“I know I’m your first female friend, so it’s taken some adjustments for you. But we’re not going to have in-depth mammary discussions. Also, I’m not changing in front of you,” I told him. Dick rolled his eyes and turned his back.
When I remained clothed, he sighed his martyr’s sigh and slunk outside my bedroom door, calling in, “Whatever you girls did to banish the Ghost of Jackasses Past obviously didn’t work, because you’re all still sulky. So, you’re going to take this like a man. No ice cream. No fruity drinks. No movies where whiny women ‘find their power.’ You’re not a girl, Jane.”
“I think my God-given gift of cleavage proves otherwise,” I muttered as I pulled the tank top over my head.
Dick snickered. “You know what I mean. You’re not like other girls. If you were, you’d be sitting in a dark room somewhere, making a scrapbook of painful memories and reading Women Are from Mars, Men Are from Uranus or something. You’re sort of a guy at heart, Jane. And you know what guys do when we’re suffering?”
I poked my head out of my room and informed him, “If this involves going to the Booby Hatch and watching my cousin Junie do her tribute to famous interns, I’ll pass.”
Dick ignored me. “There are three things guys do when we’re suffering. We drink, and we don’t talk about our feelings.”
“Oddly enough, I find that extremely appealing. What’s the third thing?”
Dick handed me my purse and ushered me out the door. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Why do I see cow tipping in my immediate future?”
When I found myself sitting in the parking lot of the Cellar, staring at the sputtering neon sign, I asked Dick if he’d lost his ever-loving mind.
“It’s the Cellar, you loved the Cellar,” Dick said, jiggling my shoulder. “That one time. Come on, Norm asks about you all the time.”
“As in ‘Whatever happened to that girl who got her ass handed to her in my parking lot and was suspected of setting Walter on fire?’” I snorted.
Dick dragged me out of the car. “No, as in ‘Whatever happened to that girl who kept me from being a Norm-shaped smear across the parking lot?’”
The Cellar was packed compared with the single night I’d spent there the previous year. Norm, the ironically named cuddly bartender, was busy, his work complicated by the house band blaring painfully earnest Elton John covers. But there were humans and vampires on the dance floor, and everybody sitting at the bar seemed companionably drunk.
“Norm!” Dick crowed over the din.
Norm shook his broad, balding head and chuckled. “That never gets old.”
“Place is busy tonight,” Dick observed.
Norm opened his mouth to answer but started when he saw my face. “Jane! I almost didn’t recognize you! Haven’t seen you around here since, well, the night Walter died.”
I smiled and hoped none of Walter’s friends overheard this conversation. Technically, Missy did the actual killing, but that report wasn’t as widely circulated in the vampire community as the one accusing me of setting Walter on fire. … Oh, wait, Walter didn’t have any friends.
“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” Norm said, grasping my hands in his own warm, thick paws. “Most vamps, especially newborns, probably would have wanted to stay out of that mess and let me fend for myself. You helped me, and I appreciate it. You don’t pay for drinks here, ever, got it?”
If I could have blushed, I would have. Instead, I just gave him a crooked smile and said, “Thanks.”
“Hey, I was there, too,” Dick objected.
“You were in the can,” Norm said with considerably less warmth. “And I’ve seen you drink. You’d run me out of business. What can I do for you?”
Dick grinned liked a winsome, irresistible toddler. “A bottle of tequila and two shot glasses, please, Norm.”
“That’ll be twenty-five dollars, up front,” Norm told him.
“I ask you, where’s the trust?” Dick grumbled as he dug bills out of his wallet.
Norm handed over his best bottle of tequila, which I could only imagine was a nod to me, a bowl of lime slices, salt, and shot glasses.
I grimaced. “I’m not so sure about this. I know this is going to shock you, but I’ve never actually done tequila shooters. I’ve always been more of a ‘mixed drinks that taste like snow cones’ kind of girl.”
Dick poured two shots and nudged a lime slice my way. “I’ll bet you’re a natural, honey.”
I sighed. “Set me up.”
Following Dick’s motions, I licked the salt, pinched my nose, and knocked back the shot, wheezing when it hit my throat. Dick forced the lime to my lips and I bit down, careful not to swallow any vomit-inducing pulp. The heady, antiseptic burn of the liquor mixed with fresh, tart citrus juice. Dick laughed and tapped his shot glass twice on the bar. “What do you think, Stretch?”
“I think my throat is melting.” I coughed, though the room started to tilt pleasantly. “Give me another one.”
“That’s my girl!” he crowed, pouring another shot.
Three shots later, I was a much mellower vampire. Hell, I was even admiring the finer points of the band’s rendition of “Rocket Man.” So, when a tall, handsome vamp came my way and asked me to dance, I was just relaxed enough not to embarrass myself completely.
OK, what I said was, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and then I ran to the back of the bar. Which was only a little embarrassing.
In the ladies’ room, I stared at the ceiling and wondered why I didn’t get any share of the Early feminine wiles, so aptly handled by Jenny, Mama, and Grandma Ruthie.
