by Johi Jenkins
“No. You didn’t do anything wrong. I on the other hand… I’m the older one—by a long shot—so I should be more careful. Exercise restraint. I didn’t do that today.”
Oh shit. He really feels bad. I take his hand.
“What’s the matter, really?” I’m afraid. What did he do when he went inside?
Thierry sighs, and looks away. After a few seconds he speaks. “Corben called me. I didn’t answer it,” he adds quickly, “but his phone call makes me feel like he’s watching me.”
Damn it, Corben. “And?”
“And it makes me feel… I don’t know. Sad.”
“Sad?”
“Yeah. And well, also a little nervous. About what he thinks. He hasn’t said anything to me, but I know he’s still not dealing with this the way that I’d like him to… in a perfect world.”
By this he clearly means us. “What’s he doing? What did he say?”
“He’s acting like a fool….” He stops. I wait, but he doesn’t give any further explanation.
“How so?” I ask him.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, come on!” I shove him with the palm of my hand, but of course he doesn’t budge, and it hurts me more than it hurts him. He picks up my hand and kisses it briefly.
He takes a deep breath, and doesn’t meet my eye. “I think you’ve figured out that Corben didn’t want me to be with you when we first went out.” He looks at me for confirmation. I nod, biting my lower lip. “I told you he was acting weird, but didn’t give you more information. Well, I didn’t need any more information. If Corben wanted me single, or in Chicago, or even gone, for the matter, all he has to do is think it. Wish it.”
I inhale sharply. This doesn’t sound good. “Is that because he’s your maker?”
“Yeah. But it’s not an alpha male thing,” he says, addressing the very next thought that I have. “He doesn’t force me to act; at least, it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
“How does it feel then?” I almost whisper.
“Like I don’t do it against my will. More like, my will changes to suit his.”
“So if he doesn’t want you to date me….” This is painful to say. “How come we’re together, then? At least for the last two weeks?”
“He’s not unfeeling. I mean, he does care about me. He noticed how I was feeling after….” He stops, and laughs.
“What?”
“After John Schmidt.”
“Oh!” I frown and pucker my lips, slightly repulsed and embarrassed at the memory.
“Yeah well, in the end it worked out for me, because after all that time, he started changing his attitude. We talked after that incident.”
Incident. I blush, but don’t interrupt him.
He continues. “It had been three weeks since I had stopped talking to you. I wasn’t over you, but when he came down here, I acted like I was fine out of respect for him. But somehow he knew. He always knows.”
Thierry pauses. He finally looks at me, and I see the faintest trace of a smile. “So Corben said… that if you loved me, and I loved you, and if that was what I wanted, that he’d stay away. When I picked you up on Mardi Gras from the bar fight and that asshole, it had been almost a month since we had talked, but you were responsive to me. Like you cared for me. Do you remember?”
I smile feebly. “Of course I remember.”
“So he’s tried to stay away and leave me be. For the most part,” he finishes. His version of the story is cute, but leaves me a little dejected. I can’t even begin to understand how he feels.
“And now?” I ask.
“He’s so unhappy. I… and I don’t want him to be unhappy.”
“Because of what you said before, how you don’t want to challenge his will?”
“Yes. He’s my maker,” he says, as though that explained everything.
“So what, he made you, and now you have to do everything he asks?” I try very hard to not sound upset.
“No, not like that,” he says. “That’s what I was trying to explain. When he turned me, his blood, his vampire blood mixed with my human blood. My resulting vampire blood coursing through my veins is mixed with his; his blood didn’t just fade out of my system. So I am part him in a way, even though it doesn’t work the other way around; and I always want to obey him. I don’t have to, but I want to. My blood is attuned to his; I don’t want to make him unhappy. If he’s unhappy I feel it. If he’s happy, I’m happy. That’s the way it’s been for almost two hundred years.”
