John sidled next to me and whispered from the corner of his mouth. “What’s so fascinating?”
“Huh? Oh.” My face burned as I realized what he was implying. “I was staring, wasn’t I?” I didn’t tell him that the couple reminded me of the fun Zach and I used to have together. But that was over now.
John pinched his fingers together. “Only a little.” He tipped his head toward the trail, eyebrows raised in question, and we began walking again.
“So,” he said after a moment’s silence. “Do you believe what she said?”
I walked with my head down, making sure I didn’t trip on any rocks or protruding tree roots. “About the rockslide? Yeah. I remember reading about it in the paper a few years ago.”
“Not that. About the ghost. Or other paranormal beings, for that matter. Do you believe in such things?”
I snorted but didn’t look at him. “You’re joking, right?”
“Nope.”
I stopped, and so did he. “Do you believe in ghosts and other paranormal beings?” I said, using his exact words.
He raised a brow. “There’s a lot in this world to which most people remain happily oblivious. Or if they’re not oblivious, they simply choose not to believe. ”
I resumed walking. “’I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Take that however you want to, Blake.”
Something in his voice made the small hairs on the back of my neck prickle, but that didn’t stop the grin from spreading across my face.
A light spray had been rolling off the waterfall. Combined with the high humidity of the afternoon, my clothes clung to my skin. Out of habit I reached a hand to my hair, worried that my painstakingly straightened hair-do had frizzed from all the moisture. I touched one of the springy curls, remembering I’d worn it au natural.
John reached out to stretch a curl before letting it go again. From the corner of my eye, I watched it spring back into place and coil tightly at my temple like a snake in hiding. “I like it better curly,” he said.
“Ugh. I hate it. Olivia’s got this beautiful stick-straight hair. I’ve been jealous of it since the first time I met her. Seriously, girls with straight hair do not know how good they’ve got it.”
John squinted an eye and tilted his head as though to get a different perspective. My body froze under the intense scrutiny of his gaze. “It’s beautiful. You should wear it that way from now on.”
“I really don’t like—”
“It’s suits you,” John interrupted, fingering a few stray curls again. “Don’t ever straighten it again.”
John drove me home a few hours later with a promise to see me soon, but no indication when that might be. My parents’ car was in the driveway, so he decided not to come inside on account that bringing home a new guy so soon after breaking up with Zach might raise a few eyebrows. I didn’t disagree with his logic and simply let him kiss my cheek goodbye. A slight shiver ran up my spine at the touch of his warm lips against my skin, but I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was from the excitement of being with someone other than Zach, or the strange desire I felt for him. Whatever it was, I wasn’t complaining. I liked the feeling and hoped it would last.
I dropped my purse on the small table by the front door and picked up Zach’s bouquet of sunflowers still lying there wrapped in cellophane. My heart squeezed at the memory of his thoughtfulness, but I figured there was bound to be a few casualties of feelings in the course of a breakup. I really needed to stop beating myself up about him and just come to terms with the decision that I had made, however irrational it still seemed to me.
I took the flowers to the kitchen and trimmed the stems in the sink, and then I arranged them in a clear glass vase. I placed the vase on the counter and then stood back to admire the arrangement.
Did I feel guilty about how I’d left things with Zach? Absolutely. Did I think that hanging out with John was questionable? Maybe a little. But I didn’t see what I could do about it, either. I really liked John and wanted to get to know him better, and he seemed to feel the same way.
I found my parents lounging by the tear-drop pool out back, my dad with a pipe in his mouth and my mom with a lime-colored frozen margarita in her hand. They each had their noses buried in a book, but my mother looked up at the sound of the French doors opening. Her face brightened at my appearance.
“There you are!” she said. “I assume you and Zach got everything worked out. I can’t tell you how happy that makes Zach’s mom and me. You really had us worried.” She took a long pull on the margarita and smiled at me, her bright white, and perfectly shaped, teeth gleaming at me from behind a pair of glossy red lips.
