“Then is it the woman who works at the book arts place?
“No. Straight. Married.”
“How about the roller derby girl?”
I frown. “Mia did kiss her, but that was ages ago. And Mia confessed, apologized... She said she was drunk when it happened—”
“Court...she's taking advantage of you.”
I fall into the chair behind the desk and close my eyes. “She's just... She can't help it. That's who she is. She's never actually cheated. And I know she loves me, Azure—”
“That isn't the point,” she huffs. “That isn't romance. And a kiss is cheating. Hold on a second.” She runs down one of the aisles, and I hear her drag a step-stool up to a shelf and pull one of the books out, swearing quietly beneath her breath as the stool makes a wobbly sound. She returns a moment later with a broad, triumphant smile.
“This,” she says dramatically, brandishing the red, cloth-bound copy of Jane Eyre, “is romance.” She flips through the book, then flips some more. “Give me a second. I haven't read this novel since freshman year. Ah! Here we go...” She clears her throat.
“'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you,'” Azure reads, emphasizing the word queer, with a knowing grin, “'especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.'
“Now,” Azure says, in a mock British accent, snapping the book closed, “tell me, Courtney Banks—have you ever experienced that sort of connection with Mia Foster?”
I pretend to consider. But, honestly, there's nothing to consider. Mia and I fit together in some important ways: we're attracted to each other; we respect one another's dreams and professions; we both have serious infatuations with the written word.
But there is a disconnect.
There is a...lack. A lack that provokes Mia to crush on other women, and me to ignore my misgivings by burying myself in work and living vicariously through escapist fiction. A lack that prevents us from fully committing and moving in together.
A lack that we both feel but—purposefully, carefully—never, ever talk about.
“Well, have you?” Azure presses.
“No,” I answer; then I stand up and take the book from her hands. “But how many people ever find a love like this? Is it even possible? I mean...” I gaze at the copy of Jane Eyre that Azure’s holding dubiously. “Jane and Rochester don't exist. They never had to deal with electric bills or power outages or vampires moving in next door—”
“Vampires—wait. What?”
“Never mind,” I say quickly, trading the book for the broom. I begin to sweep the already-swept floor with quick, nervous motions. “Anyway, I'm sure this thing with Drew Yarrow will pass. Mia will lose interest, just like she did with all of the others—”
“Drew Yarrow?” Azure, who had been absentmindedly bending a paperclip into a heart shape, freezes in place. “Drew Yarrow? The woman who launched the attack against the Safe Center that was all over the news?”
I nod, gazing up at Azure grimly. “The one and only.”
“But she's—that's—I mean...” She squeezes the paperclip in her fist, then opens her fingers to reveal a mangled metal heart. “Courtney, Drew Yarrow's bad news. Have you read any of the articles about her online?”
I shake my head.
“Well, she's got some scary ideas about how to deal with the 'vampire plague,' as she calls it. We're talking extermination. I mean, it's messed up that Mia keeps chasing after other women when she's in an exclusive relationship with you—really messed up—but Drew Yarrow is a supervillain. And I didn't think Mia was part of the anti-vampire crowd. Is she?”
“I don't know, Azure.” I drop the broom to check the store's email account on the laptop. Early in the morning (okay, first thing in the morning), I'd sent messages to my contacts with the details of Lare's Maximinus request.
Still no responses.
I slouch back to the chair and collapse onto it with an oof. “Can we change the subject?” I ask hopefully.
“I really think you should talk about this—”
“I know. I should. But...not right now, okay?”
Azure shakes her head. “You're being avoidant. That means this whole thing is really bugging you—”
“Thanks, Azure Freud,” I smile teasingly, using the nickname some friends and I came up with for her in college. Azure minored in psychology, and she would have made an awesome psychologist; she's been my unpaid therapist for years. “You're right. It is bugging me, but...” I shift uncomfortably on the chair. “Something...else is kind of bugging me more.”
She moves closer, pausing when she's standing beside me. “Something else?” Frowning, she narrows her eyes. “This sounds serious.”
