42nd & Lex (8 page)

Lucan wraps his arm around my waist and
pulls me closer. I melt as I look up into his eyes. The elevator gives another
lurch and I instinctively put my hands on his chest to steady myself. The
current flowing between us is soft and warm, pulling us together. The ancient
elevator creaks to a stop and shutters a bit. Neither of us makes a move to
disengage, our eyes and bodies locked together in the tiny space. I want him to
kiss me again but I quickly hide the thought behind something else.

A mix of emotions seems to play over his
face and he reaches over to pull the grate open. He extends his arm to usher me
out of the car and into another ornate lobby. This time the lighting is bright
and inviting. Here the frescos and marble inlaid floors have been painstakingly
restored. In the center of the room is a living area with a large white leather
couch and two matching chairs. An equally large glass and chrome coffee table sits
in the center on top of a fuzzy white rug. The distinctive triangular windows
of the Chrysler’s upper floors give way to a brilliant view of the City below. The
entire floor is largely open like any New York loft. In a far corner, there is
a large four-poster bed. A fluffy white comforter and a plethora of white
pillows complete the effect. 

“Would you like to sit down?” He motions
towards the couch in the center of the room. 

“Okay.” I am looking up at the inlaid wood
on the ceiling near the entrance and trying to walk at the same time. I catch myself
just before my ankles have a different idea. “Would you mind if I took off my
shoes? I usually don’t wear these kinds of things and my feet have had enough.”
  

He smiles at me. “They are ridiculous.”   

Once I am on the terra firma of the couch, I
unfasten the buckles and sigh at the relief of being flatfooted again. Eight
hundred dollars does not buy comfort apparently.   

“Can I offer you some more wine?” He is
behind me and I turn to see a rather large kitchen in the corner opposite the
bed. It could be straight out of a Food Network cooking show. I tolerate wine
well enough on occasion—except for maybe on Sunday night—but what I have really
wanted all night is a beer. “Okay, thank you,” I answer to be polite.

 Lucan shakes his head before heading to the
Sub Zero fridge. In seconds, he’s back with two Coors Lights. This mind reading
thing isn’t so bad after all, finally a man that knows your every desire. That
makes us both laugh. He twists the tops off and hands me one. I am trying not
to think of anything else I might desire of him.

“This is the most amazing place I have ever
seen, I love it.” I walk towards the windows spanning the south wall and Lucan
follows me. The surrounding buildings mostly obscure the view from my office on
the 30th floor, but from here, the city spreads out below like a field of
stars. I could enjoy this forever.

“Abri, I need to tell you something now.” His
face looks tortured. Oh God, he heard the forever thing and now he thinks I’m a
crazy bitch that’s ready to move in and start a family. I can’t even let myself
go there, not after one date. I feel there is something there but it’s too soon
to know what. I take a long draw on my beer.   

“Oh Lucan—er, Luke, I just mean that I could
look at the city like this forever, not specifically herein your apartment. I
get that we’ve just met—” He puts his finger to my lips to stop my incessant
rambling.

“Shh, I’m ready to tell you,” he whispers
and with that I hear him speak a word in my mind. 

Vampire
.

I step back, removing his finger from my
lips. “Okay, I think I’ve officially had too much to drink. I know better than
to mix my alcohols. I think I’m starting to hear things.” I rub my temples
trying to replay the last few seconds. “You didn’t just do that thought
exchange thing to me, did you?”

He nods his head once and then turns away
from me. My brain begins firing off a string of questions that neither one of
us can comprehend. My subconscious fight or flight reflex takes over and
propels me backwards, away from Lucan and towards the creaky elevator across
the room. The magnetic pull between our bodies that I’ve noticed and tried to
ignore all night is stretching thin and it hurts. I find myself rubbing my
chest. A voice in my head tells me to stay. It’s my own voice, not his.

“I need a minute. Can I use your bathroom?”
My voice is smaller than I expect.

