by Amira Rain
“Did you kill someone again or something?”
He swallowed again, making me certain that I wasn’t going to like his response.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Instead of answering my question right away, like I’d thought he might, Hayden instead lifted the hem of his dark gray t-shirt, brought it to his face, and began wiping the blood and grime from his skin with it. Whether he realized it or not, this offered me quite a good peek at his abs, which were in six-pack formation, looking like they’d been chiseled out of rock. He has to realize what he’s doing, I thought. He’s specifically trying to distract me from getting an answer to what I asked him.
If he was really trying to distract me, it was working. I couldn’t help but gaze at his washboard abs, and also at the little bit of well-muscled chest that he was showing, too. He was so close to me, maybe only four or five feet, that I could have nearly reached out and touched his chest and abs, which my mind almost instantly made me imagine doing, almost against my will. For some reason, I just had what felt like an instinctual urge to see what his muscles would feel like beneath my fingers.
He only had his shirt raised for maybe four or five seconds total, if that, but by the time he dropped his shirt from his face, my own face had heated up considerably.
If his plan had been to momentarily distract me, it had worked. I could barely remember what had made me come out in the hallway. If his plan had really been to clean the blood and dirt from his face, though, it had pretty much failed. He’d really only succeeded in smearing the mess around.
While I tried to gather my bearings and regain my senses, he spoke first.
“I need to grab a shower, and I’m sure you need more rest, so—”
“Please just wait a second. You haven’t answered my question. Did you kill someone again?”
I’d finally at least remembered that much about what I’d been thinking before he’d lifted his shirt.
This time, Hayden answered my question right away. “No. I didn’t kill anyone again. In fact, most of this blood is mine. I got a small cut on the inside of my cheek that just wouldn’t stop for a second.”
“Well, what happened?”
Now he hesitated. He also dropped his gaze from my face to the floor. And for some reason, even though his hands hung loosely at his sides, I could almost sense that he was just dying to lift a hand to rake it through his thick, tousled hair.
“We have a…a problem in the barn.”
“What kind of a problem?”
Again, he hesitated, but finally lifted his gaze to my face again. “It’s nothing. It’s just something I’m dealing with, and need to deal with further. It’s really nothing you need to be worried about.”
“Well, how did you get a cut on the inside of your cheek? Did a cow or a horse kick you or something?”
That was the only plausible scenario I could think of, although I guessed that it would have had to have been one tall and mighty horse or cow in order to kick Hayden at the level of his mouth. Now that I was standing just a few feet across from him, and not looking at him from a sitting position in my car or bed, I could tell that he was definitely somewhere around six-foot-two, give or take an inch.
In response to my question, he simply said, “Something like that” before turning and starting down the hallway again.
For a few seconds, I just watched him go, but then I recalled why I’d come out in the hallway in the first place, and I called out for him to please wait. However, he didn’t, and after a second or two, I jogged up to him and said his name again with a hand on his shoulder.
“Please just wait.”
Except that the word wait kind of died on my lips, becoming more of a barely-articulated whisper. This had happened because I’d felt Hayden’s muscular shoulder beneath my palm, and the sensation had just kind of almost knocked the wind out of me or something. Once I’d caught up to him, I’d also caught just a faint hint of his scent, which was something earthy, woodsy, and entirely masculine, and this had also led to me suddenly becoming a bit breathless.
We definitely didn’t have guys like Hayden at my high school. Maybe I just simply wasn’t used to being around a guy like him, I thought. At any rate, I wasn’t used to being around a guy who looked to be in his early twenties. A guy who looked to be in his early twenties and had the face and body of a Greek god or something, at that.
When I’d placed my hand on Hayden’s shoulder, he’d seemed to freeze. Now, after a second or two, he slowly turned to look at me, making my hand fall from his shoulder to my side in the process. His expression was unreadable, and his face was now just a foot or two away from mine, making me have to look up to meet his gaze, since I was so much shorter.
