“How do you know?”
“He was all over her!” I pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets to stop them leaking. “Goddammit! I thought we were getting closer—”
“So what changed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was because of Cal’s party,” I said.
“Why?”
I looked at Mike, holding back a grin. “We… I went down on her in the closet.”
“What?” Mike laughed, looking rather impressed. “My maaaan!”
“Yeah, but after that… she… I thought we’d get closer, but she pulled away. The last few weeks have been hell. She barely talks to me.”
“Maybe she’s embarrassed?”
“It’s not that.” I shook my head, taking a deep breath to compose myself. “She genuinely isn’t interested in me, Mike.”
“Aw, come on now”—he stood up—“you don’t believe that.”
“I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do.” My usually deep and controlled voice trembled like a child’s. “I think you were right—all of you: she’d never have fallen in love with me if I hadn’t lured her.”
Mike leaned in and patted my back as I broke down again.
“I can’t take anymore,” I confessed, hitting the steering wheel a few times. “I’m so fucking sick of hurting all the time because of her. I don’t know what’s wrong with me—it’s changing me somehow.” I looked at my hands, not even recognizing them. “All this crying is emasculating.”
“Then take a step back from her,” he said simply. “You’re depressed, and she isn’t good for you. You’ve got to let her go—”
“And what if she has sex with him?”
“With who?’
“With Cal!” I yelled.
“You’re letting that fear control you, mate.” He squatted down again. “You need to let it go. She gave you her virginity once, you own that—forever. Does it really matter if she gives this one to Cal?”
I looked him square in the eye, ready to punch him. But it just didn’t matter to him the way it did to me. It never would. He didn’t, couldn’t understand.
“You need some distance,” he said, patting my back again as he turned the keys and drew them from the ignition. “And I’m pretty sure now that you need to go see the doc—get on some medication.”
“Seriously?” I groaned, shaking my head.
“You haven’t been eating, David, you rarely go to the gym or do anything but stare at walls. Your whole life has been consumed by this, and it isn’t healthy.”
I couldn’t say anything. My throat was thick, and I just didn’t want to cry anymore.
“You’re not used to feeling things the way humans do, and even if you take that out of the equation, depression is a pretty common thing in humans—something vampires don’t really suffer; something you would never have felt in your entire life.”
I bit my teeth together, shaking my head again. He was wrong.
“David, I need you to acknowledge that you might be depressed and that it might be making everything feel a bit more painful than it otherwise would be.”
When I stopped to think about it—going back to my concerns for Ara when we first met after she lost her mother and baby brother—I had to admit this did seem similar. He might’ve been right. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but I nodded anyway, wiping my face. “I don’t feel like a man anymore, Mike.”
“You don’t have to be right now. Not with me.” He cupped my elbow and tugged it. “Come on, I’ll drive you home and make you some brownies. Then we can watch rom-coms and do our hair.”
I had to smile at that. Since I became human, the appeal of warm, sugary foods had caused me a lot of grief—around my midsection. It had been hard maintaining my weight, but today I just didn’t care. Ara didn’t want me thin, or built, so what would she care if I got fat?
And as I climbed out of the car and let Mike climb in, something occurred to me: I cared way too much what she thought. And the few times she’d actually responded positively to me, I hadn’t cared at all. Maybe that was it: maybe I needed to ignore her to get her attention.
“What are you thinking?” Mike asked as I hopped in the car, grinning.
“I’m gonna give her the cold shoulder.”
“Ha!” he laughed. “That one works every time.”
“I know,” I said, putting my seatbelt on.
19
Ara
When David returned to school on Tuesday, he seemed to be back to his old self, but every time I tried to talk to him, he made some excuse to be elsewhere. I guess now that everyone thought I was cursed, he didn’t want to get tangled up in that. Not when he had a child to protect. But I wondered if that meant he no longer had to honor his promise to me.
By Thursday, with my birthday party just two days away, I’d started to really miss his quips and bad jokes and the way he’d inconspicuously fight with Cal over me. He was an entirely different David lately, docile and lost in long stares at nothing, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. But when I walked into Mike’s on the Jetty for open mic night, determined to pull him aside and have a chat, I couldn’t see him anywhere among the large table of friends.
“Hey, guys,” I said, sitting down. “Where’s David?”
“He hasn’t shown up yet,” Jane said.
“But you get to see me play.” Cal winked at me.
My eyes drifted to the stage then as Eric hopped up and introduced himself, his hair glowing blue with the lights reflecting off the glossy banner behind him. It was a pretty neat little café. Last time, I’d only sat outside with Lors and Ali, but inside it was very urban and rustic, with overstuffed bookshelves on every wall, and the deep aroma of coffee moving back for the stronger beverages served in the evenings. It was crowded and the energy in here was bustling with life. But I felt a bit disconnected, maybe disappointed that David wasn’t here. I even told myself to just sit back and enjoy the night, that I could talk to him tomorrow, but myself didn’t believe that. And she didn’t care. We both wanted to see him now.