He says nothing, still facing away from me,
and points to the far corner of the room next to the monstrous kitchen. My bare
feet echo in the silence as I pad across the cold marble floor. I shut the door
behind me and slide to the floor. If it had had a lock, I would have thrown it.
What in the hell have I gotten myself into? 

Vampire. 

Vampire?

I will be the first to admit there are
things in this world I do not understand, but this has taken the proverbial
cake. Vampires cannot be real. Otherwise, I have to suspend everything I
believe in, give up on my definition of reality. Suspension of belief is not
something I am used to or even capable of, really. I have promised to trust
him, but even trust had its boundaries. That voice in my head reminds me that
I’ve already taken the mind reading and the electric shock in stride.  

I do a quick mental check down of what I
know about vampires versus Lucan O’Reilly. Lucan came to my office during the
daylight and stood in front of a brightly lit window without bursting into
flames. Hell, his apartment is more than half windows. He ate dinner and
dessert with me tonight, not blood. We even used silver utensils and I am
pretty sure there was some garlic in the mashed potatoes. There is a giant bed
in the corner of the room, not a coffin. I saw his reflection along with mine
in the mirrors outside the restaurant. I haven’t noticed any crucifixes but
that is probably not enough to be a determining factor. There is not a single
match. Well, besides the moving really fast thing and the mind reading thing. And
the fact that he just told me he was a vampire. Then again, that is probably
enough when you thing about it.  

This is ridiculous. I am doing a mental
check-down of a real person against popular fiction. Fiction by definition is not
real. Lucan is real.  

My chest aches again and I am overwhelmed. My
mom always told me to trust my gut. Neither she nor it have every steered me
wrong. I think about the consequences of leaving now: how my life will continue
forward, playing out on whatever tedious and uninteresting pathway I was headed
down and that thought sickens me. This is where I am meant to be.

Then I realize I am here; I have found that
little 3a.m. place in my soul I’ve been searching for. A deep breath centers me.
I am here and everything is clear. Guess I didn’t even need to be that drunk to
get here, I muse.

I wanted to  deny it until now, but
something had come alive in me yesterday morning—something that had kept me up
all night and was now pushing me towards Lucan. That something was my destiny
switching tracks like a train at a crossroads. Lucan was now my path. 

I am running on gut instinct now. I stand up
and check myself in the mirror. I don’t look crazy, but I must be. If I am
going to stay and trust that this man is for real—and it’s not just that we are
both seriously imbalanced—it is time for some explanations. Real ones based in
fact and not fiction. With a deep breath, I open the door and look around the
cavernous apartment. He is no longer standing by the windows.   

“Luke?” No answer. I walk back towards the
windows and look out. “Luke! Lucan!” I scream. He is perched on the ledge that
makes up the lowest curve of the building’s steel spire. How did he get out
there? I tap on the glass and he turns towards me, a look of shock on his face.

“Dammit Lucan! Get back in here!” I motion to
him wildly.

He walks towards me, shoulders hunched and
hands in his pockets. The moon casts a halo around his body like the sun had in
my office earlier that day. He looks fragile and unsure. He points towards the
last window to my left and I turn to look, maybe there is an opening there. There
is no way I am joining him on his suicidal perch. There is nothing there but
plate glass triangular windows. When I look back again, he is gone. Panic
overtakes me and I spin around looking for another way out. I smack full speed
into his chest.

“What are you doing, trying to kill me?” I
scream, shoving him off me. 

He springs back almost falling over the
couch. Which is in the middle of the room at least twenty feet away. I know it
is not from the force of my shove that he has traveled that far.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I mean sitting
out there on the friggin’ building ledge, God knows how many feet up, giving me
a heart attack. You could fall. Or maybe you can’t, but still! It scared the
crap out of me. What were you doing out there?” My voice pings off the marble
floors and high ceilings.

“I was giving you some privacy. The building
blocks my ability to hear you, remember.”

“Oh,”
I sigh in relief. My voice drops a few decibels. “Thank you. That was
considerate.”

“And
I didn’t want to see you when you left.” A tear is forming at the corner of his
eye. I half expect it to be red. Vampires should cry blood, right.

