“What exactly are you trying, Henry? I didn’t come here for us—to rekindle whatever we had before.”
“What are you really here for, Victoria? To save your dad or to screw some guy with a vampire complex? And why did you bring me?”
His words stake me through and through, and every single dig and splinter in them cuts me. He still has no faith. He still doesn’t believe in vampires or me. The second part hurts worse than anything else. The stake in my heart poisons me as effectively as it would any vampire as the guilt returns. I become nothing but hollow bones, and he watches me with cold eyes.
No, not completely cold. Regret flickers in them and then gives way to pity. His pity makes me reshape myself with fury, building new, tougher skin, but my bones still hurt, because he’s not wrong. I let myself enjoy those tiny moments, kissing Nicholas, losing myself in his touch. It gave me a tiny island in a sea of grief. But that island was nothing but a shipwreck of true emotion. A way to keep from feeling.
How dare he push me off of it? Why can’t I stop swimming for one second?
“I didn’t ask you to come with me. You decided you could be some kind of knight—bring some sanity back to the deranged girl who believes in vampires. But I don’t need you here to save me from the things that go bump in the night. I’m the hero in this story. I’m the one saving someone. If you can’t deal with that, then get the hell out of my life.”
His eyes grow impossibly sad. “Forget I said anything.”
My chest pounds. I can’t breathe around the anger and sadness and guilt. The combination is more than the human body was meant to handle. I wonder if vampires deal with emotion better than people do. Maybe they can turn it off like in The Vampire Diaries. Nicholas said it didn’t work like that, but I want to feel nothing. I breathe deeply and push everything down, but something in my well has broken, and I can’t seal it over again without drying out first.
“Just leave,” I say.
Henry wavers, leaning toward me, so I turn to the side and stare at the empty street. I stand like that for a long time, until another voice searches me out.
“Are you okay?” Nicholas asks.
I glance back to where Henry used to be and find nothing. He listened, then. “I’m fine. I needed some air.”
I don’t turn to him.
Nicholas wants me to feel happy. Henry wants me to feel sad. And I want to feel nothing. I want to stop worrying about what reaction seems appropriate and go back to just existing.
I listen as Nicholas walks closer and leans against the building behind me.
“You’re sad,” he says.
“No,” I lie.
“It’s okay. You can be happy and sad at the same time.”
“That’s an oxymoron.”
“No, they’re emotions, and emotions are complicated.”
“Not my emotions. Mine don’t work like that.”
He sighs like I’m a student who simply doesn’t get it even after years of study, but I don’t trust him—this is a challenge, and he’s not really my friend. Admitting I’m sad would be game over.
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“Your place or mine?” I ask boldly.
“Yours.”
“No. I want to dance again.” I force my mouth into a smile—he can take it or leave it.
He accepts my answer without trying to know what’s best for me. I turn around and grab his hand and pull him back through the door.
They say that vampires’ hearts are cold and dead.
Definitely dead. But I don’t know,
I think I still feel things inside it.
—What We Do in the Shadows
Seventeen
In the morning, Henry waits for me on the couch, and seeing him there makes my chest ache, but whatever’s really between us is too complicated, too big for me to sort through. It would require more than I can give. If that makes him hate me, so be it. Maybe one day he’ll understand.
I try to walk by him without acknowledging him. My hand is on the doorknob when he decides not to let me.
“What happens when he fails you, Victoria?” His voice is so soft I almost don’t hear him. “I’m not sure I’ll be here for you.”
My hand tightens, squeezing until my fingers turn white and red against the copper knob.
“I won’t fail.” I don’t turn around. The shine of pity in his eyes would be too much.
He sighs. “That’s not what I said.”
I know it’s not, but I can’t think like that. Allowing myself for one moment to consider the possibility that Nicholas won’t come through for me in the end would leave me curled up in a shaking, sobbing ball.
My phone rings, and I’m relieved at the chance to get out of this conversation until I see that it’s Jessica’s name lighting up the screen.
I pick up. “I was going to call you,” I say.
“Well, I win then,” she says, and I smile a little. We made everything a competition as kids—even who could brush their teeth fastest. Luckily, Dad caught us at that one and made us stop.
“You win for now,” I say, which was always our answer.
She clears her throat. We can only hide for so long behind our childhood games.
“I shouldn’t have surprised you at church like that,” she says. “I should have told you I was coming. I just…” Her voice warbles, and the sound makes me want to throw the phone across the room to escape whatever’s coming. “I wanted us to be on the same page for once.”
She’s sniffling now. I can hear it. My own throat tightens in response, and I wonder if all my hatred for her crying wasn’t about her giving up but instead about the way it made me want to let go and cry too.
I take a deep breath, keeping my voice steady. “I’m not ready.” My eyes sting. I have to clear my throat to keep going. “But I don’t hate you if you are.”
She sobs openly now. I stand there, listening to her hiccuping, wet breaths, and I cannot stop my own eyes from going wet in response, but I don’t join her. She’s crying because she believes Dad will die. I don’t. I glance at Henry and then away again. His look of sympathy isn’t going to help.