My sandals clacked against the stone patio as I made my way to the table, where I poured myself a glass of iced tea. I snagged a chocolate-dipped macaroon from an assortment of goodies that had been set out.
“Blake?” my mother said when I didn’t answer. I couldn’t ignore the hint of worry in her voice. “I assume you and Zach patched things up?”
I turned around and stared wordlessly at my mother as I polished off the last of the macaroon, not entirely sure what to say or how to break the news to her that I hadn’t been with Zach at all. “Why would you assume that?”
She pulled her sunglasses down her long, straight nose and stared over the rim at me, her dark eyebrows pulling together. The corners of her mouth turned down. “Didn’t he come by earlier?”
“Yes, but—”
“You’re note said you were going out,” she interrupted. “You’ve been gone for hours. And considering I saw Olivia outside with the twins an hour ago, I knew you weren’t with her. I assumed Zach came to pick you up since your car was still here.”
“I did go out. Just not with Zach,” I said, my voice trailing off in a guilty whisper.
My father finally looked up from his book and removed the pipe from his mouth, a ring of Black Cavendish wreathing his head. “Then who’d you go out with?”
“Hm?”
“Who’d you go out with?”
“Oh. No one you know,” I said, beginning to squirm. This conversation was quickly heading in a direction I did not want it to go, so I turned my back to them and began fixing a plate of cucumber sandwiches and cut fruit. They’d likely find out about John soon enough, even sooner if Zach blabbed to his overprotective mommy about what had happened when he came over, and then his mom blabbed to mine. Which she would.
“No one we know?” my dad echoed.
I shrugged with as much nonchalance as I could muster and headed for the door, plate and drink in hand. “Just a friend I hooked up with yesterday at the lake.”
“Well, okay then,” said Mom with a twinge of uncertainty. “Just bring her by at some point so we can meet her. We like to know who your friends are.”
I turned to face her. “I will. I promise.” I would have promised anything just to get out of there.
My dad laid his book and pipe down on the small side table and then stood up, stretching his thin accountant’s arms over his head. “I think I’ll test the water. Care to get your fins wet, Blake?”
I shot him an indulgent smile. He fervently believed that the more he pestered me about swimming, the better chance he had of me giving in. But my answer was always the same. “No thanks, Daddy. You know I don’t swim.”
He pointed a finger at me and said the same thing he always said. “One of these days you won’t have a choice. And then it will be sink or swim, Blake. Sink or swim.”
Three days went by and not a peep from John. Three whole days that I spent avoiding my mother’s constant, critical gaze. Three whole days of berating myself for breaking up with Zach for a guy who couldn’t even bother to call.
I didn’t breathe a word about it to Olivia, or to anyone else. How could I? I’d made such a mess of things, not to mention a complete fool of myself and Zach. I’d never felt so stupid or humiliated.
The next afternoon, Zach’s best friend Gabe stopped by. I took a deep breat
h to steel my nerves and invited him in. “I thought you and Olivia were going to the movies this afternoon,” I said with feigned interest.
Gabe and I tolerated each other only out of respect for Olivia and Zach. We’d been natural enemies since the second grade when he wiped a booger on my arm. He never apologized, and I’d never gotten over it.
“We are, but I wanted to talk to you first.” He stood with his hands fisted against his waist, as though he didn’t know what to do with them, and stared down at me.
His plan to intimidate worked. Gabe was the offensive right tackle to Zach’s quarterback, and he took his protection duties seriously, on and off the field.
Gabe narrowed his eyes and then, taking a deep breath to fill his massive chest, yelled in his deep baritone voice, “How could you break up with Zach?”
I took an instinctive step back and held up a hand to stop him from advancing toward me or raising his voice again. “Whoa. Hold on there. My relationship with Zach is none of your business.”
“The hell it’s not,” he said, the veins in his neck straining under the building pressure of blood. “He’s my best friend.”
