Page 89 of So Thirsty

He runs his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face. “It’s been a long time since I was young. Since I experienced anything new. The longer you live, the more everything has context. You relate it all to what’s happened before, what you’ve already experienced. Look at the moon tonight; it reminds me of that time in Istanbul, when it was so low, you could almost touch it. These hills are like Tuscany. This hotel is like the one we stayed in in Paris. These people coming over to us in the bar—they look so familiar. But every face is familiar. Every place is familiar. Every conversation. Every emotion…But then I saw you. Your face. That freckle, right there, under your eye. I watched you move. I—”

“Watched me sleep,” I say, interrupting him.

I wait for him to apologize, admit it was weird. But instead he says, very matter-of-factly, “I wanted to see you again. I thought I might never get the chance.”

“Well, you did.”

“I did. You came to that house, and I listened to you speak, to the sound of your voice and your laugh, how you chose your words, expressed your thoughts. We kissed and I tasted you, and I felt you, the warmth of you. All this is to say, yes, we just met. But I’ve never met you before. You’re new.”

“I’m…” Should I tell him the truth? That I’m not new? That I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of bored, suburban thirtysomething wives just like me? Who got married for a sense of stability, to tether themselves to someone because they were terrified of being alone, because they were terrified of themselves. Who gave up on their dreams before they could fail. Should I save him the disappointment? Or should I just shut up? I think about how good it felt to be touched by him. How caught up I was in it.

The only feeling that compares is that of the spilling of blood down my throat. Nothing else comes close.

I think about the blood on the pavement, the accident at the gas station. The broken glass. The smell of gasoline. The bodies. I think about the tumbler that I held so tightly, that I would have drained to the last drop. I think about the fiendish selfishness that overtook me in that moment. The possession of bloodlust, like at the rest stop, in the woods behind the cottage, as the wooden cup was brought to my lips at the lake house.

I think about when he first kissed me. That wasn’t possession; it was surrendering to myself, to my desire, to pleasure.

I look up and there he is, on the other side of the bridge, perfectly framed by the heart-shaped arch, and it’s a cruelty. Does satisfaction always come at such a high cost? Does its pursuit always leave such ruin?

If I give in to this want, I betray everything else.

If there is a happy medium between being a resigned, mildly depressed thirty-six-year-old woman with a thankless job and cheating husband, and being an immortal vampire indulging her lust for blood and sex and her desire for love and excitement, it sure would be nice to find it.

“What if I can’t get past it?” I say. “What I am now. What you made me. What if I can’t live like this?”

“It’s early days,” he says.

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“What about Naomi? Will she get past it?”

“Naomi is past it,” I say, drawing spirals in the snow with my finger. “She’s maybe been a little more erratic than usual, and a lot less empathetic, but overall, she seems to be adjusting to blood sucking just fine.”

Normally I wouldn’t vent about Naomi to anyone other than Naomi. I’ve always kept my frustrations to myself out of love and loyalty. I refused to give anyone else the opportunity to agree with whatever I was annoyed about, because they didn’t know her like I did, or love her like I did. Whatever conclusions they would draw from my complaints would be wrong, and I couldn’t risk misrepresenting the most important person in my life, the only person who ever really saw me. That would be treason.

But right now, treason doesn’t seem like such a crime.

“Naomi grew up with money. She’s always had something to fall back on. She doesn’t understand what it is to lose,” I say. “She hasn’t had it easy, but she’s had a safety net. I never did. I understand there are consequences. I’m not sure that’s a lesson she ever learned.”

Why am I telling him all this? Because he’s easy to talk to or because I need for someone to listen? Because there’s too much on my chest and I’m being crushed under the weight.

“I don’t know her like you do. She said you think of death, and yet she strikes me as someone afraid of dying. She lives as though she’s running out of time. There’s a desperation about her. Even now, when the long shadow of death is gone, she fears it. And you’re the opposite. You fear living. A pity. You’d be so good at it.”

It’s too much effort to feel insulted. Besides, I suspect he’s right. About me, at least. I’m not so sure about Naomi. “Why do you think she’s desperate?”

“You don’t see it?”

The way he asks—something about his tone—makes me feel oblivious, like I’ve missed something obvious to everyone but me. I hate it.

I stand up and brush the snow off. “You can cross the bridge now. I don’t know any riddles.”

“No riddles? No truth or dare?”

“No. Definitely not.”

He laughs. He stands, bows, and crosses the bridge to me. He stops about three-quarters of the way over.

“No chance you’ll meet me on it?” he asks, pointing at the arch.