“Left? Lucan, we’ve known each other for a
grand total of twelve hours.” I am nervous to continue and can’t believe what I
am about to say, but want him to hear me say this and not just think it. “But I
feel like I’ve known you for all eternity, like I am supposed to be here with
you. I’m not sure I could leave if I tried. But I need to know, I need for you
to explain,
verbally
, what is going on here. Tell me this is real and
I’m not really at home passed out from too many drinks at happy hour.”  

Without thinking, I reach out and grab both
of his hands in mine. The shock proves to be near lethal this time and I
collapse into his chest, my head resting just below the upward curve of his
neck. I am breathing but other than that, there is no report to my brain from
any of my bodily systems. I hear Lucan curse just as I black out.

It takes me a second to realize I am in
Lucan’s black four-poster bed. The clock on the bedside table reads just after
one so I’ve been out over an hour. I am still wearing my green dress but Lucan
has managed to put his blue dress shirt on me. Several buttons are haphazardly fastened
in the middle. It smells like him, even better than the jacket. Lucan is sitting
in one of the living room chairs in his tight white undershirt watching me. I can
feel the uneasiness pouring off him and it urges me out of the bed and to his
side.

“Hey,” I say shyly. “What happened?”

“You passed out.” He smiles a tiny smile. He
is searching my face and my brain for my next reaction. “I figured you’d be
more comfortable in the bed.”

 “Yes, thank you. Sorry I passed out. It
must have been all that wine.” My joke is a feeble attempt at gauging his
feelings. “Let’s try this again,” I say holding my hands out to him.

“You
should sit down first. Do you need anything? Water? Food?”

“No.
I’m good.” I sit down on the couch a few feet from him and pull my feet underneath
me. The blue dress shirt rides up my neck and I can’t help but inhale the new
wave of cologne that hits my nose. He notices and shifts his body towards me
ever so slightly. “Wait. Before you make me pass out again I think I deserve to
know what it is you’re doing to me with that.”

“True
enough. If you pass out again what would I do with you?”

My
brows furrow in response. I can think of a few things.

“I’ll
start from the beginning. I was born in Ireland in 1479. My parents were feudal
farmers. I lived there until I was twenty-five and then, bored of farming, I
set out for Italy to become a painter. The Renaissance was in full swing then. But
I was horrible and lost my apprenticeship within weeks. I began working in a
café to earn enough money to eat and put a roof over my head. One night I was
working alone and a man came in just before closing. He ordered a drink and sat
at down. He was dressed in the high fashion of the day and carried a cane with
a golden crest on the top. He finished his drink and I pleaded with him to
leave but my Italian was even worse than my paintings.

“I
finished mopping the café and went to the back alley to toss the dirty water. I
was hoping my absence would give him the hint to leave, but I was wrong. While
I was in the alley, someone attacked me from behind. When I turned around it
was the man from the café. He grabbed my arms and wrenched me down to the
ground. It felt like I had been struck by lightning before I blacked out.

“I
woke up several days later in an abandoned building. There was a woman standing
over me. Bianca. She told me what had happened to me, what I had become. I had
apparently been sick the entire time I was unconscious as my mortal body died
and the vampire venom took over. I had bruises all over my body where the last
of my blood had pooled and my eyes were sunken into dark circles. They were no
longer blue but dark red.” Lucan stops. “Abri?”

“It
felt like a lightning strike and you blacked out?”

“Oh fuck. Abri, I didn’t. I promise.” My hand
goes instinctively up to my neck to check for bite marks. The last thing I
remember before passing out is my face being very close to his neck, in perfect
alignment for biting. “Do you honestly think I would do that?”

“Why else would you bring me here and knock
me out?” A tiny bit of fear was now working its way to the surface. I had been
so stupid before, swayed by a pretty face and the fallacy of fate.

“Uh, coming here was your idea, love.” He has
me there. “Rest assured Abri, you are as human now as when you woke up this
morning. Now you told me I had a lot of explaining to do, do you want me to
finish?”