The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire (17 page)

Jordan rolled her eyes. “I'll take a vanilla latte, extra whip. Thanks, Geeg.”

“Marty?” I turned around to find Marty standing
right
behind me. I jumped and stepped away. “Yipe!”

“I'll come with you,” he said.

“Oh, no, that's OK,” I told him. “I don't mind going on my own.”

“Nonsense! I could use some fresh air. Besides, I'd hate for you to walk around the block in the dark on your own.”

Before I could object more, he exited the office and was halfway down the hall.

“Oh . . . OK.” I sighed. Jordan shot me an apologetic look. I drew my thumb across my throat in the international sign of “Imma cut you!”

Retrieving my purse, I caught up to Marty, who was walking past Margaret's desk. She gave him a thumbs-up and a big grin, which was weird.

We walked out of the building and crossed the Council parking lot. I seriously hoped Nik didn't accost me in the lot, because that would be difficult to explain to Marty. Then again, it was going to be difficult to explain my coffee run with Marty to Nik. So maybe it was better that we didn't see Nik either way.

We managed to order the coffee without incident. I refused to order Aaron's liquid crack, but I did get him decaf and one of the shop's saucer-sized chocolate chip cookies to make up for it. I found myself antsy to grab the coffees and get back to the office. For some reason, being alone with Marty made me uncomfortable, even in the cozy, coffee-scented interior of Perk-U-Later. He wasn't talking. He was just staring at me intently, as if waiting for me to tell him something. I sincerely hoped it wasn't a performance evaluation for the job he'd done so far, because that was not going to end well for him.

Cup carriers in hand, we walked back to the office in awkward silence for a few minutes. “Nice night,” I commented, reaching for any topic of conversation. “I hope it cools off soon. It seems the buildup to August is always the worst.”

Marty didn't respond, which was, again, weird.

Suddenly, he stopped and grabbed my arm. “I'm glad we had a chance to get out of the office together,” he said, his dark eyes shining earnestly by the light of the streetlamp. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Marty, if this is about taking on more responsibility, I just don't think you're ready for anything new—”

“Gladiola, I just wanted you to know that I love you. I've been in love with you for a long time.”

Shit. My mouth fell open, and I made a little squeaky noise. I only held on to the coffee carrier through some sort of miracle of muscle memory.

“You're really pretty and funny and smart. And I feel really strongly about you. I think we would make a ­really great couple. And I was hoping that you might go out for dinner with me or something this weekend? I sent you some texts the other night to try to arrange a date, but you didn't respond.”

Double shit. I would so rather give him a performance evaluation.

Suddenly, all of the coffee cups, the Facebook friending, the candy on my desk came together in one horrible puzzle. Marty wasn't a nice, incompetent guy. He was “nice guy-ing” me—a condition that occurred when a guy's definition of friendship was “I'm nice to you because I think there's a chance you'll have sex with me. And when I realize that won't happen, I reserve the right to accuse you of using me.” Each of Marty's considerate gestures had a bunch of invisible strings hanging off it, strings meant to pull me in and make me feel obligated to him. After all, Marty was such a nice guy—what sort of horrible girl would refuse to date someone who had made so many thoughtful gestures?

Maybe I could convince him that I was engaged to someone else or being deported? Any excuse that would let him down gently, because the last thing anybody wants to do is say “I don't find you attractive.” I would scramble for any excuse besides that. I didn't understand how the simplest answer was the hardest to give. But I didn't want to give it, either.

“How did you get my cell number?” I asked.

“Oh, Margaret gave it to me. She got it from your employee file.”

Margaret really had to stop giving me reasons to be mad at her. In the face of my flabbergasted silence, Marty just kept on going. Oh, my God, did he keep going.

“We could go to the Noodle Palace, if you like. I know how much you like Japanese food, and I'm willing to make an exception to Mother's meal plan just this once. But just so you know, the mercury levels found in sushi are very unhealthy. You're risking serious neurological disorders if you continue to eat this way. I'd be glad to ask Mother to come up with a nutrition plan for you—”

“Actually, Marty, I don't think it's a good idea for us to go out. We're not really allowed to date coworkers, according to the employee handbook.”