“Yes, I know he is. But even so,” I said, hoping that my voice sounded a lot calmer than I actually felt, “it’s none of your business.”
I wondered momentarily if Gabe ever pulled this kind of macho, bully crap with Olivia and, if so, how she managed to deal with it. I felt like I had a very tenuous reign on a wild bull waiting to charge the gate, and I was quickly losing my grip.
“Do you think I’m supposed to just sit back and watch you hurt Zach?” he said. “Answer me this: If I all of a sudden broke up with Olivia and you saw her hurting and crying her eyes out, wouldn’t you want to know what the hell was going on?”
I refrained from pointing out that it would probably be Olivia who broke up with Gabe, but he did have a point. If he broke up with Olivia, seemingly without reason, and she was miserable because of it, I’d want to rip him to shreds. I glanced nervously at Gabe’s hands, which were easily the size of my head. I had no doubt he could twist it right off my shoulders without even breaking a sweat.
“So Zach’s still crying?” I almost laughed, despite feeling sorry for him. I might have been the one doing the breaking up, but why was he being such a baby about this?
“Yeah, Blake. Do you know what it’s like seeing a quarterback cry? It’s all because of you!”
I crossed my arms over my chest. I no longer feared that Gabe might blow his top, but I was angry that he had pinned this all on me. “Now just you wait one darn minute! Haven’t you ever heard the saying it takes two to tango?”
Gabe made a face like I was talking nonsense, which I sort of was. It takes two to tango? I shook my head and took a deep breath, hoping to get it right this time. “What I mean is, when two people break up, the fault is mutual.”
“Mutual, my ass. What did Zach ever do to you?”
I opened my mouth to say exactly what Zach had done to me, and then closed it again. Well, he had me there. Zach had only ever treated me like the princess I so obviously wasn’t. He’d certainly never done anything to warrant a break-up.
I squared my shoulders and raised my chin to Gabe in defiance, though it did nothing to remedy the fact that I reached only to his shoulder. “Zach’s and my relationship is none of your business,” I repeated, “so I’d appreciate it if you left now. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
An angry flush of red crept up Gabe’s thick neck, flooding the broad plains of his face. “You’re such a bitch,” he said, turning at once for the door.
My mouth fell open. I’d gone seventeen years without anyone using that awful and demeaning word to describe my personality, and yet I’d been called it twice in less than a week, by two different guys. Granted, they probably weren’t in the best position to judge me, but it still hurt.
“And by the way,” he said before I could say anything in response, “your hair looks like shit.”
He stormed off and I slammed the door on his back. Then I raised a trembling hand to my curls. All at once my legs gave way and I sank to my knees.
That night I called Olivia. “So Gabe came over this afternoon and read me the riot act,” I said.
She laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. “No he didn’t. When?”
“Right before you guys left for the movies. Didn’t he say anything about it to you?”
“No. What was he so pissed about?”
“Zach. He called me the b-word for breaking up with him.”
She laughed again. “I’m sorry. You know how Gabe gets.”
“I do. And I don’t appreciate you laughing,” I said, more snippily than I’d intended. “You’re supposed to be on my side. What in the world do you see in an interfering jerk like him, anyway? He’s, like, the dumbest mistake you’ve ever made.”
Olivia huffed on the other end. “You know what, Blake? Bite me.”
The phone went dead.
Olivia and I avoided each other the entire next day, and I grew angrier with her by the minute. So when my phone finally rang that afternoon, I half expected it to be her finally calling to apologize. But it wasn’t.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier,” John said when I answered.
I put a hand to my chest in an effort to stop my skipping heart and then counted to three before I spoke. “John?” I said, as though I wasn’t exactly sure who was calling, even though I had recognized his voice immediately. “Oh, hi. You don’t have to apologize. You’ve got your own life to live, and I’ve got mine. No biggie.”