“What is it, Sydney?”
I wasn’t sure. I’d forgotten. All I could think of was how blue his eyes looked in the dim light of the hallway. Blue maybe mixed with a hint of gray. They were a stormy kind of color, and I guessed that they probably appeared either bluer or grayer, depending on the situation. As close to them as I now was, I could see that these beautiful eyes were fringed with thick, jet black lashes that greatly added to their beauty.
I felt like I could gaze into them for an indefinite length of time, but then Hayden cleared his throat, and I recalled that he’d asked me a question, wanting to know why I’d stopped him from making his way down the hallway. It was only the somewhat distant yet clear sound of someone happily singing that made me remember. The person happily singing sounded like Jen, and from the way the singing was getting closer and closer, it sounded like she was coming up the stairs.
Relieved to have finally remembered why I’d come out in the hallway, I told Hayden that I just wanted to tell him something. “I just wanted to say thanks for the birthday cake…and everything else you went in on buying with Jen. I really appreciate it all, but…remembering a cake for my birthday was really…just, especially….”
Before I could sort out what I was trying to say, Jen’s singing got even closer, and then I heard her voice from somewhere down the hallway, at my back.
“Oh, hi guys! I got the cake!”
Still looking into my eyes, Hayden didn’t even glance at her, and instead, spoke to me in a low voice. “You’re welcome. I just wanted you to have some happiness on your birthday…even if it was just a little thing.”
Preventing further conversation between us, Jen loudly proclaimed that it was “now officially cake time!”
“So, everyone get in Sydney’s room, so we can sing to her!”
Hayden said that he really needed a shower. “So, goodnight for me, Sydney and Jen.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned, strode away, and soon entered a bedroom at the end of the hallway, shutting the door behind him.
Holding a circular plastic cake box with a box of plastic cutlery, a box of birthday candles, and a book of matches on top of it, Jen shrugged. “Well, more cake for us. Vampires don’t even appreciate cake anyway.”
Surprised, I asked her if vampires could really eat cake, not even realizing that by saying this, I was tacitly acknowledging that vampires could be real.
Again, Jen shrugged. “Vampires can eat whatever they want as far as normal human food. They can chew it, swallow it, and even go to the bathroom from it, just like normal. They just hate eating regular food, though, and they pretty much just do it only when they need to act ‘normal’ around particular non-vampire humans.
See, Mel says that once you become a vampire, regular food tastes bad, and that you don’t crave it at all, or even want to eat it a little bit. She said to me, ‘Remember when you had the stomach flu so bad that one time that not a single food thing looked good to you for weeks and weeks afterward, not even cookies or pizza?’’
I said, ‘Yeah, I remember,’ and then Mel said, ‘Well, that’s how vampires feel about regular human foods all the time. We just don’t want them, not even a little bit.’ Now, that’s what Mel said about human food, but don’t even get her
started about ‘vampire food.’ With how sick you felt in your car today, it might not be the best thing for your stomach while you’re pregnant.”
I agreed that maybe changing the subject would be best.
Once we were in my bedroom again, Jen sat down at a little writing desk in the corner and began carefully planting eighteen blue candles between pale blue frosting roses of various sizes that covered the top of the cake. “Guess what? My dad says that I’m not supposed to use matches when he’s not around, but also guess what? He’s already sleeping, so his rules don’t apply anymore.”
Surprised to have my preconceived ideas about vampires challenged for the second time in as many minutes, I asked Jen if vampires really had to sleep. “Or do some of them just like to?”
Still focused on her candle task, Jen shook her head. “No, they all have to sleep…usually just an hour or two a night, though…and it’s not even really regular sleep how we think of it. It’s more ‘condensed’ sort of sleep or something…like deeper brain waves or going into a ‘trance state’ or some junk. I heard Nora and Mel and my dad talking about it one time…but I really don’t usually pay attention to that kind of talk. Anything about science, and I pretty much just zone out…on complete purpose.”
