by Liz Meldon
Which was precisely how one wanted to feel on a first date, of course.
“So why did you take me out to eat?” she asked from behind the one-page menu. Each item was grossly overpriced, including the appetizers and desserts. Her plan to split the bill disintegrated in an instant.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you don’t eat.” She glanced up quickly, then went back to the menu at the first sign of Claude’s charming smile.
“I eat.”
“Nothing that’s on the menu.”
“No, I suppose not.” The hum of various conversations around them seemed to fade, their table far from the rest to give them some semblance of privacy. “But I can stomach the soup.”
“Another trait of warm vamps?” she asked dryly, setting the menu on her stacked pile of plates. “Digesting people food?”
Claude shook his head, still grinning. She ought to be grateful he found her snark amusing; he had more patience than she deserved sometimes. Delia bit her lower lip as she stared blankly at the menu, all the words blurring together, and told herself to stop being snippy.
“No, I can’t say it is,” he said after a moment of thoughtful consideration. “I’ve developed a tolerance to it over years of business lunches and dinners with humans. Merely another way of blending in, I suppose.”
A part of her was pleased that he wouldn’t be slurping a glass of “red wine” for once. Logically, Delia could accept the fact that vamps needed blood to survive, but it still made her stomach turn watching Claude do it.
Their waiter arrived moments later and took their orders. Once he was gone, however, Delia wanted him back, if only to use him as a buffer between her and Claude. Last month, their training sessions had felt natural—normal, even. Fun. Now, the air between them was strained again.
Stilted conversation hounded them throughout the meal. Delia had always thought they bantered well, but Claude had to pull her out of her shell tonight, while Delia gave clipped answers to his questions—thank you, anxiety—and occasionally mustered a few awkward ones of her own. At no point did it feel natural to segue into the history of the local clans, and by the end of dessert, she still had nothing to report back to the High Council except that Claude wasn’t a fan of the soup of the day.
Something about Claude had also seemed off, however. There were more pauses, more formal questions—more awkwardness to him than usual. They had already slept together, yet the tension lingered. They had spent time alone together for almost a month now, on and off, but Delia felt like they were strangers.
In short, the date was a disaster. The only redeeming quality was the food, which Delia spent a lot of time talking about and praising as she tried not to shovel it into her mouth. Her round filet encircled by scallops had been the swankiest meal she’d ever eaten, and as she did, she could forget for a few blissful moments that she was technically on the clock.
But once they were outside waiting for the valet to return Claude’s car, Delia felt a familiar sinking feeling that she had failed—miserably.
Fortunately, it seemed she would have a second chance to get what she wanted—or so she thought. As Claude drove her away from the hotel, he informed her that the night wasn’t over.
And then he took her to a movie.
A romantic comedy.
In a theater full of date-night couples, most of the men looked as out of their element as Delia felt. She was on a date with the perfect man, the most attractive guy she had ever slept with, and she couldn’t stop thinking. Her orders from the High Council hung over her like her own personal storm cloud, edging out momentous first-date events, like when Claude wrapped an arm around her shoulders halfway through the movie and didn’t remove it until the credits rolled.
“Delia.” Claude stopped her once they left the theater, pulling her aside and away from the crowd. When they faced one another, it was pretty easy to see that she wasn’t the only one not having a good time. She bit her lip and looked away, her stomach in knots.
“Claude, I—”
“I wanted to apologize,” he said, speaking over her. Her mouth hung open briefly as she gawked up at him. “You seem like you’re not having a very good time, and… I’m sorry. I thought the typical modern date was dinner and a movie, but I suppose I’m rusty at courting anyone. So, I apologize if this evening wasn’t what you expected.”
She continued to stare, mouth closed now, as her brain processed what he had said. He was apologizing to her? Delia had been the one who was distant and unresponsive all night. If anything, she owed him a huge, skyscraper-sized apology—immediately.
Swallowing hard, she reached out for his jacket and gripped the front, pulling him closer. It was time to bolster her courage, to remember that this was a man who was actually interested in her—and she, deep down, was actually interested in him.
He deserved much better than what she had given.
“If you say you’re sorry one more time, I’m going to try out that new move you showed me,” she warned, lips curving upward as Claude’s turned down. “If anyone should apologize, it’s me. Claude, I really am sorry. My head has been totally somewhere else tonight. League… stuff is really heavy right now, and I let it get to me.”
“I didn’t—”
“I’ve been a shit date tonight,” Delia said frankly. “I was standoffish and disengaged, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
It couldn’t. For some time now, it had been painfully obvious how different he was from the scumbag vamps she hauled into HQ for discipline. Claude Grimm was just a man, a better man than most, and she planned to take the rest of the night to treat him as such. Fuck the High Council’s demands. She was sure she could scour the online archives later for something to send them. For now, she was on a date. With a gentleman. A gentleman who gave her butterflies like she was the star of that stupid rom-com they’d sat through.
