“The first time you were here, you came storming up my front steps because I’d sent Andrea over to your house. The last time you were here, it was because Zeb and Jolene were on the verge of collapse. We never spend time here. I’m always at your place.”
“You know, you’re right. I’m so sorry. I’m terrible at the relationship thing.”
He shrugged. “You just like to be comfortable.” He sniffed slightly, then ran the tip of his nose down my hairline. I took this as a sweet, intimate gesture, until he asked, “Why do you smell like a German shepherd?”
I stared at him, thinking maybe this was some sort of bizarre riddle, when I realized Adam’s eau de canine had probably rubbed on me when I’d plowed into him. I blew out a startled laugh. “Oh, I ran into an old friend from high school, Adam Morrow. He’s a vet, and he must have had some leftover dog residue on him.”
“You ran into him on the drive over here?” Gabriel asked.
“No, he dropped by the house to say hi, just as I was walking out the door,” I said, the suspicion in his voice setting off my “babble” response. “It’s no big deal. It’s really kind of funny. It’s this boy I used to have this huge crush on when were kids, but he never looked twice at me. I was this gawky band geek, and he was the most popular boy in our class. But now that I’ve been turned, and grown out of my braces, I guess he’s interested in me. I told him I was seeing someone. And it’s too little, too late, obviously. I mean, I’m a grown woman, and it was just a silly schoolgirl fantasy crush thing. I’m over him. Completely. Totally. Completely and totally over him.”
Gabriel grimaced, his features radiating doubt and discomfort. Maybe that second “completely and totally” was overselling it.
“So, take me on the tour,” I suggested, changing the subject far too enthusiastically. “I’ve only seen two rooms of your house. The parlor and your bedroom.”
“That wasn’t my bedroom,” he said. “That was a guest room.”
“You left your fledgling vampire childe to rise in your guest room?”
His lips twitched, and I could see him slowly coming out of his bad humor. “Where would you put a fledgling vampire childe to rise?”
I paused to think about it. “I don’t know. So, show me your bedroom. And I mean that in a perfectly respectable home-tour kind of way.”
Gabriel’s bedroom was surprising. I’d expected something lavish and baroque. Sort of Henry VIII meets Rudolph Valentino. But the walls were bare, a pale blue edging toward purple, the color of the sky just after dawn. The bed was wide and soft but plain, something you’d order from Ikea and then immediately regret. A thick navy tapestry curtain was pulled back, revealing a broad cushioned window seat, the only seating in the room. And his bathroom featured a shower big enough for six. He specifically mentioned that, which, frankly, worried me.
I ducked my head into his closet. Black as far as the eye could see. Black T-shirts, black sweaters, black button-down shirts, black slacks, broken up only by occasional splashes of slate gray.
“You ever thought about wearing a print?” I asked. “Maybe even a jewel tone? One of the less intense colors. Blue. Green. How about red? We know you like that one. Wait, are you color-blind?”
“I don’t wear jewel tones,” Gabriel muttered, leading me back out into the bedroom. “Or prints.”
There were no pictures, no mirrors, nothing on the walls save for a print of Edvard Munch’s Vampire, an ambiguous portrait of a seminude redheaded woman with her arms around and head bent over a dark-haired man. I stood, studying the image with a tilted head. Is he the vampire? Is she? Is he simply a lover seeking comfort at his redhead’s breast? Or are they two humans cowered in the shadow of the dark form looming behind them?
“What do you think of it?” he asked.
“It’s beautiful and sad and vague,” I said.
“You know, the original title of the painting was Love and Pain,” he said. “An art critic picked up on the underlying vampiric theme, and the name stuck. Munch experts were and are horrified, but you can’t deny the subconscious imagery.”
“You know, his ears are sort of shaped like yours,” I commented, looking from the slightly pointed painted ovals to Gabriel’s own lobes.
Gabriel grinned. “The artist found the back of my head to be quite compelling.”
