Then, halfway through her pint…the smell. Woodsy BO Guy was right outside her front door.
Knock. Knock.
She wanted to hide. Her canines descended on their own accord. They’d never done that before. Apparently, from what she’d heard, it happened whenever a vampire was hungry or turned on, but Celia drank enough to never be hungry and her sex drive was somewhere in the negatives. Yet, there they were; the damn pokey things had escaped their caves. She put her hand to her mouth.
Then, his voice: “Mermaid? Are you alive?”
Oh. My. God.
She sprang to her feet and dropped the bag of blood on her bedroom floor. Sudden panic made her canines retract, at least, but still, she couldn’t answer the door, not with him out there, smelling like that.
“Mermaid?” He continued to knock.
Celia lay down on the floor as if the man could see through walls.
“I’ll call the police if you don’t answer. Tell them I smell a dead body.”
Just what Celia was scared of, the police showing up on suspicion of a dead body only to discover blood all over the carpet. She stood and found her robe. She draped herself in oversized plush and took a long sip from her spilled blood bag before slowly approaching the front door.
She leaned her nose against it. “I’m fine. Thanks,” she said.
She could feel him out there, the heat of his ear against her door in the shape of a seashell. “I need visual evidence.”
“No, really, I’m fine.” She scratched at the door like a dog wanting to be let out. His smell—oh, goodness, that smell. Celia was warm and out of breath.
“Come on, Mermaid. I won’t leave until you open the door.”
She opened the door just a little so he could see the side of her face.
“Hey,” he said. The scent of weed from the night before had covered most of his normal smell—that and Celia’s panic. In that moment, his smell attacked her full bore.
Once, when she was going through a really fat phase, Celia gave up pizza for a week. Then, her stupid parents ordered delivery, and she almost tackled the pizza guy because that pizza smelled so good. That was how she felt, like tackling tall, dark Woodsy.
“So. I saw you naked last night.”
She closed her eyes. “Yeah.”
“I brought your clothes.” He held up her discarded ensemble, neatly folded in his huge hands.
Celia reached through the three inches of open door and tried to pull her clothes inside. She had to open the door a little more to get her jeans.
“I’m Ian,” he said. “I just moved in.”
Don’t stare at his neck. Don’t stare at his neck.
It was a really nice neck—long and thin. His Adam’s apple bounced when he swallowed. Shit, she was staring at his neck.
“Celia.” She blinked. “I’m Celia.”
“It’s really dangerous to swim alone at night. You know that, right?”
“I was drunk.”
“Yeah, well, don’t do it again, okay?”
She chewed her bottom lip. “I like swimming at night.”
Ian glanced toward the sea. He had nice cheekbones and a freckle on his throat. Don’t stare at his neck. “How about next time you take a dive, you come get me so I can make sure you’re safe.”
She felt tipsy on his smell and his sympathy. She’d known the guy for five minutes—his scent a bit longer—and he already wanted to keep her safe. Celia had known her parents for twenty years before they died, and the only thing they worried about was her cholesterol.
The most mystifying thing: Ian was way out of Celia’s league. He was surfer boy cute—tall, lean, spindly. His hair was wild, like a nest of black baby snakes, wiggling in the sea breeze. In the fake illumination of their nighttime apartments, she couldn’t really see the color of his eyes, but they were big and crinkled on the edges, permanently amused.
And he was worried about her.
All this put together made Celia’s canines descend again. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Okay, thanks.” When her fangs came out, she spoke with a slight lisp, so “thanks” really just sounded like a hiss.
She closed the door in his face, locked it, and raced to her bedroom to finish her bag of A-positive.
What exactly did Celia know about Ian?
He really liked to ride his bike. He took the sleek, black beauty out on a two-hour ride the following day. He came back soaked in sweat and with more freckles than when he left.
He had a scar on his right leg in the shape of, strangely, a bite mark.