“So what do you propose we do?” Claude asked. His arms wrapped around her slowly, pulling her the rest of the way so that their bodies pressed together. All she needed to do was stand up on her tiptoes to bring their lips together too, but Delia let the moment pass. Instead, she leaned back to study his face, unable to wipe the smile from hers.
“I propose…” She paused to think of something they could do that didn’t involve sex—which, given the feel of his body against hers, was an incredibly difficult task. Still, she pushed through and found the right thought eventually. “I propose we start the night over. Let me take you on a date.”
*
Although past experience had proven that Delia wasn’t the quickest on her feet, she had to pat herself on the back for this one. For once, her brain had actually come through in the heat of the moment.
“It has been a very long time since I’ve attended a music festival of any kind,” Claude noted as they stood at the gates of Fenton Park, the largest city park, home to the Fenton Festival each October.
“Really?” She felt his grip on her hand tighten somewhat as he surveyed the chaotic entryway. White and orange lights hung from all the trees and carved pumpkins with flickering candles lit the path into the park, while bales of hay with stuffed scarecrows sat stacked for photographs. Delia focused on the complex of scents wafting through the air from various food trunks parked inside, encouraging passersby to make an unexpected pit stop.
“My last festival was Woodstock,” Claude told her, with some hesitation. Delia grinned; if Claude Grimm could blush, he might have in that moment. “Although I was more or less a spectator. I, uh, wasn’t part of that particular culture.”
“Well, I’m not really part of this culture, honestly,” she said as she tugged him toward the entrance station—a table with two volunteers and a mountain of neon pink wristbands. The pair fell in line behind a group of teenagers, all of whom would probably get their hands stamped for being underage.
“This has a culture?”
“Kind of like a weird folky vibe, a little bit—I don’t kno
w, hipster but not, I guess,” she noted. His thumb had started to caress the top of her hand, which had been clasped with his since they valet parked Claude’s car back at the Beltmore Hotel a few blocks over.
“So why did you suggest it?” When she shot him a look, he gave a little half-shrug. “Not that I’m complaining. I prefer this to dropping you off at home, but I’m curious.”
“I don’t know.” A few of the teenagers in front had been let in, while the two remaining were arguing over the validity of their IDs. “I try to make it every year if I can remember and I’m not working. Usually I come for the food, but I get why it’s popular.”
With summer over and the warmer part of fall fading, the Fenton Festival was like the final hurrah before winter hit. While Harriswood tended to have fairly mild winters, occasionally getting a good dumping of snow in January or February, it would be too chilly to hold any outdoor festivals after October that weren’t Christmas-themed.
“Uh, no, put your wallet away,” Delia insisted when it was finally their turn to pay. Claude started to protest, but fell silent when she placed a hand on his chest and met his eye. “This is my date, remember? You paid for the other one.”
The Other One. The Unspeakable One. In the car between the movie theater and the Beltmore, they had agreed to pretend the painfully awkward first part of the evening hadn’t happened. Delia certainly preferred it that way.
With bright pink bracelets snapped around their wrists, Delia led Claude in through the main gates. Hand-in-hand, they strolled along the row of food trucks stationed by the park’s perimeter.
“So what would you usually get?” he asked, tugging her toward him to avoid being swept away in a cluster of very drunk, very loud twenty-somethings.
“Uh… Well…” She bit her lip to keep from spilling that when she came alone, she sampled a little something from each truck—a grand total of fifteen deep fried treats that made her stomach mercilessly angry the following day. “I usually hunt for a really solid funnel cake to end the night with.”
Claude slipped out in front of her, their clasped hands hanging between them, and gestured toward the trucks. “Shall we?”
Grinning, she closed the distance between them and nodded, trying her best not to look like a giddy kid about to get their secretly third helping of dessert. Somewhere in the distance, a band had taken to the stage. While it wasn’t Delia’s music scene—she wasn’t even sure she had one, honestly—she could appreciate the fact that it wasn’t obtrusive music. It was somehow warm and comforting, adding a much better soundtrack to this part of the date than the classical music lilting through the first.
Delia was perfectly happy hunting for the truck that usually had the best funnel cake until Claude mentioned that there were many, many vamps in attendance tonight.
She stiffened. “Really?”
“At ease,” Claude chided. He pressed a kiss to her cheek before she could say anything. “No one appears to be hunting. I think they too are here for the music and atmosphere, like many of the humans.”
“Right.” Like she could believe vamps were in a crowd of humans and none of them were on the hunt. Places like the Fenton Festival were the perfect hunting grounds for sluggish, lulled humans, none of whom would have their guard up, relying on unobservant park security to keep them safe. Had hunters been assigned here? Delia scanned the nearest crowd.
“Delia, stop,” Claude muttered in her ear. She flinched, then breathed out as he kissed her cheek again. Their hands had broken apart, but his had found its way to her hip, keeping her close. “You aren’t working tonight. Let someone else worry about it.”
“It’s hard to switch off,” she admitted hesitantly.
“I believe that.” Suddenly his hand was under her chin and he was turning her face toward his. “Is that why you were distracted earlier? You mentioned something with the League, but I won’t pry if you’re uncomfortable with my asking.”