Never mind the fact that I'd literally played a game of grab-ass with one of our vampire colleagues not long ago. This was definitely a case for careful personal editing.

Marty brightened. “Actually, I checked with Miss Lambert's office, and she said it was fine.”

“Oh, that Ophelia.” My teeth ground together as I tried to smile my way through this horrific moment. “Wait, did you check with Ophelia or Margaret?”

He gave a stilted laugh, as if I'd caught him at something. “Oh, I've been talking to Margaret about you for a little while. She assured me that we wouldn't be violating the spirit of the office fraternization policy, since we're only here temporarily.”

“Well, I'm not comfortable with the ‘spirit of the policy,' Marty. I'd rather follow the actual policy. So it's still a no. But thank you.”

He gave me a constipated smile and patted my hand. “We'll talk about it later.”

Talk about it later? Had I not just given my answer? I'd said no, clear as a bell. Granted, I hadn't given a genuine reason for
why
I was giving him a no, but my answer was still no. It wasn't up for negotiation.

I couldn't speak. I was honestly afraid that if I said anything more to him, a torrent of cursing and shouting like had never been uttered by a human in the Council office would pour out of my mouth and get me fired. Blocking out Marty's steady stream of reasons we should date, I carried the coffee into our office, carefully placed it on Jordan's desk, and swept back out of the room.

I couldn't breathe.

As foolish and silly as I'd felt after my first contact with Nik, at least then I'd known that the only person I'd hurt had been myself. I may not have been super-close to Marty, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings. But still, what the hell? I bounced between feeling sorry that I might have misled Marty into thinking I liked him and wanting to punch him in the neck. I felt stupid for not seeing the signs. I felt even more stupid for mistaking Marty's “overtures” for sucking up to his boss. I felt bad for letting him down. I felt guilty for actively trying to get him fired when he had a crush on me. I felt angry at Marty for putting me in this position. I was a blender of messed-up emotions, and they were all aimed Marty's way.

I needed some fresh air, a walk to clear my head. I had to get out of the office for just a few minutes, even though I basically hadn't spent more than five minutes at my desk that night. I didn't even stop to talk to Nik when I saw him coming out of Ophelia's office.

“Are you all right?” I shook my head and dashed out the door, ignoring him as he yelled, “Gigi!”

I walked blindly around the block, my legs pumping across the concrete, anything to carry me away from the viper pit of embarrassment. The Perk-U-Later door swung open, and I had to duck left to avoid being smacked in the face with the glass.

“Oh!” I yelped, as two strong hands clamped around my shoulders and kept me upright. I gasped, glancing up into warm green puppy-dog eyes. “Ben?”

“Gigi!” My ex-boyfriend, Ben, had one of those sweet, all-American faces that practically screamed “Trust me with your daughter, and she will return to you happy, early, and un-impregnated.” He had a cute little upturned nose, high cheekbones, and a wide, smiling mouth—a mouth currently making that awkward Ben face, where he smiled without actually showing any teeth. “Hi!”

The next few moments were a ballet of misinterpreted social cues. He went in for a hug, while I reached out to shake his hand. I raised my outstretched arm for the hug, but by that time, he'd switched over to handshake mode.

Right now, I would give anything for Nik's Swiss-cheese memory. Because I did not want to recall this later.

Despite our promises to stay friends, I'd barely spoken to Ben since we'd parted at winter break. It was difficult to recover from a conversation that started with “Let's get married” from one party and ended with “I think we should break up” from the other.

I'd beaten myself up over my feelings—or lack thereof—for Ben for weeks before his disastrous Christmas Eve proposal, which he saw as a Hail Mary play to save our relationship. I just didn't want to be with him anymore, and that alone made me feel that I was giving girlfriends everywhere a bad name. Ben was a genuinely decent sweetheart of a guy, who did everything right—remembering birthdays, having sacrosanct date nights every weekend, and faithfully Skyping when we were separated by summer internships. He accepted all of the weird supernaturalness in my life without so much as a “Hey, Type O is sort of a weird Christmas dinner.”