He had a mother who was alive. He talked to her on the phone on the front porch outside. He laughed a lot. He touched his mouth when he talked. Celia found this to be very distracting.
Finally, if she thought he looked good in the night-light, well. She had trouble swallowing when she saw him in the sun. And her stupid fangs wouldn’t stay in her head.
How did she see Ian in the sun? Vampires obviously explode and die in sunlight, but Celia was sneaky. By destroying an old black t-shirt (Fraggle Rock; a gift from her mom who had no idea Celia didn’t like Fraggle Rock), Celia made an ingenious facial covering with small holes for her eyes. She then donned a pair of huge, ugly eighties sunglasses she bought thinking they looked cool. The front windows of her apartment were covered in thick, plastic blinds. She cut a little rectangle in the middle of one of them, and she stood there all day when she should have been sleeping.
She assumed Ian must work from home. Or he was unemployed. Maybe he was on vacation? He didn’t go anywhere, except for the bike ride. She wasn’t sure if he owned a car.
He did glance at her door once, when he got back from his ride. By then, he was drenched in sweat. He had a blue bandana on his head to keep sweaty curls out of his eyes—and his eyes were blue. Not like Imogene’s, though. Imogene’s eyes were dark blue, kind of like her personality. Ian’s matched Celia’s beach cruiser—powder blue. He looked at her door that day like he was thinking about knocking, but he didn’t. He just walked past and drool dripped down Celia’s chin onto the floor.
Dr. Savage asked if Celia had met anyone, made any friends, since their last session. Celia didn’t want to talk about the Imogene debacle. She hadn’t heard from that crazy vamp since she’d hurled on her shirt. Celia decided to talk about Ian instead.
“His hair is kind of fluffy but not exactly like a clown wig. It’s just…it looks…it’s black but I think it has some red in it. I just want to squeeze it.” She moved her hand in the cold air of Dr. Savage’s office but stopped when she realized it looked like she was squeezing a breast.
“So you’ve been talking to this Ian fellow?”
“No, no. Just once.” She pulled at her yoga pants. “He touches his lips a lot. I don’t know why. Like when he’s talking, he’ll just reach up and touch his mouth.”
“Do you want to touch his mouth?”
“What? No.” Yes.
Dr. Savage leaned forward in her slick leather chair. “Are you stalking him, Celia?”
“No.” She fumbled and almost knocked over her cold cup of tea. “I just like the way he smells.”
“Maybe you should ask him on a date.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Celia.” Dr. Savage sighed. “Sexual relations are a good gateway to discussing your first bite.”
The leather couch made its usual embarrassing fart sound when Celia moved. “I don’t want to have sex with my neighbor.”
“His name is Ian.”
Celia crossed her arms and took the pose she used to take when her dad told her to stop eating so much ice cream. She squirmed. The couch farted.
Dr. Savage put down her pen and paper and put on her therapist smile. She had no wrinkles, none. “I understand this is a very difficult time for you. The first few months are hard on most vampires. It’s important to get beyond Danny and make your first human connection. It’s important to take your first bite. It’s part of moving on.”
&nb
sp; Moving on from what, Celia wondered.
Before she left, Dr. Savage gave her an assignment. She was supposed to keep journaling and talk to Ian—like have an actual conversation that involved more than grunts and cowering behind her front door.
In response to this, for days, Celia successfully avoided leaving her house except to go to work—and even then, only when she was sure Ian was not outside.
A couple nights later, she did a careful Ian check before she left for Happy Gas. She leaned against her kitchen wall, and yes, good, he was in what she assumed was his bedroom, if his apartment layout was the same as hers. His scent was close enough for her to know he was home but far enough away to know he wasn’t lingering by the front door, waiting for her to walk outside.
She exited her living space and tiptoed down the porch so as to not disturb Heidi and her sonar hearing. The last thing Celia needed was her landlady bellowing about the most recent episode of True Crime and how some husband somewhere killed his wife with something.