Jen continued on with her candle task, and when she began striking matches to light them, I decided to ask her a question, or a couple, as it turned out to be.
“What do you think about Hayden, Jen? I mean…do you know him well? Is he a nice cousin?”
Jen blew out a match, shrugging. “Well, I know all sorts of different things about him, but as far as being close…well, it’s like this. We were born only four years apart, but even though he was never that much older than me, he’s always seemed like more of an uncle to me than a cousin, if you get what I mean. He’s always been like, such a serious type of person. Not very much fun.
Now, Trevor and Sam, on the other hand, they’re a little more fun. Trevor even caught tadpoles in a jar with me a few weeks back, and then we released them back into the pond. Then Trevor called me the ‘tadpole of the family,’ which I accepted as a compliment, because everyone knows that tadpoles are just the best.”
Smiling, I tried to redirect the conversation, telling Jen that I was pretty sure I got what she meant about Hayden always being more like an uncle than a cousin to her. “So, if he was born four years before you, and you’re eighteen, he’s twenty-two, then?”
Jen shook her head. “Just kind of. He was twenty-two when he got turned into a vampire. But that was two years ago. So, technically, he’s twenty-four. Most vampires don’t talk about all that stuff much, though. I don’t even know how old my own dad is. He’s just ‘dad age’ to me. You know?
Guess what, though? Mel got turned into a vampire three months or something ago, right after we turned eighteen; so technically, she’s still stuck at eighteen years old exactly and always will be. On the other hand, I’ve aged three months since then, meaning that I’m now technically the older twin, meaning that I’m wiser. I’m now the smartest one of us two. Not Mel. She can speak four different languages, but she’ll never catch up to me now, no matter what she does.”
I wasn’t exactly sure that I followed Jen’s logic, on a few different levels, but I gave her a little smile anyway, sensing that she just wanted a little validation.
While she continued striking matches to light the candles, I thought about suggesting that she just use a candle to light all the remaining candles, but then I decided not to. For one thing, she seemed to really enjoy striking the matches, one right after the other, a fresh one for every candle, and it occurred to me that maybe the process was making her feel more adult.
For another thing, no matter why she liked doing what she was doing, it was clear that she did, and I didn’t want to upset her by asking her to do things differently. Besides, I figured that as long as I was continually watching her, making sure that she dropped every single match into a cup of melted ice and pop, she couldn’t really burn the whole house down, or do whatever else her dad feared.
Just the same, though, I made sure not to take my eyes off her for a single second, thinking that Jen and I had our first “friendship secret.” I’d never let her dad know that I’d allowed her to use matches, full-well knowing that he didn’t want her to.
Soon the blue-flowered cake was in full flame, with all eighteen candles lit. Singing happy birthday to me in a voice that struck me as surprisingly pretty and elegant for some reason, Jen brought the cake over to where I sat on the edge of the bed. Smiling, I watched the candle flames dance, thinking that although my day had started in a pretty nightmarish sort of way, it hadn’t really ended up that way. Not at all.
When she’d finished singing, Jen beamed and told me to blow out all the candles. “And don’t forget to make a wish!”
I didn’t, for some reason seeing an image of Hayden’s face in my mind while I blew out all eighteen candles with a single puff of air.
CHAPTER NINE
I slept like the dead that night, and surprisingly, considering the day I’d had, all my dreams were hazy and pleasant.
The next morning, I woke up early for a Sunday, around six, and I felt so refreshed after my night of good sleep that I had no desire to go back to bed. Wondering who else might be awake on the ground floor of the house when I went downstairs to get something for breakfast, I showered and got dressed, putting on a pale pink braided friendship bracelet that Jen had given me for my birthday the night before.
