“They can’t eat garlic, and I’ve never heard you once ask them to leave it out when we’ve ordered together, and garlic is in a ton of Mexican and Chinese food.”
“Garlic is a folktale. So is a cross, unless the vampire has lost his human soul and allowed the demon to rule his body. I haven’t. I can go into any church I want.”
“Vampires don’t reflect.” Sophie tossed out another piece of knowledge from her days of reading teen fantasy books. All the while, a prickling unease was mounting. The days Jesse had just stopped showing up right before Halloween were abnormally bright and sunny for Antonia’s foggy mountain climate. He worked days inside. He took afternoon and night classes. The picture of him that was so clearly from the eighties. His dead-white skin. Like hers.
“I don’t reflect. You can see sort of a blurry outline of a body, but no ‘human’ reflection. It’s something about the demon being the shape of the man, but not the ‘man made in God’s image’. At least, that's the deal according to some friends of mine.”
“Oh, great. There are more of you?” Sophie raked her hands through her hair distractedly, while also remembering the other night when she’d thought Jesse was right behind her in town— but he wasn’t reflected in the store’s glass window.
Jesse gave her a wan smile. “A couple.”
Silence dragged. Sophie found her head shaking of its own volition as if she were willing herself to argue and protest.But you don’t need to do that. You need to help him if that’s what you want. Is that what you want, a psycho boyfriend? You can'tclaim to care about people with mental health needs and still toss around words like “psycho”.
“I don’t blame you for not wanting someone like me in your life. I only told you because I couldn’t keep lying if we were going to get closer. The closer you get to a vampire, the more obvious it is that they are one,” Jesse explained softly.
“Yeah, I bet. Hard to miss all that blood-drinking and murdering people or turning them into an army of the undead,” Sophie returned nastily.
Jesse bridled, blue eyes flashing. “I’ve never killed a human in my life and I don’t plan to. Just ‘cause someone did it to me doesn’t mean I’ll do it.”
Again, his voice was so sure and sane that Sophie found herself confused. She’d come to trust Jesse because he was straight with her, not mollycoddling or ignoring a problem, not pretending she was the same as everyone else. He still loved her for her differences.
Like the way she looked. “I’m not a vampire.”
“I know. But... I admit I thought you were. You’re pale like me,” his cheek hitched into a half-smile. “And you can hear like me. I think you’re a little something extra, but that doesn’t matter right now.”
“No, what matters is that I’m here, trying to help you. The first step is admitting you need help.”
“Yeah, if you’re addicted. I already know I’m a vampire. There’s no help for that.” His fists balled tightly. “It means you watch everyone you love age and die while you stay frozen in a weird half-life. You can never bring new people into your world for long because they’ll run from you or because you know it’s not fair to them. And it hurts.”
“Sure does,” Sophie wrapped her arms around herself, listening to him speak with such sad, bitter sincerity, disgust onhis features, fingers on a perpetual flex and twist as if he could tear himself an escape route.
“You can go now. You made the token attempt to ‘give me a second chance’ or whatever this was.”
“You sound like a jerk,” Sophie blurted.
“I feel like one. I feel like I should have been smarter. I’ve been like this for almost thirty years, Soph. I never messed up until I met you. Dammit!” Jesse suddenly kicked the little couch in the tiny living room. Its cheap frame splintered and sagged, worn upholstery bulging over broken wood. “We could have just been friends. I screwed it up. You know what kills me?”
“A stake?” She was being a bitch and she knew it. Her eyes glimmered with confused, angry tears, matching his.
“That. That you are truly beautiful, not just your face, but your heart, and you could have used a friend. So could I. We could have kept being happy and I blew it, not just for me, but for you, too.”
Her eyes overflowed, a tidal wave of tears breaking the surface and flowing out as silent sobs wracked her thin shoulders. She had wanted him as a friend. She’d believed she was happy, she’d believed she was worth loving. He’d changed her life in a few weeks, and now she was losing him to whatever sick charade he’d invented. Even if she could help him, did she want this to be her life, constantly hoping he’d stay on the meds or in therapy, whatever he needed?
“Please.”
Sophie looked up to see his face only a few inches from hers.
“Be angry. But not sad. You can remember me as some a-hole who had a Dracula complex if you want. But don’t cry.”
“Why shouldn’t I? I love you, too, and I can’t even help you. I talked to my aunt, she’s a therapist, and I told her,” Sophie hiccuped suddenly, a loud gulping squeak amidst her sobs, “that I had a friend who thought he was undead and she started tellingme about mental illness being a disability that needs respect and help, the same as any other physical issue. God! Why couldn’t you be blind or in a wheelchair? I’d know how to help with that! Or maybe I wouldn’t because I don’t know how to talk to people or be with people! Sometimes I feel like I’m not even a ‘people’!”
Jesse watched her spiral, ranting and scrubbing at her eyes. Her eyes with the lava-red depths, her hands with their glowing fingertips. He caught her hands in his own and squeezed. “Listen to me?”
“I’m trying to!”
“No, listen to me now. About this,” he licked his lips suddenly. “I... Don’t scream.”
“Not a good line,” Sophie shoved his hands off, only to find them back on hers again, gripping with unnatural strength as he pulled her to his chest. Her adrenaline spiked and she let out a frightened gasp.