“It kind of is. And kind of isn't.” I cradle my head in my hands. “Azure, I think I'm having a midlife crisis.”
“Oh, Court.” She rests a hand on my shoulder. “I'm sorry if I was a little harsh about Mia. I just care about you and—”
“I know, I know. The problem is...” I look up at her and chew on my bottom lip guiltily. “I think I almost—well, not almost—but I might have—but I don't know, really, because the lights came back on—but I really, really wanted to—”
“Hey.” Azure holds up a hand, laughing lightly. “Can I get a complete sentence here? Your dangling phrases are making me dizzy.”
“Sorry.” I grimace, raking a hand back through my hair—which is marginally less tangled than it was yesterday evening. Should I do this? Should I confess to Azure? She isn't a priest, and I'm not Catholic. But my brain keeps running in circles, and it might calm down if I voice some of my shameful, guilt-ridden, befuddled thoughts aloud.
I take a deep breath. “So. I'm sort of in lust with a vampire.”
For a moment, Azure only stares at me, arms and ankles crossed, leaning against the desk with a furrowed brow, her purple mohawk tilted to one side. She's so still that I begin to wonder whether time has stopped, or slowed, or ceased to exist—after all, if vampires are real, time travel can't be far behind—but the second hand on the wall clock is steadily ticking around. Finally, she straightens and offers me a confused stare. “Okay. I just needed a second to compute. So, what you're saying is...you're having an affair with a vampire?”
“No! No, I haven't had anything with a vampire—no affairs, no kisses.”
“No interviews?” she asks wryly.
I smirk. “No interviews. Yet.” I wring my hands in my lap. “And I don't intend to have any...interviews. But... Well, you met Lare. You know—”
“Lare?” Azure's eyes leap out of her head—or look as if they have, they're so wide. She loses her balance and has to catch herself by grabbing onto the desk, but her gaze—stunned and gleaming like green beach glass—never leaves my face. “You're having an affair with a customer?”
I fold my arms across my middle and shake my head, a little sulkily. “No, Az. I'm just attracted to her. Very attracted to her. Rochester-and-Jane attracted to her. And,” I say, smiling weakly, “turns out she's my new next-door neighbor.”
“What?”
“I don't know if it's fate or karma or coincidence, but I'm feeling, you know, weird about the whole thing. She came over last night and”—I roll up my shirt sleeve and show Azure my bandaged arm—“treated my knife wound.”
“Knife wound?”
“Don't worry. It didn't happen in a dark alleyway.”
“Then where—”
“A dark kitchen. The power went out, and I dropped the knife in a very clumsy way.” I shrug then, pushing my sleeve back down. “And apparently Lare's a doctor.”
Azure gives me a withering glance. “A vampire doctor. Seriously
?”
“Seriously.”
“Okay, you know I'm pro-vamp all the way. But that's... That's like inviting a cannibal to a dinner party. Or a recovering drug addict to a pot-smoking shindig. It isn't cool. It's a disservice to everyone involved. I mean, you can't really blame the cannibal for eating your Aunt Frida, because it was a dinner party, after all. He arrived hungry—”
“I know.” I chew on my thumbnail. “I have to admit—I was worried about that, too. But Lare was calm and...business-like around my blood. She didn't seem to mind it, or crave it. And, Az, there was a lot of blood—”
“Still—”
“Maybe vampires have more self-control than we give them credit for.” I lift a brow at Azure and bite my bottom lip, remembering Lare's gentle fingers on my skin, her steady gaze, silver and unblinking, reflecting my own anxious eyes...
“Courtney, what are you trying to tell me here?”
“I... I don't know.” Distracted, I shake my head. “There's something about Lare that just...”
“Just what?”
I sigh, frustrated, and look up at Azure helplessly. “I've never been a love-at-first-sight kind of person. You know that.”