“So, this is an altar to your vanity?” I asked, teasing.
“I enjoy the irony. A man interpreting me as a vampire but being told it’s impossible. What brought you rushing to my front door if it wasn’t bad news?” he asked as I pulled him back down the stairs toward the surprise I’d brought for him. He offered more than a little resistance as I pulled him farther and farther from the bedroom.
“I thought we might actually leave the house for a date. I figured we’ve covered the couch date. You are master of the corner lean and the casual backrub that might lead to something. I thought you might like to up the degree of difficulty. It’s time to leave the comfort of the make-out couch, Gabriel. Let’s go out to see a movie.”
He arched his eyebrows at me as I pulled him to the foyer.
“Moving images projected onto a screen in front of a darkened room full of people.” He shot me a withering look. “And since I don’t think even your broad horizons are quite ready for the Hollow Cineplex, I thought we would visit the dollar theater.”
“The dollar theater?”
“The old two-screen place downtown. They show old movies for a dollar a ticket. It’s sort of a gamble. Sometimes you see the ending, sometimes the film melts. But the seats are cushy, and there’s a lot of ambience.”
“You mean the Palladium?”
I chewed my lip. “I think that’s what the sputtering neon sign says.”
“The Palladium used to be the premier moving-picture palace in this end of the state. I saw my first film there, Casablanca.”
“You waited until the 1940s to see your first movie?”
He shrugged. “I had things to do.”
“Well, now the Palladium is the place where you can buy a bucket of beer with some very stale popcorn.”
“But … all those humans.”
“We’re vampires. If someone talks during the movie, we tear their throats out. Come on, I wore my cute date shoes and everything.”
He peered down at the strappy black pumps peeking out from my jeans. “You know I can’t resist you when your toes are exposed,” he grumped.
“Good, that means wearing open-toed shoes in winter is well worth it. And since we can’t exactly swing by for a pizza on our way into town, I brought you this.” I pulled a very nice bottle of donated Type B-positive, which I knew Gabriel favored, from the picnic basket.
“Very nice,” he commented, appraising the label. “Your palate is improving.”
“Thank you. Now let’s go.”
“What about drinking this?”
“I have a whole thing planned. Just relax that ramrod spine of yours and come with me.”
I took Gabriel to Memorial Park, a tiny patch of grass in the middle of downtown. It was home to a gazebo flanked by blackened cement statues of famous Civil War veterans from the Hollow, including Waco Marchand, who now served on the local commission for the Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead. High-school kids posed for pictures in their prom-night finery at the gazebo each spring. But tonight it was abandoned, empty save for the fairy lights strung from the carefully preserved gingerbread eaves. I winked at Gabriel and began unpacking the picnic basket on one of the gazebo’s little wrought-iron benches.
“It’s December,” Gabriel said, staring at me and tucking his coat tighter around his body.
“We stay at room temperature,” I reminded him, patting the bench. “Besides, we have twinkly Christmas lights, only available at this time of year. We have a lovely bottle of oaky B-positive. We have grapes and cheese, which, I’ll admit, I bought on the way over to your house strictly because I’ve seen people pack them for fancy wine picnics in movies. We have romance and atmosphere out the ying-yang.”
He gave me a smile that assured me that he was working hard to humor my girlie romanticism.
“I’m wearing the date shoes,” I reminded him.
“Curse your sassy toes,” he huffed. “Let me open that. You don’t want to cork it.”
“Are you implying that a little old thing like me can’t operate something as complicated as a corkscrew?” He grinned at my indignant tone. “OK, you’re right. But that’s not because I’m a woman. It’s because most of the stuff I drank when I was alive involved screw tops.”
“I’ve always enjoyed your little quirks.” He grunted at the faint pop of the cork coming loose. He carefully poured into the plastic wine glasses that came with the picnic set. “What do we drink to?”
