All the people I’d met in Valentine—I would never see them again. Sure, they didn’t really know me, and I didn’t really know them, but we’d connected through the long nights of winter. Would they remember me in a few years?
I sat down on the piano bench next to Vlad, scooting myself as close to him as I could get. When his fingers stopped on the keys, I shook my head. “Keep playing.”
We two have run about the hills,
And picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot
Since auld lang syne.
I looked at Vlad’s beautiful profile, the boyish hair curling around his ears, the freckles smattered across his nose from sunshine hundreds of years past. His kind eyes and strong hands.
This song was about us.
For three hundred years, Vlad had been there. Sure, I kicked him out and said “Goodbye forever” every few years, but he came back. He always came back.
His full, rich voice filled the house. We sang the last chorus together.
And there’s a hand my trusty friend, and give me a hand of thine.
Tears streamed down my face for all the goodbyes, but especially the most recent. Sure, a sentimental vampire is the biggest oxymoron in the world, but I was who I was.
Vlad lifted his fingers from the keys and wiped away my tears. “Tiffenie, I’m so sorry. I’ve been a naysayer for many years, always warning you against mobs with their torches and pitchforks, but you were right. You made friends. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“What’s next?” I made light of his compliments if only to stem the tide of my tears. “Do you think men and women can be friends?”
“No.” He guffawed at the absurdity. “I’m changing, but not that fast.”
“What about Heaven?” I asked. “Or Dr. R?”
With tenderness, he rubbed my back. “One thing at a time, my love.”
“In three hundred years, I’ve never really tried to fit in. I’ve just been paying the bills, existing, trying to fit into a box. This is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling part of a community.”What are you going to make?Heaven’s question echoed in my mind. Maybe I sucked at crafting, but I could make friends, even without a tutorial from Dr. R.
“Remember when we were first together,” I reminisced, “before you turned me?”
He smiled at the memory.
“I wanted to be with you because I was desperate to make my own way, to have independence. I wanted to read books and think big thoughts, to live a bigger life. You were the only one who saw that as a possibility for me.”
“I still do.”
“I know. Instead, I’ve been hiding, living a smaller life than I did as a girl. Until now. I want to live that life we imagined so long ago. I’m ready for it.”
His hands barely touched the keys. When he looked into my eyes, I saw the Vlad from long ago, a man filled with hope, not the jaded misanthrope of late. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” he asked.
“Were you serious about pulling a Harry and Meghan?”
“Yes, I want to be Harry and Meghan,” he said, with the utmost earnestness.
That was all I needed to hear.
“Three hundred years ago you asked me to be your vampire bride. We were so young and stupid. I wasn’t ready then. I wasn’t strong enough.”
He clasped my hands tighter and shut his eyes. “I loved you even more for walking away, Tiffenie. You were stronger than me. You have stoodby your principles for over three hundred years.”
I looked up at his sparkling green eyes, softened with love. “No matter what, you have been here for me, through every move and every dumb job, every century. You kept me hidden from the parliament. You have been my only consistent companion. So many times, I would have chosen to be with you, if it didn’t mean choosing everything that went along with it.”