I close my eyes, because something here seems so unfair. Corben doesn’t know me. I’m nothing close to that person that he loved, other than… what? What did Thierry say? My attitude was like hers. Jesus. I’m starting to think that it’s just a power thing of Corben’s, where his vampire child can’t be happy unless he’s happily established with some vampire hottie. “Has he ever dated, after the woman that died?”
Thierry actually guffaws. “Corben? No. I’ve never seen him even drink from a woman.”
“Oh,” I say, taken by surprise. “Why?”
“Because feeding….” He begins, and actually pushes his chair slightly away from me. “Feeding can be a very sensual experience.”
“For who? You or the chick?” I meant for the vampire or the victim, but my mind went to the gutter. I imagined him biting me, and my chest actually burned with desire. Then immediately I became jealous that he would do that with another girl. He said he doesn’t normally feed from women or children, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t on occasion. And what about the men he drinks from; what do they feel?
“For both,” he says. “For us it’s intense. Imagine the blissful feeling you get when you eat a delicious meal, and multiply by a hundred. Your whole body feels delighted, it’s gratifying. It is a form of pleasure. Me, I feel the warmth spreading head to toe….”
“And the donor?”
“For the donor it’s also highly pleasurable. It’s like your blood caresses you from the inside as it’s drawn out…. Your entire body feels it.”
I actually feel a tug somewhere in my belly when he describes it. I look down. He doesn’t say anything anymore, so I ask him what’s on my mind. “So how come you… haven’t… done it with me?”
“Tori,” he hisses sharply, and slides his chair backwards, as if I was highly dangerous. “Don’t say that. Please. I can’t.”
“You can’t?” I’m not made out of lead. “What do you mean, you can’t? Or won’t?”
“I won’t!” He says heatedly. I grimace, hurt, and he slides his chair closer to mine again in a flash. He grabs my hands. “No…. Don’t. You’re too precious, Tori.”
I don’t reply because of the lump in my throat.
“You’re seventeen years old; this immaculate thing. I couldn’t… defile you like that.”
I look away. I don’t get it. Seventeen is old enough. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I sigh, a little irritated.
“Is that a vampire thing?” I finally ask.
“You could say that,” he says softly. “I’m old, Tori. Ten years ago you were still a child. Hell, two years ago you were still a child.”
“I was not,” I say, acting exactly like a child. I look up at him. “But you… you’ve kissed me, and stuff,” I argue. I was going to say felt me up, but it’s a bad time.
He takes one of my hands he still holds, and brings it to his face. “I can’t help it.”
I’m so close to him, and this talk is making me so flushed, that I just want to scramble on to his lap and make him do things to me. Make him see me as a woman.
I brush one of my fingers over his lips. “How old do I have to be?”
“Huh?” He asks, dazed.
I slip my thumb past his lips, and graze one of his sharp canines softly. “How long until I’m no longer immaculate?”
He makes a sound, a deep groan, and I feel his tongue wet against my thumb in his mouth. “Tori,” he pleads. He grabs my forearms
and pushes me away delicately.
“What?” I murmur.
“Please don’t make this harder for me. It’s not just how young I see you. It’s also how I feel in regards to my maker.”
Corben. I sigh in defeat. “You can’t be happy unless he’s happy?”
“More or less.”
“What if he was evil, and wanted to kill me? Would you do it to make him happy?”
“No, of course not! God, no. It’s hard to explain. If he was evil it’d actually be easier, because I wouldn’t care about pleasing him. Or if I was the evil one, I wouldn’t care about him either. But he’s actually a good companion, and I love him; I want him to be happy.”
Great. He can’t say he loves me, but he loves my nemesis. Okay, not my nemesis, but a vampire that is really starting to piss me off.
“What if he found a girlfriend,” I ponder, “and he was cheery again? Do you think he’d let you be?”
He thinks about it for a second. “Maybe…? I don’t know. I’ve never imagined him with a woman. Or man. With anyone. But…. No. You’d still be you, and he’d have a problem with me seeing you.”
