Not If You Were the Last Vampire on Earth (4 page)

Chapter 11

Her

He likes the Four Seasons and Led Zepplin and Modest Mouse. He used to watch crime

dramas like
Law and Order
and
NCIS
. Once, he found a cop car and spun out around corners with the siren wailing in a small town in Oklahoma. He can roller skate. He went to a zoo during the worst of The Sweep and regretted it when he saw most of the animals dead in their habitats. Unable to escape, they slowly starved to death. Except the tiger. The tiger was missing and he kept looking over his shoulder as he ran for the entrance. He never knew his grandfather and his father left when he was eight. He grew up surrounded by three generations of women: his grandmother, his mom, and his twin sister.

I soaked up these details as he talked, winding phone cords around my fingers and playing

with the shoelaces of my boots or carving my name in someone’s coffee table. Everyday I called him after I finished my morning chores. It’s unspoken, but two o’clock has become our hour. He always answers and I’m never late in dialing. I became things again I am not able to be alone. I’m funny. He laughs a lot at my quips. I’m annoying. I’ve learned to recognize the puff of air that he huffs out when he’s irritated. I’m important. He always picks up by the second ring, indicating to me that he was next to the phone, waiting for the call. He scheduled me into his day. He made deliberate decisions to ensure we have our hour.

I am something to someone.

It felt good.

Chapter 12

Her

I slept with Brock Olsen after dating him for three months. He was a senior in high school and I was a junior. Everything about him put him out of my reach: he was the power forward on the basketball team. He had a barely there afro cropped short on his head, biceps that could bench my weight bulged his arms, and he had a goatee he teased school administration with. He kept it just long enough to irritate them but not so prominent that it needed to be shaved to meet school dress code. Girls swooned in the hallways and
I heart Brock
was scribbled inside more than a few lockers.

It was a classic, story book pairing in Chemistry class. I was a year ahead in math and science so I sat in on the senior classes. Alphabetical order destined us lab partners and by the beginning of summer, we were a thing. I was not as pretty as his former conquests but four months of my wit had me on his mind all day.

That’s what he told me.

“You’re on my mind all day. I’ve never met a chick as funny as you.”

Well, that’s basically poetry to a sixteen year old girl who’d never had a boyfriend. Landing Brock was like striking gold on the first dig. But he didn’t make his move right away. We lab partnered until the end of the school year and I left my junior year with a heavy heart knowing that our flirtatious friendship or whatever it was would never come to anything. He was leaving for college and I felt stupid for thinking that maybe we could have been together.

But that first day of summer, I got a text message from him asking to meet me at the mall. He bought me a sno cone. We shopped for shoes. We walked around in the small city park at the end of Restaurant Row which had scores of places to eat with their dining rooms spilling out onto patios between the park and the mall. He kissed me before helping me into my car and asked to see me again tomorrow.

For the rest of the summer, it was me and Brock. Mostly me and Brock. Maybe more like half the time it was me and Brock. I was one of those girls who didn’t drop all her friends because some popular boy batted eyes at her. Well, I hoped I was one of those friends. Truthfully, Brock had a lot of preparation to do before starting school. He had an out of state scholarship for basketball and he was still putting in a lot of practice time over the summer to keep his skills sharp.

On his last day in Tucson, about two weeks before I went back to school, Brock was in my room. My dad was at work and we had the day to ourselves. I was wearing a bracelet Brock had given to me for my birthday four days ago and I was feeling particularly smitten with him so I hadn’t minded when we left our usual perch on the living room couch to settle in my bedroom instead. Our make out session was spiraling quickly and Brock’s hand had found its way into my underwear. I felt one of his long fingers brush inside me and I pulled away from our kiss in shock.

“I brought something, it’s okay,” he murmured, kissing my neck. His middle finger joined in and I pushed away again.

He pulled back at little and looked at me curiously. “You know I love you, right?” he asked. “I hate that I have to leave tomorrow.” He smiled sweetly and planted a small kiss on my lips. “I want a piece of you to keep with me while we’re apart.”

Well, fuck.