She opened and closed her mouth, knowing that she had enough sense to keep her assignment a secret, even though it made her feel like a terrible human being. He was being so open with her, so earnest, and here she was hiding something from him already.
But that was her job. Even if she wasn’t doing this sleazy gig, there was no way she could tell him the ins and outs of her work.
“Never mind,” he said gently, easing away from her and taking her hand when she didn’t answer. “If you want to tell me, you can. If something is bothering you, I don’t mind listening. You can be as vague as you like.”
“I know.” They started moving forward together, Delia’s eyes roving the food trucks. “Thank you. You’ve been really sweet tonight.”
“I did try,” he told her as her hand tightened around his. He squeezed back, adding, “I’ve been on my best date behaviour. It’s been quite some time.”
“You said that.” Taking a deep breath, she shoved the storm cloud of League and High Council worries away again. Let it hover a few feet behind her for a little while. “Out of curiosity, when was the last time you went on an actual date?”
She spied the funnel cake food truck as Claude took a moment to consider the question, his gaze skyward. As always, there was a ridiculous line in front of the register, and she had to stand on her tiptoes to even kind of see the front once she and Claude joined it.
“Well, that would have been with my last wife,” he said finally. Delia looked at him sharply, panic fluttering in her chest. “She died almost a decade ago, Alzheimer’s, and we were married for a good, oh, twenty years. I courted her before that, so…”
She hadn’t realized her mouth was hanging open until their eyes met. Blushing, Delia pressed her lips together tightly and looked away, not entirely sure how to process what she was feeling.
“I’m sorry,” Claude told her, his voice catching in his throat as he spoke. “I shouldn’t have… That’s not very good date etiquette, is it? Bringing up former loves.”
“It’s fine. Really,” she insisted lightly, standing up on her toes as if she was trying to see the front of the line. Really she just didn’t want to make eye contact with him.
Delia had skimmed his history at HQ. She knew there had been a Mrs. Grimm at one point or another—only she hadn’t realized it was so recent. Well, recent for a vamp. She also hadn’t expected to feel so much when he said it aloud.
Neither said anything until Delia had her funnel cake in hand, and by then she felt pretty silly about the whole thing. They found a spot to sit on one of the huge rock formations near the young trees the city had planted last year, and Delia dug into her deep-fried mess with fiendish delight.
“I’d offer you some,” she said once she’d swallowed a huge mouthful, “but the stuff on top is cherry drizzle, not O-negative, so…”
Claude wiped something off her cheek, warm fingers brushing close to her lips, and sighed. “You are just so thoughtful, Delia.”
“And don’t you ever forget.” She hacked off another piece of cake with her fork, then nudged him with her shoulder. Moments later she was tucked under his arm, eating very carefully to keep the sugar dusting on top of her cake from getting on his clothes.
“I can see why you would want to come here for a first date,” Claude said after a long bout of people-watching and cake-eating. Delia set her empty plate aside, stomach ready to burst after all the rich food she’d plied it with that night.
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“It’s intimate without being private,” he mused. “It’s nice.”
Delia agreed with a soft hum, resting her head on Claude’s shoulder as he started to fiddle with the loose ends of her hair. Hours ago, she had taken a curling iron to it to get some sort of controlled curl. The mirror in the movie theater bathroom had already told her that the effort was wasted. Her hair did what it wanted, but Claude seemed to enjoy twirling it around his fingers—and Delia enjoyed letting him.
Eventually, Claude suggested they check out the latest band, but when they
finally reached the concert area, it seemed this band was the most popular of the night. The audience had swelled with people pushing forward and holding up phones to record the performance. To Delia, it all sounded the same: a never-ending stream of banjo and guitar and smooth vocalists. It was nice to listen to, but with no huge monitors to show the stage, anyone standing more than halfway back in the crowd could only do just that—stand and listen.
“Here,” Claude said after the first song, Delia up on her toes in an effort to see over the crowd. He crouched down and sidled in front her, gesturing to his back. “Get on.”
She almost said no, but she’d thrown caution to the wind ever since they crossed the threshold to Fenton Park. Why not? Grinning, Delia placed her hands on his shoulders, pleased that she had worn an accommodating skirt, then jumped up onto his back. Seconds later he was upright. A giggle escaped her before she could stop it.
“Better?” he called, tipping his head back to try and look at her.
“Much,” she said. From there she could actually see the band. It didn’t matter that they were far away. In fact, she didn’t really care all that much about seeing them in the first place; she just didn’t want him to put her down. Her legs wrapped snugly around his midsection, and she shifted down so that she could drape her arms over his shoulders. As his hands slipped under her knees for support, Delia pressed a quick peck to his temple, heat flaring throughout her body. Her whispered thanks in his ear made him smile.
They stayed there until a new band took to the stage, and by then midnight had come and gone. Although staying up all night and sleeping all day was nothing new, Delia hadn’t prepped her schedule accordingly. Her second yawn prompted Claude to ask if she wanted him to take her home.