SIX
I was actually glad that Paul had been so rude to me and had made me feel so self-conscious about being a bookworm. This was what I told myself, anyway, and I mostly believed it. This was because even though I couldn’t deny that Paul was insanely hot, his behavior had made me dislike him, to say the least, so now I didn’t have to worry about the complication of crushing on two different guys at once.
Now I’m free to try to become a little closer to Jake only, I thought, mildly amused by the fact that I’d actually thought that after spending all my teenage years single, I might suddenly have the problem of having too many attractive suitors to “choose” from.
After showering, I dressed in pajamas, deciding that I was just going to stay upstairs for the night, since I had no idea when my dad’s meeting would end, and I didn’t exactly want to come back down in the middle of it. I had just one problem, though, which was that once I’d finished untangling my damp hair with a wide-toothed comb, I realized that I was hungry. And not just hungry, but incredibly so. Silently cursing myself for not grabbing a pint of the ice cream I’d brought home on my way upstairs, I checked my nightstand drawer for any snacks, because I usually kept a few in there to nibble on while watching movies in bed. However, I found only wrappers and crumbs in the drawer, making me think that my three-year-old twin brothers, Mason and Alex, might have helped themselves recently. Having watched movies in my room before, they knew exactly where to look for snacks and sometimes came in to raid the drawer when I wasn’t in my room.
Having another idea, I grabbed my phone, intending to text Jen to ask her if I could raid her room for something to eat. She’d always had an extremely large appetite; so, for convenience sake, she practically had a whole kitchen, including a minifridge, a microwave, and a toaster oven in her room, along with a custom-built cabinet to store all her food.
Thinking that she probably wouldn’t mind if I took a cup of instant noodles or something from her stash, I began typing out a text. However, before I could finish it, I received one from her. I got a lil borrd at the meating, so I’m out herr in the kitchin makking spigati. Want sum in a wile?
A notoriously bad speller, Jen had recently turned off the autocorrect feature on her phone out of frustration, because it so frequently changed her horribly-misspelled words into words that she didn’t intend.
Smiling at her text a little just because I found her horrible spelling kind of endearing in some way, I hit reply and typed out a return text. I’d love some spaghetti. Thanks! Could you bring some up to me?
Within a minute of hitting send, I had a reply. Cool, I’ll breng you up a lott becuz I’m makking a hole big pott of it for the twinz to have sum too when thay git hoem.
I stifled a little giggle looking at this text, marveling over the fact that Jen had still spelled bring incorrectly, despite the fact that she’d been able to see the correct spelling in my text; yet, she’d somehow spelled the word too correctly for the way she was using it. This maybe shouldn’t have been that surprising to me, because sometimes her spelling and grammar could be just as surprising as she herself could be. One particular time that I remembered, she’d managed to spell the word convenience correctly on a hand-written shopping list, but not the words peanut and butter, which she’d spelled peenit and buttr.
About a half-hour later, bearing a tray loaded with plates of spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread, she entered my room, announcing that dinner was served. “And by ‘dinner,’ I actually mean ‘second dinner’ for me, because all the tacos I had on the way home today were probably my first. They might have fallen under ‘second lunch,’ though, so…who knows.”
After I’d thanked her for bringing me up some dinner, she asked if I minded if she ate in bed with me, and I said of course not.
“I’m glad to have the company, because I don’t think I’ll be heading back downstairs tonight.”
While setting the tray on my writing desk, Jen asked me why not. “Don’t you want to see your mom and Mason and Alex down there? They’re all home now.”
I shrugged. “Well, I want to see them, but…I guess maybe I’ve just visited with all the newcomers enough for one day. I at least don’t want to go back downstairs until the meeting is over.”
“Oh, well that probably won’t be for a good while. Everyone was talking pretty intensely when I walked by to bring the tray up.” Jen took two plates of salad off the tray and began bringing them over to my bed. “Or, I should say, everyone was talking pretty intensely until I walked by. See, because I put garlic in the spaghetti sauce and on our bread, I just couldn’t help but make a comment. I was just like, ‘If any of you vampires start to feel threatened by the smell of this garlic, just know that it’s not for vampire-fighting purposes. It’s just because my niece and I like the taste of it. We promise to never turn it against you all, unless you give us a good reason to.’” Handing me my plate of salad, Jen burst out with a little peal of laughter. “Your dad gave me such a dirty look.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I bet he did.”
“Yup. He gave me his ‘warning look,’ so I pretty quickly hightailed it up here with our food. Guess who didn’t give me any kind of a dirty look when I said my little comment, though?”
I asked her who, and she went to get the rest of our food, clearly fighting a smile, as if enjoying drawing out the suspense.
