by R. M. Webb
“I want both.”
Of course he does. I answer the easy question first. I talk about how I feel so antsy all the time, how the prospect of real life doesn’t fill me with hope or relief, but dread. The prospect of working for some nameless corporation for all the days of my life, struggling to make ends meet, using up my youth and beauty on forty to fifty hour work weeks just fills me with defeat. And then what? Once I’m accomplished enough to afford all the time off I’d need to experience all that I want to experience in this world, I’ll be old and used up and too tired to actually care.
Being a vampire would extend the time I have on this planet to see all that I want to see and be all that I want to be. My expiration date is removed. I’ll have my youth and my beauty and I can learn an infinite number of new skills. I don’t have to choose between the things that interest me. I’ll time enough for them all.
“But as amazing as that sounds, that’s not the thing that sold me on wanting to become a vampire,” I say. Thomas isn’t looking at me. I’ve had to direct all of my words at the back of his head.
“Well if not that, then what?”
I’m eager to reach him. Eager to have him back. I don’t like all this distance between us. “You,” I say. “You sold me.” He turns ever so slightly and I catch his profile, illuminated against the window. “The time I’ve spent with you has changed me. I’ve never trusted anyone. Never let anyone into my heart. I’ve spent a lifetime of keeping myself at arm’s reach from everyone I’ve ever met. Somehow, for whatever reason, not with you. I love you, Thomas. I can’t imagine ever being without you. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to you and having to mean it.”
He sighs. His eyes drop to the floor and his lids slide closed. “Forever is a long time…”
“I’ve seen all the movies. Read all the books. This is the part where you try to tell me about how time changes a person and how I might not feel the same in a few decades.”
“You may have seen the movies, but I’ve lived through those decades you just casually dismissed. Time …”
“It stretches on. I get it. I’m staring at the next sixty years leading up to my death with dread. But with you-”
“And what will you do when I’m not around? What if I get bored? What if I leave you? I’ve lost someone I loved, someone I trusted, someone I thought would help me face eternity. How will you handle that?”
I blanch at the thought of him loving someone before me, someone he was truly ready to spend forever with. For me, there was no one of consequence before him. But the thought that I might share his heart with the memory of some failed relationship…? I don’t like the way it feels. “I didn’t know you’d lost someone.”
“Yes, you did. My sister. I told you about her.” And in that moment I’m flooded with relief that makes me feel ashamed. Here I am feeling better about myself because he’s lost someone he cares about but it’s ok because it’s a sister and not a lover. “She was my stability. She was my world. Everything I knew and loved has crumbled and disappeared. In the span of my lifetime there’s not been one thing that remained constant outside of my sister. And now that she’s gone? I have nothing to anchor myself to who I was. And, even after all this time, I’m not ready to forget the person I used to be in order to embrace the monster I am.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen pain like this before. I can’t handle not touching him. I cross the room and lay my hand on his shoulder. He flinches away at first, stabbing a deep wound of rejection into my heart, but I persist. After just a moment, he softens and turns towards me. I bury myself into his arms and press my forehead to his shoulder.
“It feels like I was made to fit right here,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
And in that moment I realize that when Thomas was asking how I’d handle it if he suddenly lost interest in me, what he really meant was that he was afraid that I’d lose interest in him. How can I prove to him that I was irrevocably in love with him? How can I prove that I want to be at his side for the rest of eternity?
I don’t know what else to say. It feels like we’ve come to the end of anything that could be said. If he’s not ready to turn me, then I’ll just have to be patient. Content in having him in the way I have him for as long as I get to. Thomas is quiet for a while, just holding me while he looks out my window. The snow’s tapered off, leaving just a dusting across the grass. White outlines on black branches. It’s beautiful.
“So,” Thomas says, breaking the silence with his voice like snow in the mountains, snow in the trees, “did you mean it?”
I don’t need to ask him what he meant. It’s clear that he’s asking me if I meant I could be with him forever. I don’t move. I don’t try to catch his eye and hope he sees the truth in my words. I don’t come up with another verbose explanation for why or how I know it to be true. I simply nod against his chest and say: “Ya. I meant it.”
He tenses slightly and I stay still, afraid that I’ve ruined the moment with my honesty. He moves away, just enough to raise my face to meet his with one touch of his cold finger to my chin. I let him study me, content in the connection.
“I love you.”
His words ring out like a bell even though he uttered the so quietly someone else in the same room might have missed them. But their reaction on me was monumental. My chest filled with warmth and my eyes misted with tears and everything was happiness and joy and I smiled. My entire body smiles.
“I love you, too.” I love having those words outside my head, hanging between us.
A languid smile traces his lips, almost chasing the pain and worry from his gorgeous gray eyes. “And you’re ready to face forever with me?”
I freeze. Is he really considering it? I can’t speak so I simply nod.
“You’re sure?”
I find my voice. “Very.”
He leads me to the couch and he explains how to make a vampire, the process we’d have to go through. I’m somewhat numbed by disbelief, but I try to focus on what he’s saying rather than the roar of excitement that’s happening in my head and heart. This is one thing the movies actually kind of got right. Three blood exchanges need to happen between the vampire and the mortal. Each time, the vampire’s blood needs to enter the human’s body just as her heart stops beating. The timing can be tricky. Apparently, we’d already fulfilled one of those exchanges the first night we’d met.
