“You should probably get going.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and started sliding to get out of the car, hoping that he could make it home before he fell asleep. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Nah, I can’t. I’m going on that business trip with Ezra,” Jack reminded me. “But I should be back in like two days. We aren’t doing much more than signing some papers.”
In the past few months, Jack had stepped up and started helping Ezra with the family business.
What that entailed, I wasn’t entirely sure, except that they owned a few companies overseas and had lots of stock holdings. Every now and then, Ezra would leave for a few days to work on something, and Jack had finally decided that he should learn the ropes. Also, he’d rolled his car, and Ezra demanded that he work for his money to pay for the next one.
“Oh. Right. Well… call me when you get back.”
“I always do,” Jack grinned, and I got out of the car.
Before I had even made it inside the doors of building, I heard the tires squeal as the car sped off.
I was glad that Milo was inside so he wouldn’t get any ideas. Milo was waiting in the lobby, pushing the call button for the elevator, and he shook his head at me.
“What?” I asked, wondering what I could possibly do that had offended him
“What did you and Jack talk about? My driving?” The elevator doors opened, and I followed him inside, laughing at his paranoia.
“No, of course not.” I leaned back against the wall, and he turned to me, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“Well, did you talk about why you’re not having sex yet? Because you really need to discover the reason for that.” Milo was a tad in love with Jack, and he couldn’t grasp why I wasn’t. Neither could I, really, but I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that maybe I was. A little.
“You really need to get a boyfriend so you can stop hounding me about my lack of one,” I rebuked him, and he scoffed loudly.
“You don’t have one because you spend all your time with Jack! And you keep insisting that he isn’t one.” He sounded completely deflated by the time the elevator reached our floor. “What is wrong with you, Alice?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I sighed and walked down the hall to our apartment. There probably was something wrong with me, but not the way he meant. “Things are just a lot more complicated than they appear. Alright?”
“If it’s because he’s older than you, I don’t think that matters. He’s pretty immature for his age.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I laughed.
“That’s only because you won’t tell me!” Milo whined. I hadn’t brought my keys, so I waited for him to unlock the apartment door, and we went inside.
Since I had met Jack, I’d been hanging out with him nearly everyday. He was nocturnal, so while I’d been in school, that required many late nights. Ever studious, Milo had declined joining us, but once school let out for the summer, he’d decided to go with us a lot more. For the most part, that was great, because I didn’t have to feel bad about leaving him home alone all the time. But he’d started to pick on some of the things that had alerted me that Jack and his family were different.
Like the fact that they never ate, their skin temperature was oddly temperate, and they were insanely attractive. Just like me, he had a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer. We had all agreed it would better for Milo if he didn’t know what they really were, so I stuck with it.
Milo continued to try and interrogate me about what my deal with Jack was, so I blew him off and went into my room. Putting Lou Reed in my CD player, I grabbed my copy of Pride and Prejudice and settled into my bed. The window was open, allowing the warm summer breeze to blow over me. Over the music, I could hear Milo straighten up the living room indignantly. But it was a beautiful summer day, and I didn’t want to spend anymore of it arguing about vampires.
Part of Jack’s work schedule allowed me more time to spend with Jane, my supposed best friend.
Neither Milo nor Jack readily approved of this friendship since Jane tended to be a little self absorbed, and she had actually once ran and hid while I was nearly attacked. Jack ended up saving the day, as was his style, but he didn’t easily forgive her of such a slight. On the other hand, I had very little human consorts as of late, consisting almost solely of Milo and Jane, so I was reluctant to let her go. Besides, we had been friends for ages.
Using her father’s car, Jane drove us down to the Roseville Mall to do a little pre-school shopping, which was approaching all too quickly. She also had the advantage of her father’s credit card, while I had a small allowance garnered from my mother. Jack’s sister-in-law Mae frequently offered to take me clothes shopping, and while I know it would be more of a treat for her than me, it still felt too weird taking their money. So I settled for twenty bucks and an endless afternoon of window shopping.
We were going to spend the entire day in the mall shopping, and it would be the entire day with the way Jane shopped, yet she had worn a pair of stiletto heels. Worst of all, her feet never seemed to hurt her. She could run a marathon in those things easily, and she would look amazing doing it. Her skirt was barely over six inches long, but it probably cost more than my entire outfit.
As we rode up an escalator, Jane pulled out her compact and reapplied her lip gloss, seemingly oblivious to the boys on the opposite escalator, eyeing her up.
The one thing that Jack and Jane had in common: when I was with them, I became some kind of indistinct accessory. Every person of the opposite sex (and some of the same) ogled them constantly, but no one ever really noticed me.