“Hey, you okay?” Cal asked, clicking his fingers in front of my face. I tried to smile, but it was as plain as Jane that I didn’t want to be here.
“Hey you.” Ali bumped her hip into my shoulder, standing above me with a tray of drinks on her other hip. “So I hear you’re gonna be working with us starting next month.”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “Jack gave me the thumbs-up apparently.”
Ali looked over at the stodgy guy behind the bar. “Yeah, he said you had a good work ethic and a bubbly personality.”
I had to laugh. “Bubbly? Me?”
“That’s what I said,” she exclaimed dramatically.
“So you getting up?” Elora asked, coming up behind Ali.
“Up?” I said.
“On stage.” She nodded to Eric.
“Who, me?” I said, aiming my thumb at my chest.
“Yeah.”
“Um…” I looked at Eric, at how amazing he was—his rough but sexy voice stilling the crowd, his fingers moving so easily over the strings that I, strangely, thought of David. “I don’t play,” I finished.
“At all?” Ali looked at Lors.
“Um, no.”
Elora squatted down to my level and leaned in close. “I know you do.”
My eyes shot up to meet hers.
“Eric picked up your guitar, remember?”
“So?”
“So it was in tune,” she said, and my blood flooded with ice-cold realization. “It wouldn’t be in tune unless you’d been playing it.”
I felt like an idiot. What a stupid mistake to make. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I turned in my seat so I could whisper in her ear. “I’m having fun here. I like this life. If I tell Brett I’m remembering things, he’ll take me back to my old life, and I won’t see any of you guys again.”
Elora jerked back in shock. “What are you remembering
?”
“Shhh.” I motioned over my shoulder to the noisy group of teens. “Not much. Just… I remembered my favorite book—like, every line—and I just… I could play guitar, like a reflex.”
“Do you… can you remember any people?”
“No,” I said sadly. “I dream sometimes that I do, but it’s always David in my dreams.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m there in what I know is my old life, and I know the house and the faces, but it’s hard to focus on them, and when I do, I dunno”—I shrugged, a bit embarrassed—“I guess my brain is mixing the old with the new and more familiar faces I’ve come to know.”
Elora’s wide eyes and open smile made her face look bright, as if she’d just been given really good news. “So you see us?”
I nodded.
“Are they happy dreams?”
“Some are, and some are… horrific. I…” I checked to see if anyone was listening before I repeated this. “I had a very hot dream about your brother—several.”
“Have you told him that?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll think I’m… he’ll take it the wrong way.”
“How should he take it?”
“I can’t be anything more than friends with him right now, Lors. I like him lots, but it just isn’t like that.”
“Like what?”
“When I think about… when I imagine myself living a life with him… my entire life, or his entire life, I guess, I… I don’t want it.”
“So you love him as a friend but not as anything more?”
“Yeah. And isn’t that okay?”
She looked down as she spoke, so I couldn’t quite hear it, but it sounded like she said ‘For now’.
“What?” I said. “I didn’t hear that.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh.” My brow twitched. I was certain I’d heard her speak.
“Look, I just don’t get it,” she said, “if you love him as a friend, why can’t you love him as more?”
Cal’s hand slipped around my waist then and he pressed his chin onto my shoulder. “What we talkin’ ’bout, girls?”
I motioned to Cal with my eyes, trying to tell Elora without actually telling her that I had stronger feelings for Cal right now. He was so much like David anyway, but without all the… attachments.
“Elora!” Jack shouted from the bar, his voice reaching our ears over the noise of the crowd. “Get back to work.”
Elora stood up, her lip stiff below a pair of eyes like daggers, aimed right at Cal. “Don’t tell David that, okay?”
“Why?”
“Just don’t. Not right now.”
“He’s going to find out.”
She looked over at Jack, who tapped his watch at her. “He’s not okay right now, Ara. Don’t make that any worse.”
“Why isn’t he okay?” I stood up, forcing Cal to let go.
“What’s wrong with Dave?” Cal asked, both of us watching as Lors walked away.
“I have to go,” is all I said, grabbing my jacket. “I’ll see you later.”
“Ara!” He caught my hand.
I spun back and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and a gentle squeeze around the ribs. “I’ll talk to you about it later, okay?”
“Okay. Call me if you need me.”
“I will.” I waved, putting my jacket on—well, David’s leather jacket—as I walked out into the cooler night. The egg I found on our drunken walk was gone now, found cracked in the pocket the day after, no bird in sight. When I showed Brett, he told me it was a snake egg, which meant that, somewhere in our house, we had some kind of snake slithering around. Lucky we were immortal. But I did wonder sometimes if it was an omen of sorts—what it meant, I hadn’t yet figured out.
* * *
I rapped on David’s front door and Mike answered, catching me off-guard.
“Mike!”
“Oh, hey, Ara. You here to see David?”
