The Vampire's Favorite

by V. R. Cumming

  I sucked in a ragged breath and exhaled it slowly, struggling to keep my voice down. Fuck all. The last thing I needed right now was for my family to hear me and Eric arguing. “If that’s what you think about me, why are you with me? Why not leave now, go back home to Gianna, cut me out the way you wanted to from the start? Fuck, Eric. We both know how you feel about having sex with men. Do you think I don’t know what a blessing me being numb below the waist is to you?”

  He whirled around and his skin, already so pale, drained completely of color. “Jase, God.”

  “No, we’re being honest here, right? I’m only good for one thing, and let’s face it. The only reason you fuck me as often as you do is so you can control your beast. I know how much you hate having sex with men, with me. I know how much you despise that part of your life.”

  And I knew he only did it so he could be with Gianna. His wife, never mine, no matter what rings we wore or how much I loved her. She’d chosen him over me, and he’d brought me into their union anyway. For a short time, the three of us had coexisted in a perfect state, sharing our hearts and minds and bodies, sharing our love. Fuck all. I wished I’d never known what a lie that had been. I wished to God I’d never believed we could achieve perfection again.

  I snapped my jaws shut and wheeled around, so fucking tired of being on the outside, I couldn’t face it for one more goddamn second. “I need some air.”

  “Adonis—”

  I slashed a hand out. “Don’t ever call me that again.”

  I maneuvered out the door and down the hallway, through the living room and kitchen, out the back door and down the ramp Pop had built. One at each entrance to the house, just in case, I guess. I stopped at the bottom under the moon’s cool light and scrubbed the heels of my palms over my eyes. Fuck. If this throbbing mass of hurt pounding in my chest was love, I didn’t want anything to do with it.

  At least I’d figured out how Eric really felt about me before Gigi woke up. She wouldn’t have to witness this. My hollow laughter rang through the still night, silencing the crickets chirping from their hiding places in the backyard. Yeah, she wouldn’t have to witness me again, not ever. Eric would find a new favorite. Maybe he’d even go back to Devin, golden-haired, charismatic Devin. He was everything I’d never be, smooth, urbane, beautiful, and he was Eric’s first male lover, the first man to snag his heart. There was no competition, never had been. Why had I pretended otherwise?

  I sat outside until the hurt faded to a dull roar, until the moon dropped below the horizon and the lights went off in the spare bedroom. I sat out there with no thought on what I’d do, on how I could fix things with Eric or if I even wanted to. I sat out there as a breeze whistled through the air and rain threatened, and still, the path I should take eluded me.

  Hours later, I wandered back into the house. Eric was in bed with the sheet pulled over his hips. His pale torso gleamed in the light cast across it out of the bathroom doorway into the bedroom, an alabaster statue, perfectly formed.

  I used the toilet, brushed my teeth, undressed, none of it easily, but what the hell. I needed to learn how to get by on my own, didn’t I?

  When I was as ready as I’d ever be to sleep beside the man who thought I was little better than a whore, I hoisted myself into bed and threw the sheet over my legs, careful not to jostle the mattress too much.

  Eric rolled over and cupped his hand over my bicep. “You ok?”

  Christ. So much for being careful. “Didn’t mean to wake you up,” I said gruffly.

  “I was awake. Why didn’t you ask me to help you undress?”

  “I did ok.” All the hurt I thought I’d left outside rushed back into me in one fell swoop, smashing through the walls I’d managed to build around the throbbing wound in my heart. I stared up at the ceiling, blinking it back, praying like hell I wouldn’t embarrass myself by crying. “You’re nothing like him.”

  “Jason.”

  “I’m not with you because there’s a superficial resemblance between you and him.”

  “And I’m not with you solely because of Gianna.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Stop peeking into my head.”