She’d braided it right in front of me after we’d eaten our cake, then had insisted on wrapping it up in wrapping paper to give to me even though I’d already seen it. Mel had come in my room during the cake party, too, and had also given me a gift, which was a high-end vanilla-scented candle set for me to display on my dresser.
Before leaving my room, Jen had swept all the candles into a drawer full of jeans, mumbling something about the candles smelling like “rotten garbage,” which wasn’t true at all. I figured that the real truth was that she was just a little jealous that Mel had given me a gift, too.
I’d just dried my hair and applied a little makeup, intending to go downstairs to get something for breakfast, when there was some sort of a soft knocking sound on my door, although it didn’t sound exactly like a knock, and it seemed to have come from some low spot on the door, as if maybe someone had softly kicked the door a few times instead of knocking.
Wondering who could have done it, and why, and who could be wanting to see me so early, I said come in, and the voice that responded on the other side of the door, asking me to please open it for her, told me that it was Jen. Smiling a little, I figured I should have known it was her. Softly kicking a door instead of knocking just didn’t really seem like Hayden’s style.
I did as Jen had asked and opened the door, finding her holding a large tray practically groaning with breakfast. Two large plates were piled at least half a foot high with scrambled eggs, fried eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, both links and patties, waffles, pancakes, and toast; some slices buttered and some slices with jam.
Alongside the plates sat clear glass bowls filled so full of yogurt and fruit that strawberry halves and chunks of melon were spilling over the sides. Two glasses holding silverware and napkins, a half-gallon of milk, a half-gallon of orange juice, and a bottle of syrup were wedged in between all the dishes.
With her face a bit red, indicating that her trip up the stairs had been something of a struggle, Jen stood holding the tray with her slender little arms visibly shaking. “Heard you awake and wanted to surprise you with breakfast, but I didn’t know what kind of breakfast stuff you like, so I just made everything.”
For some reason, I felt like I wanted to laugh out loud, although with complete delight and amusement, and not with any kind of derision. Instead, I just gave Jen a big smile, took the tray from her poor shaking arms, and said how nice it was to see her and be surprised with breakfast.
She grinned, clearly pleased.
“I thought you might like something to eat. Pregnant girls usually do.”
Pregnant. Me. It still seemed so strange. So impossible. Clearly, I was going to need more time to fully get used to the idea.
A short while later, Jen and I sat in my bed eating our gargantuan breakfast, with pillows on our laps, and then the tray full of dishes across the pillows. At first, Jen was her usual extremely chatty self, but then she fell silent. This wasn’t because she was watching a Sunday morning news show on TV, either. In fact, she’d dropped her gaze to her plate and was keeping it there.
Something told me that she wasn’t just engrossed in her food, so after a minute or two, I asked her if anything was wrong, surprised when she looked up at me and spoke in a quiet voice with tears shining in her eyes.
“You’re the only person besides my dad, and Wanted, who ever really looks totally happy to see me. I mean…every once in a great while, Sam or Trevor might smile at me and call me a tadpole or something, but…the two of them and Hayden are always so busy and stressed out with all this different boring grownup junk all the time that none of them really ever have too much time for me.
Then there’s Mel, but you probably know by now that she’s basically my nemesis in life. Then there’s my dad’s girlfriend Carol, and she smiles sometimes when she sees me, but…I guess I’m just not really too sure about her yet. She’s taken me out to lunch and to her house in Sweetwater to make cookies a few times and stuff.
I guess she’s nice, but…I guess I’m just still trying to figure out if she might make really good stepmom material or not. I’m also still waiting to see if she might try to break my dad away from me or something else crazy like that. I guess I just don’t fully trust her a hundred percent yet, so I don’t fully trust her smiles a hundred percent when she looks like she’s happy to see me.
So, basically, I have my dad, and I have my beautiful dog, and now I have you, and you guys are three people who always look totally happy to see me. Except that my dad doesn’t all the time, though. Sometimes he even looks borderline enraged at me. But he looks totally happy to see me enough, I guess.”