Finally, after bringing over all plates, napkins, and silverware, she had a seat next to me in bed and told me. “He’s this new vampire guy named David. He came here with his brother Sean, and I talked to them a little bit before the meeting. I’d just come downstairs from taking my shower, and my hair was still a little bit wet, but actually, a whole lot wet, because I just got a little too hyped up to come down and meet everyone, so I didn’t even bother drying my hair. And David came up to me, and he was just like, ‘Been swimming lately?’ And he laughed a little, but then right away, he stopped himself and turned red, and he was like, ‘Sorry, that was probably stupid.’ And I was like, ‘No, it honestly wasn’t, and I honestly think you might actually be a little bit psychic, because I actually have been swimming lately. I swam in a lake on my lunch break today.’ And then, long story short, David asked me if my name is Jen, proving his psychic ability even more, and then he proved it even more again when he asked me if I’m into different scientific statistics and things. I told him, yes, I actually am, and that a lot of times, I like to quote scientific statistics when I’m trying to prove something to someone. I told him that it doesn’t even matter if the statistics aren’t even real, because all that matters is just that they sound like they might be real, because that’s just how science works. And then David acted like he wanted to burst out with some laughter, and he was like, ‘That’s actually not how science works.’ And I said, ‘Well, how do you know?’ And he told me that before coming here today, he actually worked as a research scientist or something. And I said, ‘Well, this is an important moment. I’m finally meeting one of the scientists whose statistics I’ve been quoting all these years.’ And then we both laughed, and then we laughed some more about different things, and then, like I said, he didn’t give me a dirty look when I said my comment about the garlic on my way up the stairs. In fact, he kind of smiled a little, like maybe he thought what I said was funny.”
Pausing in twirling some spaghetti around my fork, I glanced over at Jen, smiling a little. “It sounds like maybe you and David made a connection.”
Picking up her fork, Jen drew in a deep breath, seeming to be fighting a grin. “Yeah. You could say that. You could probably even say that we made a pretty big connection. See, ninety-seven percent of scientists say that sometimes, the biggest connections happen when people least expect them to…so, that’s probably what happened with me and David. We just connected right up, because neither one of us was really expecting it.”
Jen and I soon got down to serious eating, watching a TV show while we did so. Jen took a break from eating to get some bottled water for us from her minifridge, and then took another break to help Wanted climb up on the bed to sit with us. His arthritis usually made climbing up entirely by himself impossible.
A while later, after feeding him a few carrot coins from her nearly-empty salad plate, and the last meatball left on her dinner plate, Jen leaned back against my headboard with her hands behind her head. “What a day. It started pretty unluckily with me nearly burning the house down by putting a muffin in the microwave for fifteen minutes, instead of fifteen seconds how I meant to; but it ended super luckily by me making a connection with a pretty handsome and pretty cool vampire named David.”
Capping my bottle of water, I smiled. “You turned your luck around.”
With a small, satisfied-looking sort of smile playing around the edges of her mouth, Jen said that she sure had, then shifted her gaze from the TV screen to me. “So, how about you? Do you like any of the new vampires that showed up today?”
Feeling a little funny about revealing my crush on Jake for some reason, I said that Mack and Liz seemed like a really nice couple. “They were both so apologetic for showing up late today because Liz wanted to stop to photograph some sandhill cranes. I kept telling them to not even worry about it, because—”
“Oh, no you don’t.”
“What?”
“I can’t just let you off the hook from honestly answering my question, Chrissy. I’m your aunt, and also pretty much your best friend. So, basically, I have the right to not be put off from hearing the truth. So, I’ll ask you again. Do you like any of the new vampires that showed up today? And keep in mind, when I say ‘like,’ I don’t mean who do you think is nice, or who do you think takes cool pictures of cranes or whatever other construction equipment. I mean, do you like like any of the new vampires.”
Feeling weirdly self-conscious but knowing that Jen wasn’t going to let me off the hook, I hesitated in responding. “I guess there’s this guy Jake that I kind of like. He’s the really good-looking guy with dark blond hair and blue eyes, and he drives the blue mustang parked out in the driveway, if you’ve seen it.”
“I saw it out the kitchen window. Can’t say I’m a fan. The paint is just…too shiny or something. I just didn’t like it.”
“Well, Jake’s car isn’t the reason that I like him anyway. I like the way he smiles, and I like how he’s friendly, and I like how he’s into books just like I am. If I’m being completely honest, I really like the way he looks, too, but…I don’t just like that. I just like the complete package of him…no matter how shiny his car is or isn’t.”
With her gaze on the TV, Jen shrugged. “It was too shiny. It just didn’t strike me the right way.”
Thinking that maybe her dislike of Jake’s car was possibly more of a dislike of him, I asked her if she’d met him yet.
With her gaze still on the TV, she said yes. “I talked to him for a second, and I talked to that other really hot new guy who looks like he’s in his early twenties, too. The one with the really dark hair and gray eyes…Paul, I guess he said his name was. And here’s my verdict about both of them.” Uncharacteristically stony-faced, Jen finally shifted her gaze from the TV to me. “I don’t like either of them for you.”
“Well, don’t worry about Paul, because I definitely don’t like him for me, either. He called me a bookworm, and a whole bunch of other really rude things. But, just out of curiosity, what’s your reasoning for not liking him or Paul for me?”
Turning her gaze back to the TV, Jen shrugged. “They’re both just a little weird. They’re both liars.”
“What do you mean by ‘liars?’ What do you think they’re both lying about?”