  “If you don’t want me to peek, don’t open yourself to me.” His fingers stroked my skin, so gentle and light, I barely felt his touch. “I’m sorry for saying what I did. I didn’t mean it, not the way it came out.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Jason—”

  “Seriously, Eric. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “All right.” He pressed a hesitant kiss to my mouth and retreated to the far side of the bed. “Good night.”

  “Night.”

  Fabric rustled as he rolled over. The silence descending over us crushed the air out of my lungs, slowly suffocating the tenderness I’d always held for him in my heart.

  I woke late the next morning, disoriented and alone. The room was darker than it should’ve been and for a minute, I couldn’t remember where I was. I grimaced and scrubbed a hand over my face. Right. I was back home in the bedroom my parents had built for Pop’s mother, now a guest room, since she’d had to go to a home for better care than we could give her. I twisted around and glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. Ten forty-eight on a Sunday morning. Shit. I’d overslept and missed church. Ma would give me hell for that.

  I struggled out of bed into my wheelchair, considered giving myself a sponge bath and just as quickly discarded the idea. Maybe Pop could help me with a real bath when he came home from church. If he couldn’t, I’d tackle it on my own later.

  The house was quiet as I wheeled through it. For the first time in weeks, I had free time to kill. I could do anything I wanted that didn’t involve being in the sun or using my legs. I could read a book or, God forbid, watch ESPN without feeling any guilt over Eric’s innate inability to understand sports.

  My heart squeezed into a painfully tight knot in my chest, stealing my breath. Yeah, probably wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while.

  Food first. My stomach was an empty ache in my gut. There had to be leftovers in the fridge, something I could heat in the microwave or eat cold.

  I wheeled into the kitchen and rolled to a stop. Pop was standing at the sink, gazing out the window overlooking the backyard. He turned and set his coffee mug down, and his eyes had that flat-curious look he wore when he had something to say and meant to say it.

  My stomach shriveled up, edging out my hunger. Well, fuck. Looked like the reckoning was upon me. “Hey, Pop. Thought you’d be in church with everybody else.”

  “Somebody needed to stay home and make sure you got by ok.”

  “I’m a cripple, not an invalid.”

  His mouth thinned into a stern line. “Eric said you didn’t sleep too well.”

  Neither had Eric, but who was counting? “It happens.”

  “Something on your mind, keeping you up?”

  “Nothing I want to talk about.”

  “Hmm.” He picked up his cup and sipped coffee, his gray eyes hard over the cup’s rim. “You and Eric have a fuss?”

  Christ, what was this, Dr. Phil? “It’s nothing, Pop.”

  “Must be something to put bags under your eyes.” He dropped his gaze to his cup and swirled it in small circles. Steam wafted upward, disappearing gradually. He inhaled, lifted the cup to his mouth, lowered it without sipping. “Your ma would know what to say now, how everybody quarrels and making up is half the fun or some girly crap.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “So he’s not your lover?”

  My breath whooshed out of me. Fuck. Not much I could say to that. “Pop—”

  The cup smacked onto the counter. “Don’t lie to me, son. You think I’m so blind I can’t see the way you look at him?”

  I clamped my lips together. All this time, I’d wondered how I was going to tell Pop. After going to such lengths to hide what I was from him, he’d already guessed part of it, right when Eric and I were on the outs. I’d
probably lose him, would’ve anyhow if I hadn’t figured out how to get my legs to work, and now I was about to lose the rest of my family on top of everything else.

  I managed to steady my shaking hands and look my father square in the eye. “I can’t go outside, Pop. It’ll literally kill me, but maybe I could get my things and wait on the porch for a cab or something.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Now, why would you want to do a fool thing like that?”

  I shrugged. “I knew when you and Ma found out I was bisexual, you’d cut me out. I don’t blame you. Who wants a perv for a kid, right? Just, could I have some time to say goodbye to my sisters maybe?”

  “Hell, son.” Pop shook his head and scuffed a booted foot along the linoleum. “You really want to leave, I can’t stop you, but don’t think you have to go just because you’re a little different.”

