I reach out to take her hand. She pulls my arm and folds her body around it as if she will never let go.
“You're my ideal,” I say. I glance at her and her face is wrapped in a smile. It is impossible to think that anything I could do would make her look like that.
She studies my hand, putting her fingers up to mine. “So where are we really going?”
“To Miller's. I want to take you out on a human date.” She puts our palms together and curls her fingers between mine.
“But you can't eat.”
“I can pretend. For you.”
“And then we're walking on the beach?”
“If you want.” I reach out to brush some hair behind her ear. Her smile widens and her heart picks up.
“It sounds so human. So ordinary. But really romantic.”
I had thought for a long time about what a teenage couple would do on a date. “I am trying to be more human.”
“It's working.” She turns on the radio. I set it to the classical station. Sometimes I miss the music of my human life. The soft instruments, the lush voices that hummed with vocal power.
Pachelbel's Canon shivers through the air.
“I love this song. It always makes me think of weddings,” she says as if she were reading my mind. My skin has started to absorb the heat of her skin. Her scent blows around the car, covering up the scent of the dealership.
The music washes around us, drops of it flowing into our ears, making us quiet for the rest of the way. She is lost in thought that I do not wish to disturb. I hope she is not worried. I test the thread that connects us, pulling it a little to see if she is all right. I just get a buzz from her thoughts. Musings. Nothing bad, nothing good. Just even.
The neon sign over the diner throws orange light onto the hood of the car and onto our skin. She tenses up.
“What if I want them?” Her voice is quiet.
“I will hold your hand. You can fight it.”
“How?”
I consider before answering. “Accept that you want it and move on. The only way to get past it is to go through it.”
“I guess that makes sense.” I bring her hand to my lips.
“If you decide that you need to get out, tell me and we will leave.”
“We need a safe word,” she says, tapping her chin with one finger. “How about wings? No, that's dumb. Um, unicorn? No...” She thinks some more.
“Adore,” I say. She turns to me, smiling slowly.
“Perfect. So if I say that, it means I need to get out and you can go all Spiderman and rescue me.” I still have not seen this Spiderman she talks about, but I nod anyway.
Clicking off the radio, she says, “You’re really going to have pie with me?” I wish I could tell her yes.
“I will sit with you. I will order something so I do not look out of place.” I won't drink it, but perhaps I can give it to Ava.
She has to let go of my hand to get out of the car, but she takes it back as we walk into the diner.
“You're awesome.” Her head burrows against my shoulder and her scent invades me.
“Thank you.” I am not going to debate the status of my awesomeness with her tonight. Tonight we are going to be human — as human as I can get. I want this night for her.
“If we're going to be human, you should open the door for me.” My hand is already going for the handle. I open it and usher her in.
“Thanks.” She tenses as she takes a breath of the diner. I wait for her to say the word or for something in our connection. She exhales.
“I'm fine,” she says. And she is. A little tense, but I know she can handle it. She breathes again, smiling in delight. My Ava-Claire. My strong one.
The diner reeks of fried food, coffee and humans.
“Two?” the hostess at the counter asks us, holding up two fingers.
“Yes,” I say.
She writes something down and hands us a number written on a wooden disk. There are several other people waiting for tables, most of them elderly couples, but there are a few families with children. Ava smiles at a little girl who hides her face in her mother's leg, but peeks back at Ava, who blows up her cheeks. The little girl giggles and hides her face again. I have never seen Ava with children.
The family's number is called, and Ava waves to the little girl who skips off to their table.
“She is so cute.” A little twinge of longing permeates her voice. So small, she is not aware of it, but I hear it.
“You would make a good mother.” She stares at me. I know that look. I have said something she did not expect. This happens less often to me, but it does every now and then.
Her cheeks bloom with red. “I'm a little young to be thinking about that anyway.” She pulls a thread off my shirt and won't look any higher than my chest.
But she’s not too young to think about throwing away her mortality?
A few minutes later the waitress calls our number. We're seated in the last booth at the end of the diner. It's coated in a thin glaze of grease from hundreds of french fries. Ava slides in one side and I go on the other. The menus wait for us, and I feel as if I should pick mine up to keep up appearances.
Ava laughs as I pretend to study the menu. “Don't bother; I've got the whole thing memorized.”
“But this is a human date. We should act like we haven't been here.” There are a lot of things on this menu I had never eaten when I was human. What are sweet potato fries?
“Oh, right.” She picks up her menu and pretends to peruse it. I want to reach for her hands. Our waitress comes over moments later. She's about seventeen, Ava's age, with dyed red hair and a jewel in her nose.
“How are you doing tonight?” She leans on one hip and tosses her head.
“Good,” Ava says.
“Can I start you off with some drinks?” I feel her gaze on me, but it skitters away just as fast. Her heart rate increases, and she starts to let off a scent I've smelled millions of times. Fear.
“Water,” I say.
“I'll have a Sprite.”
“Do you need some more time with the menu or are you ready to order?”