She chuckles, sinking down onto the low footstool behind the desk, and begins to retie the trailing shoelaces of her lime green sneakers. “I remember you telling me in college—we were so drunk that night; it was after that party at Adele's—that you didn't believe in love, period. You said it was just a societal construct; a temporary, chemically induced brain dysfunction—”
“Did I really say that?” I ask quietly.
“As quoted.” Azure nods, smiling a sad smile.
“God...” I stare at my hands in my lap. “I have no memory of ever saying that.” Though I've thought it often enough. It's how I feel, how I've felt for my entire life—or at least since I was eight years old, when my parents, after a decade of screaming expletives at each other, finally split up.
Right now, Azure's revelation hits a little too close to home. I've never told Mia that I'm in love with her, only that I love her. And I do love her. Despite her wandering eye, she's a phenomenal human being, so driven and alive and determined, and I feel honored to be a part of her life.
But the truth is...I'm not sure that I know what being in love feels like.
“All right.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “So I'm a professed love skeptic.”
“Love atheist, technically.”
“Still, I've never cheated on anyone, not ever. So how could this happen? I mean, I don't think anything's going to happen between Lare and me, but I feel so guilty—”
“Listen.” Azure stands up and then takes my hands, pulling me off of the chair until I'm standing, reluctantly, in front of her. She cups my chin and stares hard into my eyes. “The reason you don't believe in love is because you follow your head”—she taps my forehead—“you analytical Virgo, you, and not your heart.” She taps the left side of my chest.
“Hey. No foreplay on the job.”
“Sorry, boss.” She grins, but then her expression becomes serious again. Bad sign. Azure is rarely serious. I swallow another lump in my throat and shift my gaze to the box of books on the floor. The novel on the top of the stack is, ironically enough, titled So She Learned to Love—a pulp fiction book from the sixties. The cover depicts a blonde, Twiggy-esque woman looking perplexed as silhouetted couples embrace behind her.
“Now, if your heart is telling you to have a mad, reckless fling with a vampire doctor, I say go for it. Break things off with Mia. You haven't been happy in a long time, Court. And, I'd bet, neither has she.”
“But...” My stomach sinks. “Are relationships actually about being happy?”
“Yes! Of course they are. Otherwise, what's the point?”
I gaze back at her uncomfortably. “Companionship? Orgasms? Someone to share takeout boxes with?”
Giving me a look that is somehow both stern and sympathetic at the same time, Azure reaches for the copy of Jane Eyre on the counter and presses it hard against my chest. “This is your bible. Study it. Memorize it. Live it.”
“I can't...” I shake my head and smile. “I don't even know if I'm Rochester or Jane.”
“Be either of them, both of them. Whatever! Just be happy, Court. Or else...” Azure poises her fingers menacingly, wiggling them in the universal gesture of I'm going to tickle you.
The door jangles open then, saving me from choosing between a panic-inducing promise or an equally panic-inducing ticklefest. With a last warning look, Azure turns around to go wait on the customer, and I return to the desk, distracting myself from my chemically induced brain dysfunction by picking up the newspaper and skimming the other articles.
I furrow my brows as I read the top story: Give Life Technologies Scientist Missing, Presumed Kidnapped.
My heart starts beating faster. Give Life Technologies is Lare's workplace. A quick scan of the article informs me that a chemist named Daniel Pascow went missing during the middle of his graveyard shift late last night. His co-workers searched the building for him; then they called his wife to find out if he'd gone home early. When he didn't turn up after a few more hours had passed, police arrived on the scene and began a preliminary investigation.
One of the detectives is quoted in the article as saying, “I'd like to say that I'm surprised by this turn of events, but I'm not. When you've got humans and vampires on staff in a closed facility, it's only a matter of time before that powder keg ignites and blows.”
The writer of the article carefully stresses, in the final paragraph, that no one—vampire or human—is under suspicion of kidnapping at this point, but the anti-vampire protesters had assembled outside of the Give Life facility just after dawn, having somehow caught wind of the developing story. There's a photograph featuring five or six angry-faced humans holding up handmade signs reading Go back to Transylvania and If you're with them, you're against us.