“So you killed me that night.”
“I did.”
“Why did you bring me back?”
“I couldn’t bear to destroy something so beautiful.”
“Did you intend to see me again?”
“No. I didn’t think I could trust myself around you. I didn’t … I don’t want to destroy you. I can’t fathom the thought of doing you harm.”
“It’ll harm me if you leave me to rot on this earth without you.”
My words seem to finally bring him to a decision. He nods and takes a long breath, letting it out with a heavy sigh. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
And then, just like the first night, Thomas moves towards me. He doesn’t ask permission. He doesn’t speak, he just takes me in his arms and tilts my head back so he has access to my throat. His teeth pierce my skin and tiny pin-points of pain flare up and subside as he sucks on my neck, pulling the blood from my veins. I grow light and dizzy and the world grows fuzzy and inconsequential. My heart slows, each beat like thunder echoing through my chest. My eyes slide closed and I’m content to be wrapped in Thomas’s arms for the last seconds of my life. I feel it in the heaviness in my chest and the lightness in my arms. I’m dying.
There’s some shuffling and scuffling, movement that jostles me and makes me frown. I just want to float away. And then there’s something pressing against my mouth and running through my parted lips and I swallow and life shoots through me. My eyes fly open and Thomas pins me with his gaze as I drink in long droughts from his wris
t, his blood is cold in my mouth but warms my body. He sings to me. That song I didn’t recognize. That song that made me feel wistful and sad and that will forever on make me smile. While Thomas might have been its last keeper, he’s shared it with me and I will keep it with him. Together, we’ll make sure it’s not forgotten.
A jingling sound distracts me and I purse my brows in question. And then I recognize a key in my lock and the sweet lilting greeting Mia calls out as she enters my apartment. I pull my bloody face away from Thomas’s wrist and when she sees me she drops the keys to the floor and screams.
Chapter 17
“What have you done to her?” Mia yells when she finishes screaming. Or maybe she never stopped screaming, it just mutates from an inarticulate howl into words flung in our direction. I’m off the couch and Thomas rushes to close the door, to keep her voice locked inside the apartment with us. His rapid movement combined with the door seemingly closing by itself does nothing to calm my friend.
“There’s blood all over you!” She’s trembling. Her entire body quaking with barely contained fear. Her face is all white, especially around her lips, and there’s just the tiniest bead of sweat starting to show at her hairline. Her heartbeat is elevated and I realize that I can actually hear her blood rushing through her veins. I can see the fear rolling off her in great sickly green waves. The second part of the turning is complete and instead of celebrating, of enjoying the way it feels to experience so much more, of spending the evening tucked into Thomas’s arms content in the knowledge that he and I are closer than we ever were, I get to deal with my friend freaking out in my foyer.
“Mia, I’m fine.” I want to sneer at the word. Now that I’ve realized how often I say it, it’s almost repellant to me. How many times have I said that to her and not really meant it? And now that I actually mean it, there’s no reason for her to believe me.
“You always say that,” she echoes my thoughts. “And I always take you at your word, but look at you! You are NOT fine.” She turns to Thomas. “You’ve ruined her. Whatever you’re doing, you’re in the process of destroying her, don’t you see that? Look at her? Is this what you want? Her all covered in blood? Claiming she’s ok when she’s not? Hiding from her friends? Hiding from just...life?”
Thomas’s face crumbles. His lips part. He takes one look at me and his eyes close. When they open, there’s a flash of sadness, of regret and then … there’s distance. Like he’s removed himself from me. “I’m sorry,” is all he says and his voice is hollow and panic thrums in my chest. I try to read the expression on his porcelain face, but there’s nothing to read. He’s gone.
“Don’t you dare…” I’m walking towards him. I’ll take his face in my hands and I’ll look in his eyes and I’ll do all the dramatic things I wanted to do just a few minutes ago in order to prove how much I love him. “Don’t you dare disappear on me.”
“Listen to yourself!” Mia’s screeching and I hate that I’m sharing this moment with her, that it’s happening because of her. Hate that she’s even here. And if I’m not careful, I’ll end up hating her, too. “It’s like you've gone crazy!”
“Get out.” I say the words through clenched teeth, just as I’d done the night she sat on my couch and tried to talk me into going down to the Citadel. But this time it’s Thomas who responds.
“I’ll leave.” He doesn’t move, but somehow it feels like he’s already gone.
Tears spring into my eyes and I wipe them angrily away, smearing blood across my cheeks and forehead. “No.” I didn’t know so much emotion could be forced into a single syllable.
“She said it. I’m destroying you.” And my heart breaks because I know what he’s going to say and I don’t know how I’m going to talk him out of it. “I couldn’t bear to destroy you before I knew you, there’s no way I could live with myself now that I know your beauty extends to the very limits of your soul.”
And then he’s gone.
I don’t think he’s ever moved so fast and the only reason I see it at all is because it’s his blood coursing through my body right now. All the better to see you with, my dear. And it’s mine coursing through his. We’re part of each other and his absence cuts me to the quick.
