit of beefy goodness. It was oddly domestic and distinctly uncomfortable without Gigi as a social buffer. Cal’s eyes stayed trained on my mouth, the way it moved, the way my lips wrapped around the straw of my milkshake. But he didn’t speak.