“World peace?” I suggested. He grimaced. “To doing things that normal couples do?”
He cleared his throat and raised his glass. “To Mrs. Mavis Stubblefield, without whom we would not be here together tonight.”
I laughed. “That’s kind of twisted.”
He nodded while he sipped. “But true.”
“To Mavis Stubblefield, without whom I wouldn’t have been fired, publicly drunk, mistaken for a deer, shot, and turned into a vampire by you,” I conceded, and took a deep drink. Despite my pacifist leanings, I enjoyed the sizzle of human red cells as they zipped through my system. “Maybe I should send her a thank-you note.”
“We both know that’s not going to happen.”
“Also true,” I admitted, snuggling my head into the crook of his neck.
“What are you doing?”
“Enjoying the moment.” I sighed.
“You are, without a doubt, the most interesting girl I’ve ever shared a gazebo with,” he murmured, kissing my forehead.
“Interesting. There’s your favorite word again.”
“I think we’ve established how interested I am in you.” He chuckled, kissing me. He sighed when he released me. “I feel as if we haven’t been able to spend much time together lately. I’m sorry business has taken so much of my time.”
My lips parted, and I could feel the rush of questions gathering. Why wasn’t he answering his phone? Why was he being so uncharacteristically vague about his travels? Where had he been, really? But the evening was so perfect, so relaxed. Again, passages from Sense and Sensibility popped into my head. Elinor almost loses her Edward because she doesn’t speak up and tell him how she feels. She might have ended up alone, but Lucy Steele lets Edward off the hook by eloping with his brother. Would Edward stay in love with Elinor if she pitched a tantrum when he left her at Norland without confirming his feelings? Would making demands and ultimatums confirm that Edward made the right choice in Lucy?
I was an Elinor, not a Marianne. I didn’t want to waste precious, uninterrupted time together with outbursts or questions that might provoke an argument. So I feinted for a safer topic.
“It has helped that I’ve been all about wedding, wedding, and more wedding lately.” I sighed. “Tell me how it’s possible that this shindig has taken complete control of my life and I’m not even the one getting married? I’m just a lowly bridesmaid, and yet I’m the one doing cocktail-napkin comparisons and in-law interventions.”
He mulled that over for a moment. “Oh, I saw this in one of those ladies’ magazines you leave scattered around at your house. I think the term is ‘Bridezilla’?”
“I don’t know if I would use the word ‘Bridezilla.’ It’s not that Jolene’s being all that demanding or … yeah, were-bride just about covers it,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to do. I just keep getting pulled in. Dress fittings, engagement parties from hell, favor-making parties. It’s not that I don’t have the time, I’m just getting worn out, you know? But I don’t think any of her cousins will do any of this stuff with her.”
“And her fiancé has made vague yet disturbing advances toward you and is treating her badly, so you feel incredibly guilty.”
“No!” I insisted. I looked down into my glass and grumbled, “Yes.”
“You’re a very good friend.”
I waited for the sage advice he normally dished out in these situations. And got nothing. “And?”
“That’s all the platitudes I have,” he said. “Generally, people don’t invite vampires to their weddings, much less make them their undead bridal handmaidens. This is a situation I have never had to deal with.”
“In more than a century?” He gave me an apologetic look. “Well, that’s disappointing,” I said, looking down at my watch. “We’d better get going, or we’re going to miss the previews.”
“I thought the theater only showed movies that are at least twenty years old. That means the previews are for movies that are twenty years old.”
I drained the last of my blood. “There’s a principle at stake here, Gabriel.”
Since we were sticking to strict dating principles, Gabriel insisted on paying the two-dollar admission. He was a little put off when he saw our options listed on the old-fashioned marquee: Pillow Talk or the 1932 version of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi.
“Isn’t that sort of obvious?” he asked.
“Oh, we’ll go see Pillow Talk if you really want to. We’re talking singing, Tony Randall, lots of pastels …”