Finally, she draws a long breath and stops.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you too.” My voice is strong. I end the call and tuck my phone in my pocket.
A few traitor tears slip from my eyes, and I reach up to banish them, but then Henry’s in front of me, cupping my hands inside of his.
“What are you doing?” One tear has made it down my cheek. I try looking to the side to hide it.
“Don’t,” he says.
“What?” I step back. He follows me, hands soft against mine but firm enough to hang onto me. I know he’d let me go if I really pulled away from him, but I like the way my hands disappear inside his, like someone else is in control if only for a moment.
The tear drips off my jaw and stains my baby-blue shirt with an ugly dark splotch just above my breast.
“Damn it.” I blink. I let one renegade out, and now they all want to be free.
“It’s okay,” Henry says.
“No.” I shake my head, taking another step as he follows. “It’s okay for some people. It’s okay for Jessica.” And I really believe that now—she’s doing what she has to do to survive. Like I am. “It’s not for me.” My voice cracks. This time I do pull free, but as soon as I do, he reaches up and cups my face on either side, and I can’t wipe my tears without tangling my arms in his.
“Let it out, Victoria.”
“No.”
“It helps. I promise.”
“How would you know?” I’m mad now. It’s hard to rein in my emotions when I can’t even erase the physical evidence from my cheeks.
His eyes slide away from me, and his fingers twitch against my face before he looks back at me. “I can’t tell you how many times I lost it at my grandma’s funeral. I couldn’t keep it together.” His voice hardens. “But you wouldn’t know
that, would you?”
Henry still doesn’t know that I was there, but I guess it doesn’t count that I was. I didn’t stay. It was a few days after we kissed and he ran away from it. I walked into the church and saw him sitting there with Bailey. I don’t know what I expected—for him to have broken up with her and be waiting there for me? Clearly that wasn’t the case. And suddenly I was afraid that Henry wouldn’t want me there at all, so I left. But he’s right. I didn’t see him cry at the funeral.
I fear he’ll walk away now, pay me back, but his fingers press harder into my cheeks instead.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He shakes his head like he doesn’t want or need those words. “My mom held everything in, and now she’s a ghost. I can’t watch you become that. You already are, and I can’t stand it. I just got you back.”
He leans down, and I hold my breath, but he only presses his forehead into mine.
“Please,” he whispers.
I’d do almost anything for him in this moment.
“Cry,” he says. “Let it out.”
But not that. I can’t cry for my dad like Henry cried for his grandma. Dad’s not dead.
“I can’t,” I say, even as a tear slips out and travels the maze of his fingers.
“Why? Make me understand.” He pulls back to look me in the eyes.
We’re so close, like the night we kissed. It makes me want to be vulnerable again.
“I won’t mourn something I plan on stopping.”
“You can cry because he’s sick. He’s sick right now, Victoria. You can feel that, at least.”
I am crying. The tears come hot and fast, but I shake my head, forcing Henry’s fingers to slip on my wet face, yet he hangs on. Dad’s sick. Even when I heal him, we’ll always have the pain of these last few months.
I let myself cry for that.
“Cry for what you’re losing if you succeed in what you’re doing,” he says. “Because you’d still be losing something, wouldn’t you?”
Yes. So many things. And Henry will probably be one of them. Right when I finally have him back.
I sob now, and Henry lets go of my face to squeeze me into his chest.
After a minute I pull back to look up at him.
“I was there.”
“What?” His brow furrows.
“At your grandma’s funeral. I came, but I walked in and saw you sitting with Bailey, and I assumed she was who you wanted—that you didn’t need me, too, so I left. I should have stayed and just lived through the embarrassment of loving you when you clearly loved someone else.”
Henry furrows his brow and shakes his head, then laughs a little in a way that cuts through some of my pain. “What about our past makes you think I didn’t love you?”
“Let’s see… maybe you dating my other close friend?”
He shakes his head. “I’m talking about before that. Dating Bailey—” He shakes his head again, cringing a little like he doesn’t want to say what’s coming next. “I liked her, but I was trying to get over you. I was trying to move on finally.”
I step back from him. “Move on from what? When did we have a chance to be anything?”
“Are you serious? I kissed you first. You literally fled to the woods to get away from me.”
“You surprised me!” My voice has gone up an octave. “You clearly regretted it. You apologized about fifty times. And you’re the one who came up with the ridiculous pact.” I point my finger at him, but he grabs it and ends up gripping my hand awkwardly between us.
His voice goes down an octave. “I didn’t want to lose you. I said those things to save our friendship. I thought you’d come around eventually.”
“I thought you said those things because you regretted it.”
“Not for a second.”
“Why didn’t you say anything later? In all those years in between?”
“I thought I was. I used to make up excuses to sit too close to you. I made sure our fingers touched every time I passed you something.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I stared at you so often, I bet I could close my eyes and draw your lips perfectly from memory, and we both know I’m not an artist. But you were always the one who looked away or moved away.”