  I laughed, couldn’t help it. Different wasn’t exactly how I’d put it. “I’m living with a married man, sharing his wife with him, and there’s so much more, Pop, things I can never tell you, and I’m a little different?”

  “Maybe I understated it a bit. Thing is, your ma and I have known about the sex thing since you were a teenager. She caught you, nearly had a heart attack when she did. Her baby boy having sex with a teacher, and a male teacher to boot?” He snorted out a laugh. “Made those nudey magazines she found under your bed seem like nothing.”

  Heat flooded my cheeks. “Jesus, Pop.”

  “I won’t lie. It took me a long time to wrap my head around it.”

  Why hadn’t he kicked me out when Ma found out about me and Mike? Shit. “Why didn’t you turn him in?”

  “You were already eighteen, a grown man. We had no way of knowing how long you two had been at it. I wasn’t about to ruin a man’s life over consensual sex, even if he was a substitute teacher at your school.”

  Well, thank God for small favors. Mike could’ve lost his job, ruined his reputation, and I never would’ve been able to show my face again anywhere near Crookston. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I reckoned it’d work itself out, especially when you went off to school in the South.” He leveled that hard stare on me, granite overlain by love. “Your grandma ever tell you about the time she had to bail me out of jail?”

  I nearly fell out of my chair. My straight-laced father, in jail? No way. “She never breathed a word.”

  “Sure enough. It was right after my pop died. I was a teenager, full of piss and vinegar and a need to prove I was the same man he was. Me and Hardy Johnson stole two six-packs and got stone cold drunk behind his parents’ house. We were sick as dogs the next morning, but that night, we were flying high. Invincible. We hotwired a car and went joyriding.”

  “Wait. You and Preacher Johnson stole beer and a car and went on a wild ride through Crookston?”

  Pop’s lips twitched. “That was a ways before he stumbled onto the straight and narrow.”

  Sounded like. “What happened?”

  “Car ran out of gas two miles outside of town. A deputy sheriff found us and hauled us back. Made us call our folks and explain the whole thing to them, right there on the phone.” Pop waggled a work-roughened finger at me. “Your grandmother nearly skinned my hide. Said I was lucky she loved me and that if I ever did anything that stupid again, she’d let me serve the time, and good riddance. It broke her heart right in two, though she never admitted to it, but there was one other thing she said I’ll never forget.”

  His eyes narrowed on me, and I squirmed in my chair. Here it came, the axe I’d had hanging over my head for nearly four years.

  “She said,” he continued, “that someday I’d have a son of my own, and when I did, I’d better remember what she’d done for me. I’d better remember that being a parent is more than changing diapers and keeping a roof over your child’s head. It’s having an open heart and an open mind, and knowing when to draw a line and when to erase it.”

  My hands tightened on the arms of my chair and something an awful lot like hope blossomed through the worry pressing into me. “Pop, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know Eric that well. God knows I’m not happy you’re having sex with him, but he seems like a good man and you’re happy with him. I reckon that’s as good a reason as any to erase that line.”

  “And what if he and I don’t last?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” He sipped the last of his coffee, rinsed his cup out, and plunked it into the sink. “But if you have to ask that, maybe you don’t know him very well. A blind man can see the way he feels about you, and I’m not nearly as blind as your ma thinks I am.”

  No, he wasn’t blind at all, was he? And I should’ve known better than to try and hide what I was from him and Ma both. “I’m sorry, Pop.”

  “Can’t blame you for following your heart, son, only for what you do with it once you get there.” He plodded across the kitchen, his work boots heavy on the linoleum, and smacked my shoulder. “Maybe we can find a game to watch. God knows, we’ll not get to watch it long. Once Eric and the womenfolk get back, your sisters will put an end to that.”

  I sat frozen in my chair, listening to his boots scuffing on the floors as he shambled through the house. Ma and Pop had known about me all along. Christ, they’d known and accepted me. I should’ve known they would, should’ve believed in them the way they’d always believed in me. I shrugged it off, fixed myself a hamburger from last night’s leftovers, and wheeled into the living room to watch a game with my old man.