“See, that’s what I have a problem with. I’m so far removed from this woman—you said I don’t even look like her that much—yet he can’t see you with me. Are you sure it’s my supposed resemblance with the girl he knew, or is it a… a vampire master thing?”
“I don’t think so,” he says, understanding my question exactly. I’m asking if Corben is just pissed off that Thierry is happy and he is not. But that would make Corben a dick, and Thierry is basically denying that he is. I see a glimpse of the extent to which Thierry is reverent to his maker.
“What if it was someone else? If you were with some other girl?” I ask, not giving easily.
“He didn’t have a problem with Mary. Mary was my… my girlfriend. When I was human. She’s the one I told you about, that went mad when she found out what I had become.”
I take a deep breath. He’s given me a lot to process. “So what do you want to do now?”
“Now… for the first time I don’t want to do as my heart tells me. I want to please him, but I don’t want to. I’m so conflicted. It’s more than you could imagine.”
***
That night as I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, for the first time I question my relationship with the vampire. It seems way overdue; I now see how I’ve been brushing off the potential problems with dating Thierry. He’s a monster that could potentially kill me. No way; I trust him. He has actually killed other people. So what? Even I think some evil people deserve to die. He’s so old that it should be downright disgusting to kiss him. Nah… he looks young, and he’s soo hot.
But now, he can’t be happy as long as his creep maker is conflicted about me, because I remind said maker of his dead love? Well… fuck that shit.
Angry tears pool in my eyes as I reflect on having to give up Thierry. But I may have to. If I can’t be happy with him, what’s the point? I should forget about him. My brain tells me I can do this; I’ve done this before. But my heart is set against forgetting Thierry and reminds me this time is different. Last time it was Thierry who said we should be just friends; this time he hasn’t said anything. My brain tells my idiot heart that it’s the same damn problem as last time: Corben doesn’t want me in Thierry’s life.
I close my eyes, trying to shut the truths from hurting me further. As the tears spill down my temples I try to deny it, but it’s no use: I can’t let go now. I can’t go back to my life and pretend he doesn’t exist, that we never kissed, that everything I learned this last week isn’t true.
I’m in too deep.
***
The solution is a shitty patch-up work that we both know is a temporary fix and can’t last forever, but we both seem to be in denial about the future. Neither Thierry nor I bring up anything that remotely touches the subject. We simply hang out like we used to, except that we try not to make out as intensely as that time in the hot tub (by we I mean he. He tries to exercise caution; I go along with it). Removing articles of clothing is out of the question. My bikini lives in his apartment, though. I left it there and refuse to bring it home for June or Fiona to see.
The whole week Thierry and I have been walking on eggshells around each other; being polite but not cold, kissing but not sucking face, talking about vampirism without actually mentioning the other vampire that I know of. What’s left of our old relationship works, and I don’t complain; I need him, and I’ll take whatever I can. The weekend after what I call the hot tub incident I don’t even visit him; I see him briefly after work on Saturday and then I stay home all Sunday when I don’t have to work.
I can do this, I tell myself. As long as he lets me in a little bit, I can do this. Thierry hasn’t mentioned… the other vampire, so I begin to have hopes that someday we may go back to what we were.
March sneaks quietly upon us. The weather doesn’t warm up significantly, but I’m from the North, so I can’t even tell what’s normal in New Orleans. Kerin says that she’s cold but I show her what the weather is like in Eldridge and tell her to shut up.
Kerin hasn’t called me her best friend, but I wonder if that’s out of respect for Lynn. But I can safely say that Kerin is my best friend—human friend—since I have no one else. Fiona is actually not bad, but there’s an impenetrable wall between us. I don’t really count Lynn, and all the other girls I know from school I can’t really consider friends, since I barely talk to them.
Another negative side effect of hanging out with vampires.
On the first Tuesday of March I’m in school, scanning the lunchroom for someone to sit with. I groan internally.