Again, Jen shrugged. “They’re both just hiding something. I can just tell when people are. Have your parents ever told you the story of that Carla chick who moved here to the farm once?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, you probably heard how I never liked her from the start. I just had a feeling she was bad somehow, or that she was hiding something…and I turned out to be right.”
“Well, what do you think Jake and Paul could be hiding?”
Jen shrugged yet again. “No clue…but the fact that they both are just makes me not like them. No guy who’s hiding something should be anywhere near my niece, no matter how good-looking. Period. That’s just a recipe for trouble, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“But…you really think Jake could be ‘hiding something?’ I mean, he seems pretty friendly and open, so—”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter how people seem. It just matters what kind of a gut feeling you get from them. And mine about Jake, and Paul, isn’t a good kind of gut feeling. It’s the kind of feeling that makes me want to keep you away from them.”
“Well, even my dad was saying that everyone here on the farm should give all the newcomers a chance.”
“Yeah, I gave both Jake and Paul a chance. I gave them both the chance to make a good first impression on me. They both failed. Especially now since you told me that Paul was calling you names…even though calling you a bookworm is pretty accurate.”
I snorted. “Well, it was really more the way he said it…just, all under his breath and everything when he’d nearly passed me.”
“Well, would you rather that he said it loudly and right to your face?”
Fighting an eye roll, I sighed. “No. I wish that he just hadn’t said it to me at all. But, actually, on second thought, I’m glad he did.”
“Why?”
“Because then I was able to see right off the bat that he’s a jerk. I didn’t even have to waste any time trying to figure out if I like him or Jake more.”
With some funny little gleam in her big blue eyes, Jen shifted her gaze from the TV to me. “Well, how about if you don’t like either of them. How about if you like someone else…a different new guy.”
“And who would that be?”
Jen fought a smile. “Sean…David’s brother. He’s close to your age, you know. He only just turned twenty right before he was turned, and he wasn’t turned very long ago. So—”
“Well, now all this makes perfect sense. You just said all that about Jake and Paul both ‘hiding’ something just because you’d rather I date Sean instead, just so that…well, what? Just so we can both marry brothers and have a double wedding or something?”
Jen said no. “That wasn’t my first thought, anyway, but now that you mention it…a double wedding would be pretty awesome. But, no. I just want you to date Sean because I can already tell that he’s a really nice guy who isn’t hiding anything. He’s pretty much an open book, just like David. I started to trust them both right away, like, within fifteen seconds of talking to them. That’s why I want you to date Sean. Because I trust him and I don’t think he’d hurt you. And as far as him being the reason why I said what I said about Jake and Paul hiding something…that’s just not true. I said what I said about them because they both are hiding something. And, also…I just don’t like either of them. Why would I? Unless the thing that they’re both hiding is suitcases full of candy in their move-in stuff, what they’re hiding can’t be any good.”
I made a noise between a chuckle and a snort. “Well, being that they’re vampires and don’t eat food, I’d say the possibility of them bringing suitcases full of candy onto the farm is pretty slim.”
“I bet David might bring me a suitcase full of candy if I asked him to. Just judging by a few of the little looks he gave me earlier, I think he likes me that much already.”
I told Jen I was really glad she met him, and she said she was, too, then paused for a moment or two, glancing at the TV, before speaking again.
“A double wedding really wasn’t my first thought, but wouldn’t it be so cool for us to date brothers? I mean, just think about it. We could go out on double dates all the time…to the movies, out to eat, maybe even ice skating in the winter.”
“Why couldn’t we go out on double dates with you and David, and me and Jake?”
Making a little harrumph, Jen turned her focus back to the TV again. “This has pretty much been my entire life. I get feelings about people, and no one ever listens to me…not until it’s too late, anyway. Not until Carla gives your mom some poison dagger or something, telling her to kill your dad with it or whatever.”
I told Jen to give me a little credit. “I’m not going to take a poison dagger from anyone…and I’m definitely not going to try to kill anyone. I just want to get to know Jake a little better, maybe. First of all, I just want to make sure he’s single, and make sure that he doesn’t have a girlfriend back in Indiana or something.”
“He doesn’t. Or, at least, he claims not to. You never can tell, though, with people who are hiding something.”
“Well, how do you know he claims to not have a girlfriend? Did you just come right out and ask him?”
“I asked everyone. I wanted to just ask David, specifically, but the idea of asking him only just felt super weird and personal somehow, since we’d just met. So, instead, when there was a break in our conversation, I told everyone in the dining room to quiet down, and then I said I was taking a quick poll. ‘Please raise your hand if you’re married or in any kind of a relationship,’ I said. ‘And just sit like normal with your hand down if you’re single.’ And then I looked around the room and noticed who all had their hands raised, and who didn’t. And when I saw that David had both hands down, I gave him a little smile, and then later, I told him I thought it was pretty cool that he hadn’t raised his hand. He thought it was pretty cool that I hadn’t raised my hand, either.”
“So, you saw that Paul didn’t have a hand raised?”
Jen whipped her gaze from the TV to me, frowning. “I thought Jake is the one you like.”
“Yeah, that’s who I just said. I said Jake.”
“You said Paul.”
Thinking, I realized that maybe I had, which kind of alarmed and disturbed me for some reason.