“You are a ridiculous person,” I told myself. “That was a perfectly nice-looking, nonthreatening person, who, for some reason, seems not to find you repulsive. And if you were a woman who had normal emotional responses and a regulated sense of paranoia, you would actually give that man a chance to take you home tonight. Go back out there, and stop being a spaz.”
I shoved the door open, fully committed to non-spazdom, and heard someone on the other side yelp. I stepped out to see that I had smacked some poor guy with the door and spilled his beer down the front of his shirt.
“Well, there goes that,” I said. “I’m so sorry!”
The vampire now wearing his beer laughed and wrung out his shirt. “So, are you anti-drinking, or do you just really hate plaid?”
I laughed at the situation and the funny. “Both, actually. I had a traumatic childhood involving hard-drinking lumberjacks.” His smile was wide, friendly, his fangs incongruent with the sweet chocolate eyes. “Can I buy you another beer to replace what you’re wearing?”
“Nah,” he said. “It was my friend’s round, and he tends to buy domestic. But you can dance with me. To cover my chest, so no one will see the stain on my shirt … that you caused. Not to make you feel obligated or anything.”
“Why would I feel obligated?” I laughed and let him lead me to the dance floor as the band struck up “Your Song.” I hadn’t slow-danced since Zeb and Jolene’s wedding, when Gabriel twirled me around the floor to the strains of “My Heart Will Go On .” Oh, thinking about Gabriel was really not going to help me right now. I pushed those images away as this delicious man, who smelled pleasantly of Polo cologne and beer, put my arms around his neck and pulled me close. Normal, healthy relationship, I repeated over and over in my head. Normal, healthy relationship.
“I’m Charlie.”
“Jane.”
“I noticed you earlier, you know. You’re one of the only women in here whose smile looks real. Sometimes when people are turned, they lose that. It’s nice to meet someone who hasn’t.”
“Thanks.” I smiled.
“See? There it is again,” he teased, his dimples winking as he smiled back.
Charlie was the type of guy I would have loved meeting when I was living. Sincere, friendly, open, and out in the world. Of course, I never went to bars when I was living, so technically I wasn’t out in the world.
“So, how’s a nice girl like you doing shots in a place like this?”
I smirked. “Why don’t you guess?”
“You lost a bet?” Charlie asked. I giggled—yes, it’s pathetic, I know—and shook my head. “You’re new to Alcoholics Anonymous, and you’re unclear on the rules?”
“Good guess, but no.”
Charlie bit his lip and considered. “You’re in the witness-protection program and that guy is your inept federal handler?”
We glanced back at Dick, who was giving Charlie the “male relative” death glare.
“That’s my friend Dick. I’ve been having a rough time lately, and he’s trying to cheer me up with good booze and bad Elton John music, forgetting that I intensely dislike both. But I do like Dick, so I’m making the best of it.”
“That’s nice of you.” There was the smile again, drawing my attention to his mouth. It looked soft and sweet; obviously, he made Chapstick a priority.
As we swayed and turned in silence, listening to the insistently poignant music, I caught sight of Dick watching us from the bar. He looked concerned, not necessarily judging me but definitely concerned. One didn’t have to be a mind reader to tell that he was wary of Charlie and the fact that Charlie’s hands were making contact with actual skin. It was only the skin on my arms, but it still seemed to disturb Dick.
I turned my back on him. Charlie took this as a hint to hold me closer, so that his lips brushed my forehead. It felt good, uncomplicated. His hands stroked my back in slow circles, urging me ever closer. It would be so easy to tip up my head and let him kiss me. But something was holding me back. Actually, it was several somethings: the knowledge that Dick was watching, doubt over whether a nice girl would move on this fast after breaking up with her vampire sire, and the possibility that for all I knew, this was the guy who had lurked outside my house the other night. I really didn’t like that last one.
Why couldn’t I be the casual-romance girl? Why couldn’t I pick up some strange guy at a bar, flirt and kiss, and have no-strings-attached sex? Why did my brain always prevent me from behaving like a normal person?
Kissing. I would start with kissing.
So I did. I parted my lips and felt the cool, wet slide of his mouth across mine. He slipped his hands under my chin, tilting my face toward his so he could take even more of my mouth. He was gentle. He was sweet. And it felt wrong.
You know when you can tell you’re making a huge mistake—not just buying ugly shoes because they’re on sale or choosing the wrong Christmas gift for your mother but “the world is off its axis, spinning out of control into the abyss of space” wrong? I was making a huge mistake. Even though it was possible Gabriel was out, enjoying a “purely carnal” relationship with a woman who enjoyed high-quality stationery, at that very moment, it felt wrong for me to be kissing someone else. It felt like a betrayal.
I pulled back from him and sighed. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. You’re really nice. And that was a really great kiss. I don’t want to lead you on or send out mixed signals, which is, ironically, exactly what I’m doing right now. But I just got out of a weird relationship, and I’m not ready to do this yet.”
“I can be your rebound guy,” he offered affably. “It won’t hurt my feelings, honest.”
I stared at him for a beat, my hormones waging war against my more rational parts. Stupid rational parts! I groaned. “That’s really tempting, trust me. But I’m more of a wallowing-in-self-pity/angry-outburst type than a rebounder.”