Her phone jingled, and it always amused me that her ringtone was “Fer Sure” by Medic Droid, which essentially described her life to a T. It wasn’t funny that she had it, so much that she was self-aware enough to realize that it was her life. When she didn’t answer her phone, it didn’t surprise me. It just gave people another reason to look at her, and that was just the way she wanted it.
“Aren’t you gonna get that?” I asked when the ringing felt like it had gone on too long. We stepped off the escalator, and she started walking towards the Victoria’s Secret, swishing her hips like she was on a runway. An attractive guy walked past us, smiling appreciatively at her ass, and I groaned inwardly.
“Nah, its just Cole, and I am so over him,” Jane explained as we walked into the store. She said it as if I bothered to keep track of who she was under. I had at one time, but it had gotten to be too much work, and she rarely stayed with a guy for more than a week.
“Maybe you should tell him that,” I muttered when her phone started ringing again.
“He’ll figure it out.” Her heels clacked loudly on the floor as she made her way over to inspect red lingerie, and I couldn’t help but notice the hot pink strap from her thong showing over the top of her skirt. Jane was nothing if she wasn’t classy. “So what about you?”
“What about me what?” I gingerly picked through a bin filled with brightly colored panties, but I had no intention of buying any. Sometimes, when I felt like it, I was that kind of a girl in the lace thong, not that anybody ever saw it. But I was never the kind of girl that spent her entire school shopping money on one pair of panties, especially when they were little more than a string.
“Are you making any progress with Jack?” Jane tried to keep it light, but her voice tightened every time she mentioned Jack.
They’d only met twice, but he had a way of making a lasting impression, especially since he was the first guy that Jane had really wanted that didn’t want her back. The sting had started to wear off, and now she could actually talk about him with me, so at least that was something.
“I’m not exactly trying to make progress with him,” I reminded her for the hundredth time.
“Nonsense.” Jane, like Milo, found it impossible to believe that I wasn’t secretly carrying a torch for Jack. She grabbed nearly transparent bright purple thong and held it out towards me. “You need these. Guys can never resist a whale tale.”
“I’m sure lots of guys do, and I already have thongs, but thanks.” I turned away from her, but she walked over to me, still holding the panties in her hand.
“You need to do this,” Jane whispered fiercely, her blue eyes wide and serious. Taken aback by her intensity, I just stared at her. “For all of womankind, someone needs to have sex with that man, and for some reason, he only seems interested in you. So get in there, so I can start living vicariously through you!”
“It’s not that simple.” I tried walking away from her, but she followed me.
“He’s not gay, is he? Please tell me he’s not gay.” Jane sounded so desperate that I had to stifle a laugh. Briefly, I considered telling her that he was gay just so she’d get off my back, but I was a terrible liar.
“No, he’s not,” I shook my head, and Jane let out a dramatic sigh of relief. I pretended to be really interested in a padded bra, hoping she’d get bored and wander off, but she stayed glued next to me.
“How do you know? Have you guys kissed?” She crossed her arms over her chest, studying my face for clues, so I knew my best bet was not to respond. That gave something away, though, because she gasped.
“Ohemgee! You totally kissed!”
“It was once, like six months. It’s not a big deal,” I tried to brush her off her. It was just once, six months ago, but it was a really big deal. It had been the most amazing, heated, passionate kiss of my entire life. But there was a very good chance that any more kisses like that could lead to our deaths, so we had to stop, and we hadn’t kissed since.
The problem was Peter. My blood was meant for him, and his for me. Something was encrypted in our DNA that made us attracted to each other, and it’s the most intense physical need I’ve ever had. When I can’t breathe and my lungs crave oxygen is nothing compared to what I feel for Peter. He eclipses everything else.
Being away from him leaves a dull ache inside of me that never goes away, but it gets easier to ignore. Peter had already lost someone that he loved and didn’t want to go through that again, so he avoided me. But when it came right down to it, there was something off between us. He’d felt the way this was supposed to feel before, and there’s something missing this time. Everything I feel for Peter is purely physical, and it’s supposed to be more than that. There’s supposed to be love, only more powerful, and there wasn’t.
That doesn’t change the way Peter feels for me, though. Vampires by nature are very possessive, and even though he doesn’t exactly want me, he doesn’t want anyone else to have me. Rather, he can’t let anyone else have me, even Jack, who appears to be far more attracted to me than he should be. If Peter knew that we’re together, if he could smell Jack on my blood, then he’d probably kill Jack, even though he wouldn’t really want to.
Peter knows how Jack feels about me, and he couldn’t find any way around it. Last spring, he told me that he and his family weren’t going to see me anymore, and I had been completely devastated. In the heat of the moment, I had asked him to kill me, and after pleading and drawing my own blood in front of him, he’d finally caved in and bit me. As amazing as my kiss with Jack had been, Peter biting me felt a million times better. It was everything I had heard sex was supposed to be, and so much more.