  Pop was right about the game and he was right about my sisters, two of them anyway. Charity and Anna Grace piled out of the car, laughing loud enough for us to hear them over the sports announcer, and burst into the house on the kind of wild, summer energy all kids magically find once school was close to being out. Di was strangely absent from the group, but maybe that wasn’t so bad. Last thing I needed after dealing with Eric and Pop back to back was her sniping at me.

  Eric tagged along behind my two youngest sisters and Ma, dressed in the khakis and collared shirt we’d picked out yesterday. He dropped a casual kiss to my mouth, seemingly oblivious to Pop’s heavy stare and my sisters’ avid attention. “We need to talk. How about a bath after lunch?”

  I leaned back and met his gaze. “What’s wrong?”

  “Marco. I didn’t get a chance to tell you about him last night.”

  And there I’d thought my day was evening out. “I could use a bath.”

  “I know.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a soft whisper. “I heard you all the way in town.”

  “I wasn’t sending on purpose,” I groused.

  I know, Adonis. He blanched away from me. “Sorry. It just slipped out.”

  I caught his hand and tugged him back. “We should maybe talk about that, too, while we’re at it.”

  “Yes.” His thumb rubbed over mine, sweet and easy and as familiar as the sun rising every morning, washing me with his warm radiance. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  Lunch was a lot happier without Di around. Maybe that was mean of me to admit, but she’d been a real sourpuss the entire time I’d been home. If I thought it’d do any good, I’d try to tease the reason why out of her, but it wouldn’t do a thing besides ruffle her feathers and put her back up.

  Maybe she’d work out whatever was bothering her while she’d been hanging out with her friends or whatever she’d stayed in town for.

  Halfway through the simple meal of sandwiches and assorted leftovers, a lull fell in the conversation. I cleared my throat and casually laid my left hand on the table beside my plate. “Do you think we should try to replace our rings while we’re here, Eric?”

  He set his sandwich down and patted his napkin across his mouth. “Is this the best time to talk about that?”

  “Ma might know a good jeweler.”

  She glanced between us, her expression nothing more than mildly curious. “What kind of rings?”

  I tou
ched my left ring finger, then my thumb. “The rings Gianna and Eric gave me on their wedding day, and the ones she and I gave him. They were stolen when all our other stuff was taken.”

  “Jason,” Eric said. “I thought we agreed to ease them into this.”

  “Trust me, they’re eased.” I jerked my chin at Ma. “So, wedding rings, gold and platinum. Who has the best selection?”

  The curiosity in her expression morphed into the most awful hurt I’d ever seen on her. She blinked back tears and sniffed unsteady breaths into her napkin. “You got married without inviting us?”

  “No, Ma,” I said gently. Christ, even knowing they’d try to understand, I’d managed to bungle it. “Gianna and Eric got married. We all exchanged rings as a pledge of our commitment to one another, that’s all.”

  Charity leaned into the table and glared at Eric, sitting across from her. “I thought you said you weren’t gay.”

  “I am not gay,” he gritted out.

  “Yeah, but you gave Jason a ring and you’re sleeping with him.”

  Pop narrowed his eyes on us. “She has a point.”

  “Hush now, Charity. That’s none of your concern, and you, Henry. Don’t encourage her.” Ma dabbed at her eyes and exhaled a shuddering breath. “I can’t believe you got married without me there. All your life, I’ve dreamed of watching you pledge your love to a woman.”

  If I could’ve slumped down any farther in my chair, I would’ve, anything to hide from the disappointment in her voice. “Ma, come on. We did that in private, just the three of us and some friends who know what we are. We didn’t even tell Gigi and Eric’s families.”

  “You should’ve told me.” She turned her misery on Eric. “How could you marry my boy without his family being there to support him?”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. None of us thought our families could handle the truth.”