Not even five minutes later, Brock had a condom on and was pumping away inside me. It hurt but I closed my eyes and bit down. He loved me. The realization made my chest warm and I soaked in this knowledge.

“You okay, baby?” he asked breathlessly and I opened my eyes and nodded. He leaned forward and kissed me while he moved. When he came he squinted his eyes shut and let out a groan before rolling onto his back.

“So are we going to stay together while you’re away at school?” I asked, propping myself up on one elbow to look at him.

He smiled. “Yeah, sure. I mean, it’ll be busy. Basketball practice is on weekends too so I won’t even be able to come back for a while.” He rubbed my cheek as my face fell. “It doesn’t mean that’s it, baby. Let’s make a homecoming date right now. I would have settled in at school by then. I’ll take you to your senior homecoming and we can see where things are at. Who knows? You might already be madly in love with someone else by then.”

My expression was one of horror. “I’m not going to date someone else while we’re together!”

“Well, neither am I. I heard the coach is a beast, there’ll be no time for dating. Don’t look like that. Homecoming, okay? You and me.”

I smiled tentatively. “Okay. It’s a date.”

He kissed me again, deeper, sealing it. “I have to go now. I haven’t finished packing.”

“Will you call me later?”

“Yeah. You bet.”

He did call me later, but the calls got fewer and further between until they were just random texts.
Practice was brutal today!
or
Studying, can’t talk now!

By the time mid-October rolled around, I hadn’t heard from him in three weeks. I knew we were done. We were done the day he left. His was only half present for the phone calls and he talked around homecoming plans until I didn’t hear from him altogether. I accepted this and went with a friend of mine, Mike. Mike was in love with a girl on newspaper who had a real boyfriend, not like mine. They had been dating all four years of high school. In other words, Mike didn’t have a shot in hell.

“We’ll make a fine pair,” he’d said with an amusing lilt to his voice. “Two sad people on a pity date.”

“There’s no one I’d rather pity date than you,” I’d returned with my own smile.

The dance was fun despite our disappointments. I’d let go of Brock’s rejection and just attended and took it for what it was. No expectations, no remorse. I danced. I drank crappy punch. I squealed over my friends’ dresses and accompanied this one or that one to the bathroom when wardrobe malfunctions demanded it.

On one such occasion, coming out of the bathroom, I was greeted by Mike in the hallway.

“This dance blows,” he said. “Let’s jet. We can go get some pancakes or I heard Kurt’s having a bonfire at his uncle’s place.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What? No, I’m having fun. I thought you were too.”

“Well I’m not,” he responded flatly.

“It’s not enough half over, Mike. Come on, it’s our last homecoming. We’ll get pancakes after and Kurt’s bonfires go on all night. We knew we were going to be pitiful,” I finished with a grin, grabbing his hand but he didn’t return my smile. He tugged on me.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I shook my head. Something in his expression scared me. He looked concerned. There was something he was hiding from me. “No.”

I pulled my hand away and went back into the gym.

“Please!” he said behind me, moving to catch up. I felt his hands on my shoulders but they wrapped around me into a hug when he realized it was too late. I’d seen.

Brock was here. And he was dancing with Rebecca Carter. And they were kissing.

I could barely breathe.

Wonderful World
by Louis Armstrong was blaring. I loved this song. It was one of my favorite songs. His voice was so raspy. The melody was so entrancing. The love beating inside the swells of music was almost tangible.

That’s what was playing as I watched Brock smile and kiss and dance with Rebecca. Another girl standing close to us saw us watching the spectacle and sighed.

“He still looks amazing, doesn’t he?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

“Rebecca’s so lucky. She got to date him all summer and everyone told her he’d forget her when he went off to school but he didn’t. He comes home almost every other weekend and he didn’t turn his nose down at a high school dance. Just to make her happy.”

I turned to face her. Red curly hair, freckles, a pudgy face. “All summer?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. They were at the pool all the time. That’s where she lifeguarded.”

“Shut. Up,” Mike snapped and the girl’s face grew angry at the sudden outburst. She turned and stalked off.

All summer. It made sense now. I only saw Brock sometimes. After that first date at the mall, our meetings were usually walks around my neighborhood or light hearted hoops at a pavilion not too far away. He never loved me.

