“Milo?” I knocked cautiously, but still didn’t dare open the door. This was weird considering Milo and I usually just burst into each other rooms. We had never any reason for propriety before this Bobby character had come into our lives.
I was about to knock again when Bobby opened the bedroom door. He was wearing pajama bottoms and nothing else, revealing his heavily tattooed upper torso. Something in Latin was scrawled across his chest, and there was ivy winding about just above his pubic area, not to mention about a million others that I didn’t have a chance to study. He hadn’t had a chance to flat iron his dark hair, so it stood up in a crazy mess, but he looked to have been awake for awhile.
“He’s still asleep,” Bobby whispered, then slowly crept out of the room, closing the bedroom quietly behind him so we wouldn’t disturb Milo. Matilda shoved her nose into his pants, sniffing him loudly and wagging her tail. Her white fur was fluffy and completely spotless, so Jack had time to get her cleaned up before disappearing. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Uh, maybe, I guess,” I said unsurely. He had crossed his arms over his chest, trying to protect his bare skin from the chill of the house, and I wondered why he hadn’t just put on a shirt. “Do you know where Jack is?”
“Kind of, actually,” Bobby nodded, looking pleased to be able to help. “They had some emergency business thing. I didn’t understand exactly what happened, but the stocks were going crazy and they had to go fix it. Ezra and Jack left a few hours ago, and I think Peter was already on his way there.
They should only be there for a day or two. Ezra didn’t really want to leave Mae for that long.”
“Oh.” I just kind of stared at him, unable to comprehend why he knew so much more about everyone’s whereabouts than I did. Since I was just standing there, he kept standing there, but he was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“Oh, cause I have insomnia,” Bobby smiled a little. “It kinda works out having a vampire fora boyfriend, but he still sleeps, and I don’t.” He shrugged at the humor in it, but I wasn’t sure if I found anything about him fun or charming.
“I see,” I said.
Matilda had finally decided that neither of us were Jack nor were we suitable replacements, so she wandered lazily down the hall. I watched her walk away, then went back to staring awkwardly at Milo’s halfnaked boyfriend. He smelled delicious, but I didn’t really want to eat him, so I counted that as a good sign, but otherwise, I didn’t really like him. Still, I didn’t really want to go back to my room just yet either.
“So, are you up for the day?” Bobby asked, and I could tell he was coming to a similar conclusion as me. Sitting in bed all day while Milo slept probably wasn’t all that thrilling for him either.
“Yeah, I think so,” I nodded.
“Cool. Let me just get a shirt,” Bobby said, as if I had invited him to do something. Just the same, I nodded and waited for him, like I thought I had invited him to do something too.
Bobby disappeared briefly into the room before coming out with a slim-fitting zippered hoodie hanging open. I had tried to peer around him to see what Milo’s bedroom looked like now that he was sharing it with someone else, but Bobby had barely opened the door more than a crack. I’m not sure if he was trying to hide something, or he was just trying to respect Milo’s sleep, but either way, I decided that I didn’t trust him.
“I was gonna get something to eat,” Bobby explained, zipping up his hoodie. He didn’t do it all the way to the top, but from what I could tell about his penchant for low V-neck shirts, he was a big fan of showing off his chest tattoos. Not that I blamed him really. Bobby was actually very attractive. If I was still human and didn’t have Jack and didn’t know that he was shagging my brother, I’d probably be tripping all over myself to get with him.
“I wasn’t, but that’s probably better for you.” I was kind of joking, but I was also trying to sound kind of threatening. Just as a reminder that if he hurt me brother, I could totally kill him. Not that Milo couldn’t take care of himself, and in reality, Bobby was the one with the higher risk for getting hurt.
“Right,” Bobby gave a small laugh and nodded his head, then started walking downstairs. I went with him, because really, I had nothing better to do. “So… do you ever miss food?”
“Not really,” I shrugged, following him into the kitchen. “It’s hard to explain. Like, I remember the way some food tasted, and I kind of crave it. But then when I think about eating it, I feel nauseous. Besides that, blood tastes a million times better than any food ever could.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Bobby crinkled his nose at the thought of drinking blood, which I found distasteful. I knew he let Milo drink his blood, and he enjoyed it. It seemed kind of hypocritical.
“Whatever,” I muttered. I pulled a stool up to the kitchen island and sat down while he rummaged around in the fridge.
“I have always been very partial a bagel with cream cheese.” He got said foods out of the fridge and popped the bagel in a toaster. “I don’t think I could ever it up, so I guess being a vampire is out for me.”
“Alright.” I didn’t really know to respond to that. He was trying to make a joke, I’m sure, but it sounded like a stupid thing to be a deal breaker for immortality, especially considering that eternity would be with my brother.
Bobby leaned against the counter, waiting for the bagel to pop up, and he said nothing else.