I can’t breathe. My chest is constricting and my throat is closing and I fall to my knees.
Mia’s still staring at the space that Thomas used to occupy, her brain working too slowly to process the fact that he’s no longer in the apartment. “Dear God,” she murmurs once she realizes we’re alone.
Meanwhile, I’m making a sound I don’t know how to explain. My mouth is open and tears are flowing through my closed eyes, and it’s as if my grief is forcing its way out of my body through my voice. It’s a low moaning sound, long and uninterrupted. And when I run out of breath, I take a hitching breath in, only to start into the wail yet again.
Mia rushes towards me and I can’t bear the thought of her touching me. I can smell her sweet perfume mingling with a bit of Elijah’s cologne and all the smells that mean Mia and it just spins rage into my heart. With my arm stretched out in front of me, I scramble away from her.
“Don’t touch me!”
Her face crumbles in a mockery of Thomas’s. The hurt I’ve caused her similar to what I saw in his eyes - loss, regret, sadness - yet it means so much less to me to see it on her face.
“Rachel, please let me help you.”
I clamber to my feet and the rage spins itself into a great big ball of words and I launch them at her. “You know what? I’m not fine! And you know why? Because of you! I was finally happy! I was finally safe! I finally, for the first time in my whole life, trusted someone enough to show him all of me and you just ruined it all! You burst in here and think you see a monster when he’s the only creature I trust in the world.” My entire body is straining as I hurl my words at Mia. “I’m not ok! Is that what you’ve been waiting to hear? Well, there you go. I’m not ok and it’s your fault. Now get the hell out of my house.”
I turn my back on her and I hear tiny hitching gasps. Mia’s crying. Trying to gather herself. To catch her breath. I don’t know what I’ll do if she tries to speak. Or tries to touch me. I just want her gone. Gone so maybe Thomas will come back.
But there was so much distance in his eyes when he looked at me. I don’t think he ever will come back.
I’m sobbing now. Hands on my face, slumping against a wall. I hear Mia leave, the door clicking shut behind her. As I slide down the wall and tuck my knees up tight to my chest, I hear her running across the courtyard, her hiccupping breaths. I hear her door slam shut.
All the better to hear you with, my dear.
My tears are like a thunderstorm, ravaging my heart with wave after wave of grief. I don’t know how long I sit like that, crouched on the floor against the wall, the tempest of rage and sadness waging war against the love and hope of a happily ever after I’d finally committed myself to just that very night.
Love is for people stronger than me. Love is for people who don’t get hurt as easily as I do. I was a fool to ever believe otherwise. To believe that Thomas would stay with me. That he’d never hurt me. That he’d want me in the same way I’d want him and that our love would be enough to withstand anything. That we’d be able to sustain forever.
We’d not even been able to sustain one obstacle. One night.
Maybe I’m truly built to be alone. Whatever it is in me that so easily crumbles when I let people get close to me is too strong to overcome. I’m a fool to have thought I should overcome it. I was right all along. Keep me to myself. My heart for me and me alone and that way, no one can ever truly hurt me.
I am the master of my fate, for better and for worse. Bringing anyone else into the picture had been a mistake. What was it I’d always told myself? Sink or swim but it’ll all be of my own accord. What I really meant was, I want to do this myself because I’m too fragile to trust anyone else to treat me the way I need to be treated. I’d put up this front of being strong, not because
I was sold on the strong, independent woman thing I was trying to sell the rest of the world, but because being strong meant being capable of being alone and being alone meant I’d never have to feel like this.
A small voice reminded me that I’d also gotten to experience true happiness, the kind of happiness that comes with being in love and trusting someone with your heart, because I’d let someone in. Let Thomas see me. Care for me. Trusted him with the most fragile part of myself.
I crushed that voice with a single thought. Nothing is worth feeling the way I do now. Trying to console myself with that bullshit line, it’s better to have loved than lost than never to have loved at all, is just that. Bullshit. Because this feeling right here, right now, there’s nothing worth this feeling.
After a while, my head just kind of goes numb. My thoughts stop spinning and I watch the sun stretch out across my living room floor, edging closer and closer to the pink spot I never could fully get out of the carpet. As the spear of sunlight continues to grow and then weakens, fades, and recedes back towards the window, I consider the long years stretching ahead of me. Years of keeping myself safe from others. Years of struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Years of fanciful ideas like owning my own bakery, ideas born of my need to stay separate from everyone, failing and leaving me adrift in the sea of my life. Rudderless. Just floating along towards my eventual death. Watching my youth and beauty fade. Waking more and more exhausted each day as age makes its tyrant’s march across my life, leaving its marks on me.
It all just seems so pointless.
Night falls and at some point, I’ve moved from my post on the floor against the wall. I find myself sitting on my bottom step, staring at the door, practically willing Thomas to arrive even though I know he’s not going to. Mia said the magic words.
You’re destroying her.
I know Thomas loves me. I know it like I know my name, like I know my favorite color. It’s true in the way you just know the sky is blue when the sun is shining. And it’s because he loves me that I’ll never see him again.