I turned to Mike.

“I need pancakes.”

He nodded and we left without saying goodbye to any of our friends. I didn’t really need pancakes. What I needed was to get Louis Armstrong’s voice out of my head. This was not a wonderful world. It was a shitty world. What I didn’t know was just how shitty the world was going to get.

What I did know was from that point on, I hated that song.

*       *       *

“Brock sucks,” he said to me over the phone. Fast forward five years and I’m on a phone in a house I like to frequent because the front door and the downstairs backdoor are aligned in such a way that a nice breeze tickles my skin as it passes through the home. That, and the previous owners have a phone that will let me talk to my phone buddy.

Who just got me to talk about my first time. How does he do that?

“Enough about Brock. Your turn. I’m asking you the same question.”

“Okay, but I just wanted to establish that not all guys are like the specimen of scum you just described.”

“Established. Go.”

“Mine’s not much of a story. I was seventeen like you. We were hanging out at a friend’s house. His parents weren’t home.”

“Yeah, that’s a pretty crappy account.”

He sighed. “Her name was Melinda. We had math together. She was nice. We never officially went out or anything. Like I said, not much of a story.”

“Did you love her?”

“No. And I didn’t pretend to, either. She and I both knew where the other stood. It was just the right place at the right time.”

I rolled my eyes. “How romantic.”

“Okay, Judge Judy. It was what it was. We had fun.”

“You can’t change my nickname mid-convo.”

“Sorry,
Malificent.
”

He kept emphasizing the name. He booed when I told him our aliases for the day. He didn’t like saying so many syllables and he didn’t like that his counterpart was another random Disney villain.

“They barely match,” he complained. “That’s a thin relationship between the aliases. And Jafar has an eerily long face.”

But right now I didn’t care that he wasn’t fond of them. I’d poured my heart out about my first time including everything I felt about it and his recollection in return could fit inside a fortune cookie.
Boy meets girl in math. Boy nails girl. Fun had.

“Have you
ever
been in love?” I muttered. The question was a jab at his nonchalance but I was surprised when his breathing grew still. A tiny jolt shocked my chest and caused my heart rate to pick up speed. I had been doodling trees on a notepad, but my hand paused at his reaction to my question. Which he still hadn’t answered. I waited with prickling skin.

“Yes,” he finally said. “In college, I dated a girl named Jade.”

My chest pinched tight and I released a slow breath. Why had that stung? What did I think he was going to say?

I cleared my throat and resumed my doodling. I was the picture of casualness. “What happened with her?” I asked then winced at my tone. Maybe she’d died in The Sweep. He was in school when the epidemic took a turn for the worst.

“A simple case of unrequited love. I loved her. She didn’t love me back.”

“Jade sucks,” I offered and he laughed quietly.

“Thank you, my ever loyal cheerleader. But she actually was a very important part of my life. And it did suck that she didn’t love me, but it wasn’t her fault.”

I grunted. “Maybe. But it doesn’t make sense, so I still say it’s her bad.”

“What do you mean?” His tone was serious. Fuck. I didn’t mean to give away that thought. What
did
I even mean? My response had been automatic. I tried to sort through my mind to explain carefully but decided to go with raw honesty.

“You just seem like the kind of a guy that a girl does cartwheels over when she stumbles upon you. I don’t know. You listen really well. And I can tell because you don’t come back with a canned answer when I talk for a while. And you’re funny. I’m sitting in a city decimated by disease and I’m pretty sure I’m the only living thing with thumbs. There’s nothing happy here and yet I’ve smiled and laughed more in the past six weeks than I have in the past six years. Jesus fucking Christ, you better get rid of whatever bloated grin you have on your face right now.”

“I love talking to you, too. You are the best part of my day. Everyday.”

“That’s not what I said,” I mumbled, my heart speeding up again.

“But that’s what I heard,” he replied and I could
hear
his grin. 

“I have to go now.”

“Uh huh.”

“I do. I have stuff to do.”

“Okay.”

“So…I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I hated the flustered feeling I had.