“I'll have a piece of the lemon meringue pie.” The waitress writes it down, leaning as far away from me as possible.
“And for you?” She turns to me, her pen poised. She can sense my otherness and can't meet my eyes, keeping her gaze firmly on the yellow notepad.
“I am fine, thank you.” She nods and scurries away, glad to be away from my presence.
“You could have ordered something,” Ava says, stacking the menus the waitress forgot on the end of the table. “That would have been the human thing to do.”
“I did not want to waste anything.”
“I guess not. You look kind of overdressed for this place.” Her eyes linger on my chest. They have been doing that a lot since I bought the new clothes.
“I dressed for you, not the location.”
“Also my dad,” she points out.
An elderly couple walks by us, taking the booth behind us. He has bad lungs. She has a healing bone in her hip. Still, they wear smiles on their faces. I can almost smell the love of the nearly fifty years they've shared together. I tune out their conversation and focus on Ava.
“Also for him.” I wish I could have washed the clothes before I wore them. They still linger with the scent of the thrift store and their last owner. Ava does not seem to notice or care.
“You look good,” she says, putting her hands on the table.
“How are you?”
“I'm good. It's okay. I thought it was going to be really bad, but there's so much else. It's like there is so much of it that I can't focus on one, so it just doesn't bother me. Does that make sense?”
It did. I had been through it millions of times before. More than I could ever count or remember. That was the biggest challenge being a noctalis. Resisting the urge for blood and finding something to fill your eternity.
“Yes.” I touch her knee
under the table. “What other human things should we do?” I ask. She will have to take the lead tonight.
“Well, we should gaze into each other's eyes and argue about how awesome the other one is.”
“Do you want to do that?” It doesn't sound like something Ava would participate in.
She smiles. “The gazing maybe, but I don't like to do that in public. It's too intimate. Also, it looks weird when two people are staring at each other. By the way, you should probably blink every now and then. And try to, you know, breathe. Or look like it. I'm used to you being so still, but the waitress is already freaked out by you. No offense.”
“None taken.” I never take offense to anything she says. I can see the waitress is hyperaware of me and how different I seem. Ava's father feels it as well, but his wife's approval overwhelms that feeling. Most of the time.
“If we were doing the complete human experience, we'd probably drive your car to a place and park it to make out.” A blush creeps from her neck to her face as she says it.
“Is that what human couples do?” I have seen plenty of teenage couples to know that is what they do. The level of lasciviousness in teenagers today is astonishing.
“Sometimes. Other times they get drunk and stumble around.”
“That I do know about.” I had seen enough of that at the party we attended.
“Yeah, I know.”
The waitress interrupts us by bringing back our drinks. She sloshes some of the water when she sets mine down and hastily tries to mop it up.
“I am so sorry.” She says it several times, as if we haven't heard her. I am familiar with human gestures of nerves. Ava has many of them.
“It is fine,” I say, trying a smile. I don't show teeth, I just lift my lips a little. The waitress won't look at me. She apologizes again and goes to take another order.
“That smile wasn't bad. Still needs work. We need to give you a few different smiles for different situations.”
“I still need to laugh.” I hadn't tried yet. My throat didn't seem capable of making the sound.
“I know. We need to find things that are funny to you. I know you have a sense of humor. I've seen it. Your sarcasm has gotten better.”
“Thank you.” I practice a breath. The air whistles in my lungs. I try just moving my chest in and out. That's better.
“You're welcome.” She reaches out for my hand under the table. I give it to her, squeezing her fingers gently. “I'm happy I'm here with you.” The feeling sloshes through her like a wave. It is good.
“I'm happy to be here with you.” I blink for her.
“Earth-shatteringly happy?” Her smile appears again. I have seen it many times tonight. I never get tired of seeing it.
“Incandescently, earth-shatteringly happy,” I say.
Her fingers trace circles on the back my hand. “I love that word, incandescent.”
“I like it very much, too.”
I let her voice and the feel of her skin absorb into me, wash the smell of the diner away.
The pie arrives, with the tower of white meringue several inches atop the yellow lemon gel. Very pleasing to the eye.
“It's almost too pretty to eat.” She sighs, picking up her fork. She's finished her soda and has some of my water so it looks like I drank it. The waitress gave us two forks, so I pick one up.
“What are you doing?”
“Being human.” The plate moves out of the reach of my fork. Her fingers latch onto it as if holding on for dear life.
“Sorry, but your humanness doesn't extend to having my pie.” I pull my fork back.
“Would you share it with me if I could have it?”
“I've given you my blood, haven't I?” She points her fork at me. As if she's going to stab me with it. I know better than to get between Ava and pie.
“Yes.”
“My blood is almost as valuable as this pie.” She sticks her fork into the very edge of the pie, scooping out a large bite. She brings it to her mouth and rolls her eyes back in ecstasy.
“Is it good?”
Nodding, she swallows and takes another bite.
“Heaven. Absolute heaven.”