An uncomfortable silence settled over us, and I was thinking that my day would be much better spent watching the newest season of Dexter on DVD in Jack’s room. I had been slowly but surely working my way through the whole series since Jack constantly raved about it, and I was trying to find a polite way to escape to that.
“So… you don’t really like me,” Bobby stated after his bagel popped up. He was spreading cream cheese thick all over it and wasn’t looking at me. I thought about disagreeing with him, but then I just decided to wait and see if he said more. “I don’t blame you.”
“Why? You got low self-esteem?” I replied flippantly.
“Kinda, but that’s not what I meant.” He took a big bite of his bagel then turned to face me, settling his dark eyes on me until I started shift uneasily. He chewed and swallowed his bite before continuing. “I get it. Milo is your little brother, and he’s pretty young and inexperienced. And I’m older, and I do kinda have that bad boy vibe, even though I am clearly not a bad boy.” With the tattoos and dark features, Bobby did have a rebel without a cause thing going on, but after the way I had seen him cowering around Milo in the club last night, I could say with completely certainty that Bobby was not a bad boy in any real sense of the word.
“Those things are true,” I allowed carefully. I wasn’t really sure he was getting at yet.
“And even though I am the weaker of the species, I am human, which is dangerous in a way to vampires,” Bobby admitted before taking another bite of the bagel. When he chewed, he stared thoughtfully at the floor. “I mean, he’s stronger and more powerful than I am, but I complicate things for him in a lot of different ways, and I know that.”
“If you know that then why are you with him?” I asked, not unkindly.
“That’s a good question.” It was such a good question that Bobby had to finish the entire bagel so he could think it over. Finally, he swallowed the last bite and leaned back against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I warned him icily.
“No, it’s not…” He shook his head. “You’ll think I’m lying, and I don’t have any real way to prove anything to you. Or you’ll think I’m just under the spell, that one that vampires put humans under, and it’s not that either.” My stomach started twisting because I knew what he was getting at, and it didn’t sit all that well with me. “I love him. Okay? It sounds cheesy and like an easy excuse and everything… but I don’t care. We’re in love, and that’s not something I’m willing to just throw away.”
“He’s fifteen! What does he know about love?” I don’t know why my go-to argument was the same as Romeo and Juliet’s parents, but that was the first one that came off the top of my head.
Bobby looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and it was his turn to think that I was hypocrite. “Okay, yeah, I get that I’m not much older than him, but…” I was just about to say that they hadn’t known each other that long, but that argument had applied to my situation with Jack before. I sighed and tried to think of something to counter with that I hadn’t already done myself.
“You understand where we’re coming from,” Bobby said with a wry smile, and I shook my head, unwilling to admit defeat. “The situation is difficult, but the heart wants what it wants.”
“What a stupid thing to say,” I scoffed. “My stomach wants what it wants, too, but you don’t see me ripping out your throat to get it.” Bobby shrugged, unfazed by my veiled threat, and I wasn’t sure if it made me hate him more or less. “What is that about, anyway?”
“What?” Bobby looked up at me.
“You’re like twenty-one, and people call you Bobby. Isn’t that a little boy name?” I wrinkled my nose, and he laughed.
“People called Robert Kennedy ‘Bobby’ his entire life,” Bobby offered.
“And look at how well that turned out for him,” I countered, referring to his untimely assignation, and Bobby smiled brightly at me.
“Maybe. But my name actually is ‘Bobby,’ not ‘Robert’ or ‘Bob’ or anything,” Bobby shrugged. “So it’s just what I go by, since it is legally my name.”
“Was your mother like a hippie or something like that?” I asked.
“Something like that,” Bobby ran a hand through his hair and exhaled deeply.
“Okay, so fine, you and my brother are crazy in love,” I said, and it left a bitter taste in my mouth just playing devil’s advocate. “Let’s say that I buy that. How did you two meet? And how did you come to know our particular lifestyle?” Lifestyle wasn’t exactly the right word, because it implied that there was a choice in this. I had chosen to become a vampire, but I could never choose not to be one, not unless I died. Even then, I’d just be a dead vampire.
“Um… well…” Bobby laughed dryly and fidgeted with the zipper on his hoodie.
“Obviously, I am gay. So I used to frequent the gay clubs, especially right after I turned 18, and I was really out of the closet. I wasn’t a slut, exactly, but I wasn’t… not a slut, either. One of the gentlemen I was pursuing turned out to be a vampire. We ‘dated’ for awhile, but I’m using the term really loosely. Basically, we would just fool around, and he’d bite me. But it took some time before I figured out what was going on. I mean, even after I realized that he was physically biting me, it was still a hard concept to buy that he was a vampire.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. The supernatural could be a very hard pill to swallow.
Sometimes, I still found it hard to believe in vampires, and I was one.