“Well, just so you know it’s not that I didn’t want to call you. Something a little unexpected came up.”
“Oh?” I said, with what I hoped sounded like vague interest.
“Remember I told you about Ian?”
I did remember. “He’s like your brother or best friend or something, right?”
“Right,” he said. “Anyway, Ian sort of showed up out of the blue. He’s staying with me. I don’t know for how long, but he’s here. And I have to, um, entertain him. So to speak.”
“Oh. That’s great,” I said, not really understanding. Something in John’s voice sounded off. I sat up a little straighter on the bed. “So when do I get to meet him?” I said, looking for any excuse to see John again.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
I was slightly taken aback, not to mention hurt. “Oh. Then hy did you call me?”
John’s sigh came through the phone like the sound of breath on a windowpane, and I felt a shiver run the length of my spine. “I only called to say that I’ve been thinking of you.”
My answering smile nearly split my face in two. “Really? So it’s not that you’re embarrassed for me to meet Ian?” I’d meant it as a joke, but John answered anyway.
“It’s not you who’s the embarrassment. Ian’s behavior can be a little . . . inappropriate at times.”
“Oh, come on. I’m sure he’s not that bad. If I won’t get to see you again until he leaves, then just let me meet him. I promise I can handle inappropriate.”
.John sighed again, this time in resignation. “Fine. If you’re up to it, there’s a concert on campus later this evening. He’s likely to be better behaved in a public place.”
I was dying to get out of the house, and a concert on campus sounded perfect. I’d been bored out of my mind for too long. Between my lackluster love life and unresolved tiff with my best friend, I suddenly had a lot of free time on my hands.
“Sounds like fun,” I said, trying not to come off as too eager. “What time do you want me to meet you there?”
“We’ll pick you up.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind driving,” I said, suddenly thinking of my parents. I really wasn’t ready for them to meet John or to try to explain who he even was to me. I wasn’t entirely sure I could answer that question myself.
“No, we’ll pick you up. Can you be ready by six?�
�
I glanced at the clock. Two hours was more than enough time. “Can do.”
“Great. I’ll see you then.”
I hung up the phone and perched on the edge of my bed, thinking. I didn’t need two hours to get ready, but I definitely needed time to figure out how to persuade my parents to make themselves scarce for the evening. The less they knew about John, the better.
At least for now.
October 27
I drove on auto-pilot, steering my car to the heart of downtown where I parked curbside. I sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, letting the car idle and vents blow hot air at high speed over my face as I debated about turning the car around and going home. Finally, I killed the engine and got out.
Not knowing how long I’d have to wait, or if I’d even have any luck, I fed the maximum amount of coins to the meter before making my way to the fountain in the center of the square. I knew exactly who I was looking for, and I could only hope I didn’t have to wait long before he showed himself.
Halloween was less than a week away. Strands of orange lights hung from the bare branches of trees standing sentinel up and down the square. The lights glowed brightly, even though it wasn’t quite noon. Fake cobwebs and giant animated spiders, cackling witches and ghosts dangling from invisible fishing line, haunted shop fronts. The air smelled strongly of mulled cider and hot, roasted peanuts, and I buried my nose in the collar of my coat to block the odor. People strolled through the square by themselves or in small groups to do their weekend shopping, and small children tugged on their parents’ hands, pulling them toward the maze of hay bales.
As I sat on the edge of the fountain, which had been turned off and drained with the coming of winter, I contemplated my relationship with John. Although I was sorry he’d gotten tangled up in Ian’s mess, thereby ensnaring me as well, I really wasn’t sorry that he had come into my life. He’d made me feel things I’d never felt during my time together with Zach, and I could never begrudge him that.
My anger simmered at the surface of my emotions, but I was angrier at Ian and the situation he had put me in than I was at John for not being completely honest with me in the first place. I supposed I couldn’t really blame him. After all, how did one go about telling the girl he’s involved with that he’s really a vampire?
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