I recognize Drew Yarrow at the front of the crowd.
And Mia, my girlfriend, with her long, dark hair drawn back into a ponytail, is standing nearby, one of the cardboard signs—Vampires suck!—clutched in her hands while she's gazing, puppy-dog-eyed, at Drew.
---
“Are you sure you don't want any popcorn?” Mia shakes the tub of buttered popcorn in her lap, her wide mouth curved up in a tempting, forbidden-fruit kind of smile.
“No, thanks.” I slide down a little further in the cushy movie theater seat, my hands clenched on the armrests at my sides. I want to cross my arms over my stomach, thus preventing Mia from entwining her fingers with mine, but that would be childish and sulky of me, and I'm trying my best to remain even tempered. I made up my mind after I saw Mia's photo in the newspaper this afternoon that I wouldn't fling any accusations at her; I wouldn't even ask her if she spent the night with Drew—though, considering the fact that she attended the SANG meeting last night and then participated in a hate-mongering protest with SANG in the wee hours of the morning, she probably did.
Maybe they stayed up all night talking, discussing the complicated moral issues involved in the anti-vampire movement.
Or...maybe Mia and Drew had sex.
As if illustrating my thoughts on film, the actor and actress onscreen exchange witty banter and begin to undress one another—tie, shirt, dress, bra. Soon enough, they're both naked and rolling around on a forest green-and-maroon hotel comforter.
I frown petulantly. Why are cheap hotel rooms always decorated in forest green and maroon?
“Courtney...” I stiffen as Mia suddenly takes my hand, pressing it to her butter-slick lips. “You look gorgeous tonight,” she whispers into my ear, grazing her mouth over my goosebumped neck. “God, I hope this movie isn't long... I can't stand being near you without touching you.” She slides one hand, with expert stealth, along my thigh and beneath the hemline of my dress.
Despite my many and varied inner conflicts, my body responds to her husky, sexy voice and her confident to
uch as it always does, always has: by getting incredibly hot and bothered. My heart is a hummingbird, beating, beating, and I feel my defenses, slowly but surely, begin to fall...
Be strong, Courtney.
That's what Azure told me after I showed her the newspaper photo and mentioned that I'd be seeing Mia tonight: “Be strong, Courtney. I wouldn't be best friends with a doormat. Doormats are tacky and gross. You aren't tacky and gross. You're stylish and hot. Plus, doormats are indiscriminate. They welcome every Tom, Dick and Harriet—even if Tom stepped in dog poop; Dick is, well, a dick; and Harriet pokes holes in the rubber with her high-heeled spikes.
“Be discriminating, Courtney.
“Be exclusive.
“You.
“Are.
“Not.
“A.
“Flipping.
“Doormat.
“So don't act like one!”
I'm pretty sure Azure would have carried on with the doormat analogies for half an hour longer, given the opportunity, but she had a dentist appointment and clocked out of work half an hour early.
Mia's fingers work their way along my inner thigh, her unpainted nails grazing my lacy pantyline. We're sitting in the back row of the movie theater, and the place is nearly empty, anyway: there are some necking teenagers a few rows in front of us, and an old woman is sitting alone in one of the aisle seats. So when Mia slides her fingertips beneath my panties and touches—ever so slightly—my wet center, I moan softly and bite my lower lip.
“Wanna go, baby?” she whispers, pressing harder against me.
“Yeah,” I breathe, sighing as she, slowly, teasingly, draws her hand away. “Yeah, let's go. I think...” I swallow, slinging my purse strap over my shoulder, fighting against my longing as I pull my dress back into place. Be strong. I am not a doormat. Or a throw rug. Or a floor runner. Or...anything else people track muddy footprints on. “I think we need to talk, Mia.”
---
Before she took me to dinner and the movie, Mia gave me flowers. She appeared on my doorstep with a sly smile, her straight, dark hair loose and gleaming over her shoulders, her arms full of two dozen white roses.
The Vampire Next Door Page 5