Page 32 of Only Fangs

“But. I’m not a vampire and I’m not actually creating a profile for the site.”

“But if you were…”

“Fine,” he acquiesces. “I’ll take some. But you need to too.”

“Fine,” I say, my brain already whirring with the possibilities of what to include. I want Brody to think I’m fun and interesting and not just some stuffy old killjoy. Not that I want him to think of me as a potential date though. Of course I don’t.

Chapter 18

Brody

I’m still not one hundred percent sure why I said I thought Kiki should help us. Yes, she’s an incredible artist and she has this uncanny ability to capture a scene in photo-realistic detail. But she’s also my ex-girlfriend’s sister. And my break up with Yetty wasn’t exactly the best break up in the history of the world.

Full disclosure. Yetty dumped me. And I still don’t know why. Not in detail anyway. She gave me some spiel about compatibility and us wanting conflicting things and having different ideas about life, but none of it made much sense at the time. We weren’t together long, and to be honest I thought everything was going well. We had fun. The sex was amazing. Sure she took the piss out of my job, called me a dork and a nerd – and not always in a good way, sometimes it felt a little derogatory, like she wished I was cooler.

Matt and I dissected every moment of the relationship after she broke things off. We went through every conversation, every date, every text message, searching for the thing I’d done wrong. The thing I’d done to ruin the relationship. There was nothing. Or at least there was nothing I could put my finger on anyway. Matt concluded it was a “her problem”, that I was only nominally to blame as I’d made “yet another bad choice” – his exact words – on the dating front. But to me, Yetty remains my one who got away.

Anyway, Kiki agreed to help me, but I have a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach as I stand on her doorstep, hand raised as I pluck up the courage to knock on her door. The sisters aren’t twins, but they’re so alike a lot of people mistake them for each other.

“Hey Brody,” Kiki says as she opens the door. “Long time, no see.”

“Yeah, well, I…” I run my hand through my hair.

“You don’t need to be weird with me, you know,” she says with a laugh and reaches out a hand to grab my arm and pull me into the house. “I know my sister broke your heart, blah blah blah, but that’s nothing to do with me.” She stops talking for just long enough to give me a hug, squeezing me hard. “You’re looking good,” she says, “but you need bulking up a little. That whole pale and interesting nerd-chic thing is so last year.”

She sounds just like her sister. Yetty always commented that I should start lifting heavier weights to gain more muscle. And she thought my style choices were deliberately ironic rather than my personal preference. Or that I was just too clueless and needed her to help me to – in her words – “be a better version of myself”. I’m not sure she realised that I dress like a nerd because I am actually a nerd.

“Where’s the other?” Kiki asks, looking behind me as if I might be concealing Ari somehow.

Ari has popped to see Ivan who is having a total melt down about something. I was only half listening but it sounded like he’d forgotten to pay his council tax bill and now they were threatening to take him to court about it. Ari’s gone to help calm him down and then find him a lawyer who can make it all go away. But I don’t say this to Kiki so I pull out the oldest excuse in the book. “Running a few minutes late, she’ll be here any moment.”

“Well, let’s get set up.”

I follow Kiki through her flat and out into the small garden behind. This place is amazing, more like a small jungle, a slice of paradise in the middle of Exeter. At the back, almost hidden by a screen of ferns, is a bright blue structure.

“This is the studio,” Kiki says sweeping her arm in front of her. There’s a hint of pride in her tone and I can understand why. This is probably the dream set up for any artist.

“Wow,” I say.

“I know, right?” She smiles at me.

My message alert goes off and I pull my phone out. “Oh, that’s Ari. She’s here.”

“Great, why don’t you let her in and I’ll set up?” she says as she starts to open drawers to reveal a plethora of supplies.

“Umm… I can’t let her in. It has to be you.”

She pauses, her hand resting on the handle of a drawer. “Is this one of your weird things again, Brody?”

I frown at her. “What do you mean?”

“Yetty always said you had all these weird little rules and rituals that made no sense. Like you were bound by a series of laws but couldn’t articulate them.”

“Oh.” It stings a little if I’m honest. There’s nothing wrong with order but she’s made it sound like a serious character flaw. “But no. It’s not like that. It’s just that⁠—”

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll go let her in. You just stay here. And don’t touch anything, OK?”

I nod somewhat numbly and watch her leave. But then she pops her head back round the door.