I watch her finish the rest of the slice, even scraping the plate to get the last bit of lemon. She licks her fork and puts it down on the plate next to my unused one. Considering for a moment, she folds up her napkin.
“Come here.” She sits up, leaning over the table. I do the same and she meets my lips. I can taste the pie on her breath. The sharp tang of the lemon with the sweet coolness of the meringue.
“There,” she says when our lips part. “Now you've had a taste.” Her smile is nearly as sweet as the pie.
Ava
It was the human thing to do and it felt good. Kissing Peter has always felt good, right. But I'm aware that the kiss could have been our last. I pull back as fast as I can and wait for something bad to happen. Seconds pass.
He licks his lips after our kiss.
“Very good,” he says. Disaster averted, second of the night. It is probably good I didn't tell him how scared I was about going into the diner, but it isn’t bad. The blood kind of mingles with the other smells, creating a delicious aroma that makes me want to eat the air.
The kissing is another matter. It is arrogant of me to think that just one kiss could make him instantly fall in love with me. It hadn't happened yet, and if I couldn't kiss him on this one night, then what was the point? Humans didn't have these problems. And tonight, we were human. Tomorrow we would be a girl and an angel vampire, but not tonight.
I end up paying the bill because Peter doesn't have any money. It's also not really fair for him to pay when I'm the one who consumed both the Sprite and the pie. I offer, once again, to sell some of his things on eBay. He asks me if it's a human thing. I say yes, although it would be impossible to tell. I'm sure there are many noctali selling their priceless antiques online. He reluctantly agrees.
At least that's one thing we've settled. I have hope for other things, too. And more kissing.
I hold Peter's hand again as we drive to the beach. Part of me wants to go to the cemetery, but that wouldn't have been part of human night. People didn't do things like that unless they were really weird or stoned or something. I am the former.
The town beach doesn't open for a few more weeks, so there are no other cars parked outside the closed gate. Peter lifts me up and over as if I'm nothing more than a bag of feathers.
“That wasn't human, but thanks anyway,” I say as he vaults over the gate.
He glances backward. “Should I do it over?”
I laugh. “No, it's fine. I'll overlook it.”
I twist my fingers in his, swinging our hands. He resists at first.
“This is human. Go with it.” He does and I have this image of us skipping. It's not a very masculine image, but it's kind of funny.
When we get to the edge of the beach I tell him we have to take our shoes off, even though the sand is cold.
“It's the human thing to do.”
We stack our shoes on top of a trash can so we can find them on our way back. The sand worms its way between my toes in the moonlight. Dried seaweed scrapes against the soles of my feet, but I've walked barefoot on this beach so many times, my feet are no longer sensitive to the rocks and broken shells. Of course none of this bothers Peter. He strides right into the water. I roll my pants up just in case.
“There are people who swim in the ocean in the middle of the winter,” I say.
“Isn't that dangerous?”
He stands still. The current tugging at him has no chance against an immortal.
“Probably. They do it to raise money for charity. They bring hot tubs and stuff so they can jump right in.” I pull my arms around myself, wishing I'd thought to bring a blanket or extra sweatshirt. Peter throws his jacket at me. I put it on. It's already absorbed some of his smell. Oh, heaven.
“Do you want to do it?” He sounds serious.
I back a
way from an oncoming wave, barely avoiding getting my feet soaked. “Uh, no. That's a crazy human thing to do.”
“I see.” I am not sure he does, but I let it go. “The moonlight is so beautiful on your hair.” And then he says something like that.
“I love you.” The words have a mind of their own. I am powerless to stop them, as if he's cast me under a spell. Most of the time I think he has. I shouldn't have said it.
He looks at me over his shoulder. “I adore you.”
It is hard for me to imagine he could say all those things he felt and have it not turn into love. Part of me wonders if there is a switch that he shuts off. He would walk close to the edge and lean over, but never take that final leap.
I have this theory that it is a strange form of self-preservation, except love is this thing that you can’t plan, can’t stop. It just happens. So I am not absolutely sure. What I am sure about is that I don’t want him to love me until we have broken the bind. It isn’t safe until then.
“I love that you adore me,” I whisper. I feel the need to tell him it is okay if he can’t love me. Adoring me would be enough. So would cherishing me. Such a little word, love. Only four letters. When rearranged, it could also spell vole. Nothing threatening about voles. There's lots that's threatening about love.
“It is getting late,” Peter says when we've walked the length of the beach twice. I'm cold, but I've Peter's jacket plus my own, so I'll live.
“I know. You said you'd have me back by 9. Nice job with that, by the way. Getting me in early is a good way to earn brownie points with my dad.” I bump him with my shoulder.
“I thought it would stand me in good stead.” We walk with our shoulders touching. I'd like to get closer, but I don't want to be too greedy.
“Well, I'm sure by the time you take me back Mom will have talked him into being more in love with you than I am.”
“I do not adore your father.” This induces a laugh from me that shatters the calm of the night.