“YOU CAN’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT last night,” I addressed Ryan the next morning as I walked into the kitchen. He stood at the kitchen bench, dressed in black satin boxers and pouring coffee from the drip machine pot into a mug that said ‘I LOVE NY’. I raised my eyebrows in amusement as I read the writing on the mug.
“Tell us what?” Ivy asked from her spot at the kitchen table, biting into a piece of raisin toast. I could practically taste the toast in my own mouth, complete with melted butter, the smell was so overpowering.
I jumped, turning to look at Ivy in frustration. “How do you keep doing that?”
Ivy smiled, not looking up from her newspaper. “It’s what I do, pumpkin.”
You’re the pumpkin, I thought to myself.
Only after midnight, Ryan’s voice responded in my head.
I smiled, even after what had happened the night before. Sometime before I finally fell asleep, I had come to the realization that Ryan probably wouldn’t give our encounter another thought. I mean, the guy was a professional. He probably did girls like me all the time.
At our private joke, Ivy scowled and got up from the table. I looked at her plate to see she had eaten all of her bread and left four perfectly square crusts behind.
“A vampire who doesn’t like her crusts?” I asked, accepting the cup of coffee Ryan had poured for me. My head was absolutely pounding, and I was planning on lots of coffee and plenty of grease to get me going.
“And I’m still big and strong,” Ivy quipped, scraping her leftovers into the bin. She stretched lazily, then put her coffee mug and plate in the dishwasher. I was quickly realizing how anally retentive Ivy was, how much of a clean freak she could be. The striped cushions on the couch had a magical way of being turned every morning so the stripes all ran the same way. I knew this because I kept turning them the other way, to see how long it would take her to notice.
She was starting to remind me of my mother.
Ivy bent down and tied her shoelaces. “I’m going to run down to Santa Monica Pier and back. I won’t be long.”
I scrunched my face up, calculating the rough distance between Ivy’s house and the pier. “That’s, like, forever away!”
Ivy smiled. “What can I say? I’m awesome.”
“And well versed in teenage vocabulary for someone so old,” I agreed.
Ivy didn’t answer, just slammed the front door hard enough to make the walls shake.
“She doesn’t like me very much,” I remarked, taking a mug from the cupboard and pouring myself some coffee.
“Are you kidding?” Ryan replied. “She loves you. This is her being nice.”
“I’d hate to see her bad side,” I remarked.
Ryan just smirked and sipped on his coffee.
I found a cloth and a spray bottle of disinfectant under the sink and squirted some of the cleaner onto the kitchen table, wiping the cloth over the smooth wood surface.
I can’t believe you let her eat breakfast at this table, I thought. We should burn this table.
“I already did that,” Ryan replied, not amused. “Last night.”
“Yeah, well,” I muttered. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
“I’d say she knows about last night,” Ryan said.
“Shut up,” I snapped. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ryan smiled cheekily. “It’s our unmistakable sexual attraction,” he continued, gesturing at himself, then at me. “Your subtle ‘Don’t tell anyone about last night’ probably didn’t help things.”
“Would you just shut up?” I yelled, and without another thought, I threw the spray bottle at his head.
Normally, this wouldn’t have mattered, because Ryan was a vampire and should have moved out of the way with relative ease; and equally, because bottles of cleaning agents are usually stored in plastic bottles. But in this unfortunate case, several factors meant that Ryan was smacked straight in the eye. With a solid glass bottle full of bleach mixed with water—glass that smashed as it collided with his cheekbone. And with bleach that started seeping into the dozens of tiny cuts that littered the left side of his face.
I watched in horror as the bottle smashed into a million tiny pieces, showering the kitchen floor with sharp slivers of glass that sparkled like glitter.
“What was that for?!” Ryan yelled, clutching his bleeding, full–of–bleach eye.
“Oh! Shit!” I yelled, breaking from my trance. I ran over to Ryan, pulling his hands away from his eye, trying to get a better look.
“I am so sorry,” I cried. “I thought you’d catch it!”
More groaning.
“What … what should I do?” I asked pathetically.
“Tweezers,” Ryan grunted. “Get some tweezers.”
I spent the next twenty minutes tweezing glass out of Ryan’s eyeball. It was disgusting. I threw up in the trash halfway through the job. My red wine hangover probably didn’t help matters.
After I had gotten all of the glass out, I bathed Ryan’s eye in warm water, flushing out the bleach while he pouted and sucked a mixture of bourbon and blood through a straw.
“I am so sorry,” I repeated after I had finished, being extra careful not to inhale the smell of his blood–spiked drink. “I swear that was an accident. Who keeps their kitchen cleaner in a glass bottle?”
Ryan shrugged, still frowning. “I should stop treating you like a normal person. Just because you act like one, doesn’t mean you are.”
I sat down at the table, exhausted despite only having been awake for half an hour. “What do you mean?”
Ryan downed the last of his blood infusion and stood up, stepping carefully around pieces of glass to the bench. “You were just a weak girl before. I’m still treating you like that, but you’re strong now. Fast. You may still act the same, but you’re nothing like you were before.”
Before. I pushed every sentimental image out of my mind and focused on the moment I was in. “Where does Ivy keep the vacuum cleaner?” I asked tiredly.
“Get dressed,” Ryan said, pouring himself another coffee. “Don’t worry. I’ll clean this up.”
I looked down at my Blairstown running squad t–shirt and frayed denim shorts. “I am dressed.”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “I’m serious. Go put those skinny jeans and your striped tank on. Our appointment is in –” he glanced at the clock above the microwave “—thirty–seven minutes.”
I didn’t budge. “Appointment where?” And since when do you tell me what to wear?
“UCLA. And I’m just trying to buy us some time so you don’t need to do fifty–three outfit changes before you decide on the jeans and shirt you always wear anyway.”
I jumped out of my chair. “Wait. UCLA?!”
Ryan smirked, amused. “I told you. You were accepted. It’s orientation this morning.”
My exhilaration turned to annoyance. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?!” I yelled, forgetting my coffee and running down the hall to my room. I heard the vacuum sucking up pieces of glass as I skipped into my bathroom. I kicked the bloodied bath mat from the night before into the corner. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
I was changed and with fresh makeup on and in the middle of brushing my teeth when the vacuum stopped. Ryan appeared in the doorway that separated my bathroom from my bedroom.
He saw what I was wearing—black tights, a gray oversized t-shirt and camel–coloured leather boots—and flashed an amused smile.
I spat out a mouthful of toothpaste and tossed my toothbrush back in its holder. Turning to face him, I studied his eye. “How’s it feeling?” I asked, still feeling really bad.
“Probably as good as your neck,” Ryan said, holding my handbag out in front of him. “Come on. We’re running late.”
I glared at him as my neck throbbed on cue. I turned back to the mirror to make sure my long brown waves covered my healing bite mark.
Satisfied, I took my bag and we both went downstairs to the garage. “Which car are we taking?” I asked, glancing between the Merc, the Range Rover and the other car, which had a name I had never heard of. I waited patiently while Ryan rummaged around the garage, looking for car keys.
“My car,” Ryan said. “The black one.”
“What’s a … Bugatti?” I asked, wrinkling my nose up as I looked the black car over.
Ryan appeared next to me, keys in hand, and gestured to the car I’d been asking about. “A Bugatti Veyron,” Ryan said proudly. “Fastest car in the world.”
“Right,” I said, getting into the passenger seat and pulling my seatbelt on. “So I guess we won’t be late?”