In the almost two months I’ve been attending this school, I’ve made little progress with making friends. My classmates are nice, and they’ll talk to me when they have to, but Kerin is my only friend. I don’t mind. I brought this upon myself by not caring enough.
Kerin is friends with a lot of people in our class, because for the most part they’ve all been going to the same schools since they were kids. She has a group of around twenty friends that she calls her “side friends”: not necessarily best friends, but still close friends. So when someone has a party, or an outing to go somewhere, they invite Kerin, and me by default since I’m always hanging out with her. However, after declining a few such outings, either on account of wanting to hang out with my vampire boyfriend—or rather, my vampire in an it’s-complicated relationship—or simply because I’ve had to work, Kerin’s side friends have been showing less enthusiasm when they ask me out. Fine. I don’t care. The only problem is, when Kerin’s not around in school, I hardly talk to anyone else. The one class I don’t take with her or John is one such instance. But that’s a class and I’m not supposed to be talking in class anyways.
However, my friendlessness was tried yesterday when Kerin called in sick with the flu. When I texted her back oh no, hope you get better soon, I had no idea how true my words would be by the end of the day. I took my classes alone, without my friend to pass notes to. I ran alone in the field during PE. Then at lunch I sat with Lynn like Kerin and I always do.
Lynn is very interested in a guy named Jake, one of her guy friends from her AP classes. He sits with us every now and then. And yesterday I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to make that the most awkward lunch I’ve ever had, and I’ve had lunch before with a vampire who doesn’t eat. They talked about AP stuff and college and an upcoming spelling bee they made sound like it was the most important event of the year.
Seriously?
I felt like it was my first week here and Fiona and her friends were talking over my head at the mall, except that there was no meeting a cute guy that turned out to be a vampire later to cheer me up. I tried to steer the conversation to non-nerdy things at one point where they actually paused for a second; I asked them if they knew about Kerin being sick. Lynn shrugged and said she hadn’t heard; that Kerin didn’t tell her anything an
ymore. And then she went back to her geek talk, now served with a side of bitch.
What’s her problem? My vanity suggests that Lynn is angry at Kerin for picking me over her. But I quickly dismiss it—they seemed to be having problems since before I showed up. Whatever the case is, I’m not sitting with Lynn anymore unless Kerin’s around. I won’t even count her as my friend.
So that is how I find myself scanning the lunchroom for a table on day two of Kerin’s sickness—I’m looking for an empty one preferably—to avoid sitting at Lynn’s table two days in a row. Get better already, Kerin, I send her well-wishes that sound like more like commands. Damn you, flu virus.
There are no empty Lynn-free tables. I see John and consider sitting with him, but he’s with his friends Matt and Carlos. I don’t want to sit with three guys. I’d probably bother them or they’d bother me.
Then I see her—Fiona is walking to her usual table with Megan at her heels, to set their books down. I carry my tray to her. She looks surprised when she sees me approaching.
“Hey guys. Girls,” I quickly correct myself. “Mind if I join you today?” I ask cheerfully, but I sit down before they answer me.
Fiona says, “Sure, Tori. Where’s your pal Kerin today?”
“Kerin’s sick. Lynn is being weird.”
Fiona and Megan exchange a look, possibly surprised at my little piece of bitchiness, and then they smile, almost impressed.
“Okay, we’re gonna get some food,” Fiona says.
I decide to wait for them before I eat, to pretend I’m polite, but it’s not a big sacrifice on my part—I just pull out my phone and text Kerin to waste time. Kerin texts me back right away. She’s interested to know that I’m in Fiona’s crowd, and reminds me that Lauren’s seeing a new guy and I should ask about him.
Oooh will do, thanks, I text her.
NP, she replies.
When the girls return they chastise me for waiting for them, but in a “you’re so cute” way that lets me know they appreciate it, especially when I dismiss their weak protests with an eye roll. I somehow convince them that there’s no point in sitting here if I’m not going to enjoy my time fully by eating with them.