“We had a pact,” I mutter.
He ignores me, which is fair. It seems silly now, but I thought the pulling away was mutual. How did I not notice it was me? That I was just too afraid of seeing that look of regret on his face when he found me in the woods and apologized for that first kiss.
Henry shifts his hand that’s awkwardly holding my fist and eases open my fingers with his until only our fingertips are touching. “Every single time I touched you and you hesitated before pulling away, I thought, this is it. This is the moment she reaches to hold my hand instead of running. But you pulled away every time. It got harder and harder to watch you—the way you smiled up at a blue sky like there was something there the rest of the world couldn’t see. The way you could paint a night sky and still make it feel warm. The way your eyes brightened when you looked at me. All those things started to kill me. And then you said yes to going to junior prom with Peter.” His voice rises on that last part, and then he mutters, “I was going to ask you. I already had it planned out. I was going to make a fairy ring in the woods where we first met and spell out ‘prom’ in the middle with flowers.”
My mouth is dry. I did say yes to Peter, who was part of our larger group, but we were going as friends. I even clarified that before I said yes. I assumed Henry would stick to the pact and not ask me unless it was just as friends, and going platonically with Henry when I wanted so much more would have been miserable.
Henry took Bailey.
My stomach hurts thinking about memories that will never be mine now. “You could have told me,” I whisper.
He sighs. “I thought you guessed.”
“Why did you run, then? When I kissed you?”
“All I wanted was to let go. Fall into you and forget about everything else. But it wasn’t that simple, was it? You can’t tell me you didn’t think of Bailey.”
I don’t answer. Of course I thought of Bailey—after. Not in that moment though. I only thought of how it had been way too long between kisses.
“I ran because I didn’t want to acknowledge what was between us before I ended things with Bailey, and if I stayed anywhere near you, I wouldn’t wait. But then my grandma died, and everything was such a mess, and I thought you weren’t there. That the kiss was such a mistake you didn’t show up for my grandma’s funeral.” He shakes his head again. “I was hurt.”
His fingertips move across my palm. “Why didn’t you stay or reach out? Even if I had stayed with Bailey—you couldn’t get past that? You couldn’t be there for me anyway?”
His eyes are wet, and I can barely stand to look at him. I did that. I added to his pain. I owe him the truth.
“I couldn’t reach out. I thought I took advantage of you. I thought you only kissed me back because you were hurting. I thought you had to hate me. I hated me.” I choke a little on those last words. I’ve been carrying around this shame, this regret, under so much other grief that I’d forgotten it was there. Now it rips open, fresh and overwhelming.
I’m crying again.
His fingers shift from my palm and travel up my arm slowly, as if asking permission with every inch until his hand rests on the back of my neck. He pulls me a tiny bit closer to him.
“I could never hate you,” he says. “Being hurt by someone isn’t the same as hating them.”
“I know.” I smile, trying to lighten the mood. “We never should have made that pact in the first place.”
He smiles sadly. “Technically we kept it. We graduated.”
We’ve been talking about the past, not the present—not what we feel in this moment—but his warm hand on the back of my neck is happening right now. And the way he’s staring down at me, eyes sliding between my eyes and lips, makes my heart thud. I’m not crying anymore, but t
hen he dips down, pressing his lips to mine. It’s so soft, holding so much caution and past hurt that it makes the tears come again.
I’ve been letting out more and more little griefs, but Henry’s lips threaten to tear me wide open and leave nothing buried. I still need to fool Nicholas. I still need to save Dad.
So I pull back and wipe my eyes. Henry lets me go.
“We can’t wreck our friendship right now. I need you.” It’s a weak excuse—we’ve already survived so much, but I can’t explain that I don’t want to kiss him because he’s too real. He’s not a game. And right now I need to be a player.
Hurt crosses his face before I watch him force it away with a nod. Neither one of us is running, but neither one of us is going to fight for this either.
He steps back as I move for the door. “Want me to come?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I need a minute.”
* * *
Ruth’s helping customers today and doesn’t notice me come in, and somehow it makes it seem like the universe is punishing me for kissing Henry again when I needed to focus. I was looking forward to seeing her.
The poem today makes me ache too.
Cobwebs
It is a land with neither night nor day,
Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain,
Nor hills nor valleys; but one even plain
Stretches thro’ long unbroken miles away:
While thro’ the sluggish air a twilight grey
Broodeth; no moons or seasons wax and wane,
No ebb and flow are there among the main,
No bud-time no leaf-falling there for aye,
No ripple on the sea, no shifting sand,
No beat of wings to stir the stagnant space,
And loveless sea: no trace of days before,
No guarded home, no time-worn resting place
No future hope no fear forevermore.
—Christina Rossetti
This poem captures the place I’ve existed in since my dad got sick—the emptiness. But now I feel things. And even as I rein in some of those emotions, part of me doesn’t want to go back to the nothingness of the poem.
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 21