“Um… yeah…” I walked in past his broad, warm body, taking a second to breathe him in a little. At some point in my life, this man had been my best friend—like the way I thought about David and Cal—and it seemed odd to me that I’d once been in love with him and now couldn’t remember it.
I turned around as he closed the door, and studied him studying me. He clearly didn’t know that I knew anything about our past, because he looked at me like a forty-year-old man would, and he actually looked forty, too, which I knew was clever makeup. But without that, would he look at me like he was my age, and would I look at him that way? Would we see each other as equals, not as a teenager does an adult?
“He’s depressed,” he said.
“Who?”
“David. That’s why you look worried, isn’t it? Cause he’s not right lately?”
“It was.” And now I felt even more worried. I’d only ever seen depression on TV, and the victims usually took their own lives, or tried to.
“He’s on meds now—”
“Meds? What’s that?”
“Medication,” he said. “But they make him tired, and he finds it hard to concentrate.”
That hurt—to know that David had become so sad about something that he needed medicine. “So… what made him depressed?”
“You don’t know?” he asked, as though it was impossible for me not to.
“Know what?”
“Ara, he’s in love with you—”
“What?” So he was saying this was my fault! “Look, I know he likes me a lot, but he isn’t in love with me.”
“Aw, come on, Ara, tell me you’re not that bloody blind.”
“I… I don’t even know him. How can he be in love with me? That’s…” I tried to find a better word, but couldn’t. “I’m sorry, but that’s creepy.”
Mike just laughed and shook his head, his face warm with that same kind of smile I’d always loved on a guy. And now I wondered if I always loved that kind of smile because I’d always loved him. “Ara, there is nothing creepy about him being in love with you. You’re a Lilithian, and a part of what makes you up is very appealing to humans. They fall for our kind more easily—”
“That explains a lot,” I cut in, thinking about how many guys I’d been able to line dates up with.
“Yes.” He laughed again. “So don’t hold it against him.”
“I’m not,” I promised, eyes wide. “But it’s complicated.”
“What’s complicated about it? You like him, he likes you—”
“Yes, but I don’t like him in that way,” I said, and his face went blank.
“What? At all?”
“No. Not really.” Not anymore at least.
“Ara,” David said gruffly, standing at the top of the stairs. “What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too,” I joked.
He came down, bouncing a little with each step, giving Mike a cold look as he took me by the arm. “This is none of your business, Mike.”
“Fine.” He raised both hands, bowing his head. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
David dragged me away, but I wanted to keep talking to Mike. I wanted to tell him I knew we were friends once and maybe ask him a bit about my past self. But before I could break away from David’s firm grip, he’d closed the glass French door to the piano room and spun me around to look at him.
“Why are you here?”
“I came to see if you were okay,” I said timidly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’ve been really distant lately—”
“Of course I am, Ara. I’ve had to sit back and watch you cuddling up to that no good loser every day—ignoring me!”
“Loser?” My brain went into a whirl, wondering what he meant. And then it clicked. “Are you talking about Cal?”
He turned away.
“David, we’re friends, you and I—”
“But it’s okay to be more than that with him?”
“I can’t believe you’re jealous.” I just wanted to slap some sense into him. “I’ve known you for, like, six weeks—”
“That has nothing to do with it, Ara! Time is irrelevant to the heart. I know you would love me back if you just gave this a try.”
“Love you back?” I took a step closer to the door, ready to just run away from this pathetic argument. “David. I. Don’t. Know you!”
“You do, Ara.” He moved into me, grabbing my face with both hands; I tried to jerk away but he gripped tighter. “Look at me. Look into me. You know me, even if it’s only on the surface. You know I’m a good guy and you know I would care for you and—”
“I do know that.” I gently cupped one hand and moved it from my cheek, keeping hold of it. “But I don’t see you in that way—”
“Then why Cal? What does he have that I don’t?”
“I’m not dating Cal either—”
“But you would—over me. If you had to choose.”
“But I don’t.”
“If you did.”
“Then Cal, if you really must know.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I just like him more—”
“No you don’t!” His voice went high before breaking a little on the end, his hands squeezing my face. “Can’t you see? Can’t you feel it—the deeper connection between us, the magic when I touch you? You know me, Ara. Look inside yourself. Why do you think you’ve always felt safe with me—”
“Once felt safe with you,” I snapped, trying to peel his hand from my face.
“But why? I would never hurt you, Ara. Never!”
His distraught voice reached deep into my heart and twisted it around, while the tears rolling down his red face made me want to cry too. But I knew so little of him really, and where I felt safe with him before, I just didn’t now, not after he confessed his love for me and tried to yell me into loving him back.
“I think you need help,” I said coldly, shoving him away. As I reached the door, he snagged my arm and I felt only a rush of air and a whirling sensation as he yanked me back, planting his lips to mine. I fought him, our faces meshing together in a slushy mess until I finally got enough breath to tell him no. I shoved him back hard and my palm instinctually came down across his face, splitting his soft human lip open on one side.
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