But he still didn't make my fickle self happy. I loved him, but I wasn't
in
love with him, not in the electric, head-over-heels, launching-a-thousand-ships sort of way I'd seen in Cal and Iris or Jane and Gabriel or even Jamie and Ophelia. But as selfish as it might seem, I wanted that crazy, forever, epic sort of love for myself. When you were surrounded by eternally committed vampire couples, it warped your expectations a little bit.

Maybe it had been a mistake to switch majors so that most of my upper-level classes were also Ben's classes. Maybe we'd spent too much time together. Maybe Ben got tired of seeing me perform so well in an area that was supposed to be
his
thing. Maybe we'd been doomed from the start, when I'd selfishly used him as my cover story as I secretly dated a very dangerous teenage vampire.

Either way, we hadn't spoken, e-mailed, or texted in the six months since. We were still Facebook friends, but we avoided each other's timelines. And none of this mattered now, because Ben was standing right in front of me, with a confused expression on his face.

“How have you been?” he asked, clearing his throat, gesturing for me to follow him back into the coffee shop.

“Great,” I told him, shaking my head for reasons I didn't understand. “Great. You?”

“Great,” he said. “Are you working in the Hollow this summer?”

“Yeah, I'm doing some programming work for the Council. And you?”

“Oh, uh, I'm just packing some stuff up. I've got a summer internship for Microsoft, in their Atlanta offices,” he said, pinching his lips shut and nodding like a bobblehead.

“Great!”

“Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it,” he said. “And how do you like working for the Council?”

“It's great,” I said, laughing in this awkward breathy fashion that made me sound slightly insane. “The other programmers made me project leader, which should be a nice résumé builder, if I don't screw it up.”

Ben's mouth curved up into that familiar fond Ben smile, and he finally resembled the boy I had dated instead of this stiff stranger. “You're not going to screw it up, Geeg. You're going to be great.”

If one of us said “great” one more time, I swear, one of our heads would explode.

Ben grinned and rubbed my arm, a gesture I stepped away from immediately. “I'm glad I ran into you. After last time, I had a few things I needed to say to you.”

I cringed inside. Honestly, I could only handle so many confessions of true feelings in one night. If he told me he loved me, I was going to jump through the window and run screaming down the street. I was practically twitching as he took a seat at a table near the plate-glass picture window. I remained standing, unwilling to spend more time than was absolutely necessary in this conversation.

He frowned when he saw my tense posture, but he took a deep breath and said, “I lied.”

My hands stopped twitching long enough for me to say, “I'm sorry?”

“When I said we could still be friends? I lied,” he said. “It was just too hard, and awkward. You seemed so happy every time I saw you, and for some reason, that really pissed me off.”

“I had to put on a happy face!” I exclaimed. “What kind of idiot breaks up with someone and then tells that person that she's miserable? It's against the girl code.”

“Well, I'm not going to lie, it took me a little while to get over it. I got drunk and cursed your name more than a few times.”

“That explains why so many of your friends glared at me all spring,” I muttered.

“But I just want you to know, I'm not mad at you anymore. I'm doing fine now. I've actually started seeing someone,” he said.

I expected some sort of pang, a twitch of irritation or jealousy. But I was happy for him. I wanted Ben to find someone. He deserved to be happy. And I wouldn't make him happy. I was apparently some sort of romantic train wreck who violated office policies willy-nilly and led nerds to the romantic rocks like some evil cyber-siren.

“She's really nice. She works in my office. Is that weird for you?”

“No, I've started seeing someone, too.” I glanced out the window to see Nik standing in the puddle of streetlamp light across the street, a concerned expression on his face. Triple shit.

“It's a vampire, isn't it?”

I turned to Ben and laughed. “Yeah, why?”

He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “I just figured you would end up with a vampire. They say that girls marry guys just like their daddies, and Cal is the closest thing you have.”