Ian’s bike was parked next to hers, and she touched it, once, with the tip of her finger on the handlebar. Then, disaster struck. She noticed the back tire of her beach cruiser was flat and lifeless, much like her hair. She sighed and tiptoed back to her apartment.
Then, she heard Dr. Savage in her head: Talk to Ian. Talk to Ian. Talk to Ian.
Ian would have a bike pump, wouldn’t he?
Celia paced back and forth outside his apartment. Unaware of impending doom, she paced…until his front door opened. She could hear the waves at the beach, but she felt like a wave of Ian washed over her. His scent wrapped her up like a too-warm and mildly suffocating blanket.
He wore a light blue button-down and khaki shorts. His feet were bare. Celia couldn’t look at his face, because his face was near his neck and she was not supposed to stare at necks.
“Were you just creeping around outside my apartment?”
“Uh…do you have a bike pump?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Got a flat?”
Celia giggled.
“Hang on.” He turned around which gave Celia the chance to notice his sparsely decorated living space. There were unpacked cardboard boxes on the floor and one framed photo she could see of Ian and three other guys who looked a lot like him. Ian didn’t have a TV, which Celia thought was weird. But then, she backed up suddenly.
His whole house…
Smelled. Like. Him.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
When Ian stepped outside, he had no respect for personal space, which made Celia take rapid, shuffling steps backwards until her butt ran into the balcony handrail. He gestured toward their bikes, and Celia walked fast.
He glanced at the orange Happy Gas apron she wore over jeans and a white tee. “So night shift, huh? I was beginning to think you were a vampire.”
Celia laughed until she almost choked.
Ian knelt next to her bike and attached the pump to her back tire. “Where do you work?”
“A gas station by Dry Dock Café.”
He stood up. He made her feel like an oompa-loompa. “I have no idea where that is. I’m still kind of lost here.”
“Oh, so you’re new. To Admiral Key?”
“Yeah, I just moved here from Panama City.”
“You have nice hair,” Celia said.
He smiled.
Beautiful. Brings out his freckles “Oh, God,” she whispered.
“Have you lived here long?” He used his bare foot to pump air into her tire. She had the weirdest yearning to suck his toes.
“Who?”
“You. Have you lived here long?”
“Oh, well, you know.”
He paused in pumping and looked at her with a half-smirk. “I like your style, Celia.”
“Huh?” He couldn’t be talking about her clothes.
“People are so concerned about what everyone else thinks. You’re not afraid to be really awkward. I dig it.”
Celia laughed for real—not the laugh she used for customers or pretty girls who annoyed her. Lit by the porch light behind them, she could make out every centimeter of Ian’s face, from the powder blue eyeballs to tan skin to light salmon-colored lips that looked soft.
“Um…” he said.
She’d been gawking. She saw blood rush to his face in a pink haze.
“What do you do?” She sounded like she’d sucked a hot air balloon full of helium.
“I’m a gamer. Legitimately. Companies pay me to test new computer games. Find flaws, hidden clues. You know?”
Celia was a blank slate.
“Boring stuff if you’re not a geek.” He smiled again. She was beginning to notice Ian smiled a lot.
“I owned a computer once,” she said.
He laughed. His laugh was like his voice, only deeper. He cleared his throat. He leaned over and squeezed her back tire before bending down to unhook the pump. “You’re good to go.” Ian looked up at her. “Is it safe for you to ride at night?”
“You seem really concerned with my safety.”
“You seem like you do some kind of dumb things.”
Celia thought of Danny. “Yeah.” She leaned down to unlock her bike and fumbled over the combination twice before getting it right. Before she could dislodge her bike from the rack, Ian grabbed it and set it down on the sidewalk.
“Thanks,” she muttered, climbing on.
“Do you work tomorrow night?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What about the night after that?”
“No.”
“Cool.” He put his hands in his pockets and walked back toward their apartments. “See ya later, Mermaid.”
Celia cringed at the memory.
