“You know, my mother never wanted me to meet a vampire,” Luis said all of a sudden. The words tumbled out of his mouth. “I think she knew this would happen. That I’d like being bitten more than the needle.”
“Oh?” Karim prompted.
“Mom took me to church every week growing up,” Luis said. “But I always asked too many questions. I didn’t understand why God hated vampires if God created everything. How God could hate them, when he was supposed to love everything.” He’d embarrassed her several times by asking these questions too loudly, with the naive confidence of a child. “We used to go to vampire protests, and I would always be looking around, trying to spot one. I thought a protest was like a public discussion, and vampires would show up to debate us.”
“Pity they didn’t,” Karim said with amusement.
Luis huffed a laugh. “My mom would have lost her shit if a vampire ever showed up. She worked so hard to make sure I never even saw one until I was an adult.”
Julien came back into the room. He looked softened from the blood, but okay.
“All good?” Karim asked.
“Yes,” Julien retook his seat on the other side of Luis. “How’re you both?”
“We’re good. Luis was just telling me about his mom,” Karim said.
“Just that she would hate it, me being here,” Luis said. “If that wasn’t obvious from the whole kidnapping-mind-washing-cult thing.”
“And how doyoufeel, being here?” Julien asked.
Luis gave it a moment of thought. “I feel more like myself here,” Luis’s eyes drifted over the antique art and expensive wallpaper of the room. Nothing in their house was like him, but it still felt true. “Like I’m not trying to be someone else. Like maybe life doesn’t have to be as hard as it’s been? I don’t know.”
“I think that makes perfect sense,” Julien said. “From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like your mother approved of most of your life choices.”
Luis snorted. That was the understatement of the century. “No, she definitely didn’t.”
“I had to leave home before I was an adult,” Karim said. The words were stilted like it was costing him something to say it. “Because it wasn’t safe for me there.”
“Before you were an adult?” Luis asked.
Karim nodded. “Before the Change. I was never interested in women, and I never had the temperament to fake it. I had to leave to exist, so I did.”
Luis mulled that over a moment. “I wish I would’ve moved out earlier,” he confessed. “I wish I would’ve understood sooner that she wasn’t going to change.”
“You can’t know what you don’t know,” Karim said. “Especially growing up. Those people are supposed to love you, take care of you. When they don’t–well, it’s a unique kind of betrayal.”
Luis sighed. “I just wish I hadn’t wasted so many years trying to be the person she wanted me to be. Even before I realized I was gay, I liked music, which is such an innocent thing, and Mom hated even that. A pathway to sin, she called it.”
“Is that why she took your guitar?” Julien asked.
“Yeah,” Luis said. “Remember how I said a neighbor kid let me mess with their guitar?”
Julien nodded.
“Well, he actually gave it to me when he lost interest because I liked it so much. But Mom, I mean she’d already banned me from hanging out with him, and she would’ve flipped if she saw the guitar, so I had to hide it at Cassie’s house, play it when I was there. I eventually saved up and bought a nicer one when I got a job, kept it too at Cassie’s. The one in my apartment, that was actually a splurge for finally moving into my own place. Something I could finally keep in my own room.”
“You said it was a Fender?” Karim asked.
“Yeah. Fender Acoustasonic, yellow. I’d wanted the black, but the yellow was what they had in store.” Luis missed it badly. He’d have to save up again to buy it again after all the new apartment and moving bills were paid.
“I’m sorry she took that from you,” Karim said.
Luis opened his mouth to reply, but the words stuck. Then Karim was pulling him in closer and Julien was crossing over, fitting himself on the other side. Their steady presence surrounded him.
“You didn’t deserve any of that,” Julien said into his hair, “but I’m glad you’re here and safe with us now.”
Luis shut his eyes shut against the wave of emotion. Arms around him squeezed him tighter, and a wound inside him that had been bleeding for days without him realizing it, began to ebb.