When she got to work, Ralph looked up from his surf magazine. A picture of a guy with a big, turquoise wave wrapped around him was on the cover. “You’re totally late, Celia. My mom is gonna be pissed.” He slapped the magazine closed and walked right at her. Celia had to scoot to the side to avoid being run over by the pissed-off teen who waved his magazine in her face as he left. “Your hair looks like a rat’s nest. Haven’t you heard of a brush?” The bell clonk-clonked above his sun-bleached, pointed head.
She ended up behind the counter where she continued with her research—the angsty love path of Bella and Edward Cullen. She was a little turned off by the whole glittering in the sun thing. She thought it was totally unrealistic. Celia knew if she stepped into the sun, she would go up like a piece of hair to a match—probably smell the same, too. She hoped the author realized she’d given a completely fabricated account of vampire life. Talk about misinformation.
Celia didn’t have any customers. It happened sometimes. Then, at 3 a.m., the door clonk-clonked and then (clomp-clomp), Imogene walked in wearing an INXS t-shirt and a leather jacket, with the white earbuds in her head, tape player on her hip. Celia put her book down immediately.
“I’m sorry I threw up on you.”
Imogene sighed from behind her red sunglasses and walked back to the coolers. She again passed up the beer and this time went for strawberry-banana juice. She put the juice between the two of them and tilted her sunglasses up.
Celia continued, “I didn’t even know vampires could throw up.”
“Only the really new ones,” Imogene said, then pulled out her earbuds and sniffed the air. She latched onto Celia with her hand in her hair and almost dragged her across the counter. She sniffed some more. “What is that?”
“Huh?” She teetered on the tops of her toes.
Imogene stuck her nose right against her head and snarfed a mouthful of air. “That smell. It’s the same smell that was in your house the other night.” She took a long, deep breath. “It’s fucking fantastic.”
Celia knew Imogene smelled Ian. When Celia thought of Ian, two words came to mind—fucking fantastic. He was beginning to feel like her secret. Sure, she’d told Dr. Savage about him, but that was in doctor-patient confidence. Celia didn’t need to worry about her th
erapist sniffing around her place. But Imogene, well.
She sniffed at Celia’s ear like she wanted to smell her brain. “It’s not that A-positive shit you’ve been drinking. A-positive doesn’t smell like this.”
“Um, can you…” She twisted her head in Imogene’s hand, and Imogene let go.
She tapped her chipped fingernails on the gas station counter. “I’m sorry I bitched you out the other night. It wasn’t your fault you threw up.”
“What was that pill you gave me?”
“Klonopin,” Imogene said. “Anxiety pill, but you’re not supposed to drink on it.”
“Then, why’d you give it to me?”
Imogene shrugged her thin shoulders. “You looked like you were flipping out. Anyway, you wanna hang out again at your place?”
“Are you just using me for my blood dealer?” Celia asked.
“Maybe a little.”
Celia shrugged. “Okay.”
Imogene put her sunglasses back on her face, which Celia was beginning to notice was really, really pretty when she wasn’t sneering. “Cool.” She pushed her strawberry-banana juice closer. “Why don’t you guys sell rum? You should really sell rum. It’s so much easier than having to steal it from bars.”
“You steal liquor from bars?” Celia rang her up.
“I steal things all the time.” Imogene nodded. “I once stole a statue of the Virgin Mary from a Catholic church.” She considered this for a moment. “I think it’s still in my house somewhere.”
“Oh.” Talk about a one-way ticket to Hell.
“So when can I stop by your place again?”
“Well, Tuesday, I guess,” Celia said.
Imogene turned to leave but stopped in the doorway. “Can you get something other than A-positive?”
Celia wanted to tell her no—she’d recently seen Steve and bought her weekly allowance—but she also wanted Imogene to like her, so she said, “Sure.”
“You’re all right, Merk.” She waved her hand in the air. The door clonked in honor of her exit.
Chapter Four
Bite Somebody Page 3
