Page 8 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

“Maybe it will be better if we also come up with some stories about our families to really make them stick in each other’s heads.

Like my parents once caught Dante sneaking a toad into his room.

But when they confronted him about it, it turned out that it wasn’t just one toad.

He had twenty-seven toads in his bathroom.

He fancied himself some kind of toad king or something. ”

“What’d your parents do about it?”

“My father ordered him to get rid of them immediately,” Pandora told him. “But my mother has a soft spot for Dante, so she had a pond built in the back garden where he could visit them. They’re still there, all these years later. Well, maybe not them. But their grand-toads maybe.”

Victor gave her a small smile at that and Pandora noticed for the first time that he had a slight dimple in his cheek when he did.

“Dante is the toad king. Got it,” he said, nodding.

“I don’t have any siblings, so I don’t have any toad-king stor-ies.

I’m twenty-nine. Working toward my PhD. Have a best mate named Sebastian.

We met in primary school. We bonded over hating PE.

Have been friends ever since. He lives in Manchester now, but we catch up a lot. ”

“Sebastian the PE-hater. Does he like football?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Fair enough. What about your parents?”

“Both my parents are in education. My mother is a primary school teacher. My father is a secondary school teacher, in maths. What do your parents do?”

“My mother is a … homemaker,” Pandora said, despite her mother never lifting a finger to cook or clean.

“My father is in … business.” It was as true as it could be.

He’d always been good with numbers and investments, always seeming to know which human invention was going to take off and becoming an early investor. Then he’d make a killing and cash out.

It was impressive and obscene the kind of wealth that immortals could amass over the course of their endless lives.

“What about your brother? Does he work?”

“He’s still figuring things out,” Pandora said. It was true enough. She’d never really heard Dante talk about what he wanted for his future. To them, there was truly nothing but time.

“Any other prominent family members to know?”

“I don’t think you’ll be expected to remember any of the others, given how many there are. It’ll be easier to get to know them when you have faces to go with names.”

“True. So, what about hobbies? What do you do when you’re not working at the coffee shop?”

“Mostly, I am reading. Or going to the shops for books. Or library or estate sales to get more books.”

“We have that in common, then,” Victor said, the edges of his lips curving up, making charming little creases form in the corners of his eyes.

“Yeah, I noticed you always have books on you.”

Victor gave her a sheepish look before reaching into his coat pocket and producing a small, well-worn paperback.

Pandora, completely taken by that, pulled her bag off of her shoulder and tugged it open to reveal three well-loved paperbacks.

“May I?” he asked, pointing toward them.

Pandora felt a surge of unease, knowing how many people looked down on romance books, especially ones with scantily-clad models on the cover. But she tamped that down, reminding herself that there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

“Sure,” she said, watching him reach for them all, then flipping through them.

“They make special tape for spines like this,” Victor said when he got to her bodice-ripper with the worn cover.

“Yes! I was going to fix it once I finished it.”

“These books from, what, the eighties, are hard to come by.”

“They are. I lucked upon a whole box of them. Lucy and I have been working our way through them since.”

“Lucy is your co-worker?”

“Technically, she’s my manager. But also my best friend. Though my family hasn’t met her yet, actually. So you and she will have that in common when the time comes.”

“Why not?” Victor flipped the romance novel over to read the blurb on the back.

“Oh, I don’t know. Different schedules, I guess.”

And a millennia-old rivalry.

No biggie.

“So, what about favorite foods and films? Or music?” Pandora asked.

“Foods? All things Italian,” Victor said.

Oh, great. Italian. Where almost every dish was heavily flavored with garlic, which could potentially kill her in large doses.

“I like going to see films based on books I love. Then complain how much better the book was.” Victor’s admission made Pandora smile.

“Always a fun pastime,” she said.

“As for music, I’m afraid I seem to be stuck in the eighties.”

Pandora smiled. “A staple genre.” Her brother was more of the audiophile in her family, having strong feelings on every genre and the best artists within each. While her parents basically thought that anything that postdated Beethoven was basically “noise.”

“What about you?”

“I like the stuff we play at the coffee house. Coffee-house music, I guess. Singer-songwriter stuff. It’s great background music for reading.”

“What is your go-to coffee or tea order?” Victor asked. “Since you already know mine.”

“I like chamomile tea.” She didn’t mention that the calming effect of it worked wonders when her vampire urges were getting a little out of hand.

“Chamomile. Not a caffeine addict, then?”

“Sometimes, but I’m sensitive to it.”

“Working the overnight shift can’t be good for your sleep cycles either,” he said, nodding. “Caffeine would only exacerbate that.”

“Yeah. So, what else should two engaged people know about each other?”

“Do you have any idols?”

She nodded. “Basically, anyone who can actually write. I tried once. I felt like I was typing for ages and ages. I was sure there were five thousand words. At least.”

“How many was it?” Victor asked, lips twitching.

“Two hundred.”

That got an actual laugh out of him, dimple and all.

“I also admire artists,” said Victor. “I have no artistic skills myself. But I often wish I did.”

“OK, what else? Do you drive?”

“I can drive, but I don’t have a car right now. You?”

“No. Pet peeves?”

“Open-mouth gum-chewers,” Victor said with the kind of immediacy that said he really couldn’t stand that.

“People who dog-ear pages in books that don’t belong to them.

Close talkers. People who stop suddenly on the pavement, then act like you’re the problem for ramming into them.

Interruptions when someone is clearly in the middle of something.

Group projects. Meetings that could have been emails or texts.

Too much?” he asked when he caught Pandora smiling at him.

She couldn’t help it, she was charmed by his curmudg-eonly nature.

“Not at all,” she said.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I guess people who are always thinking things were better in the ‘good old days’,” she said, thinking of her parents, of how inflexible they were to new ideas or customs. Especially when it came to human–vampire relations.

“Your parents.” Victor assumed correctly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, in a way, this is you rebelling against that mindset,” he said.

“That’s true,” she agreed. “If we get away with it.”

“Having doubts?”

How could she explain to him that she had a mind full of all of the failed fake-dating plots in the books she’d read? That she could immediately come up with over a hundred ways it could go wrong. And she wasn’t even factoring in the secret-vampire element.

She turned to look up at him, ready to give him assurances she didn’t feel. Which was how she missed the cyclist swerving to avoid something in the cycle lane, making him veer right toward her.

Victor’s arm grabbed her around the lower back, curling her toward him, out of the way, but right up against his body.

Time seemed to stutter and then surge forward all at once at the startling closeness, at the way his nearness overwhelmed her senses.

Pressed against him, she felt the quick thud of his heartbeat against her chest, making Pandora wish her own could echo the same confusion and exhilaration.

Victor’s arms were encircling her as she breathed in that vanilla, leather, and cinnamon scent of his, making her mind a chaotic jumble.

For a second, she didn’t let herself look up, allowing herself be overwhelmed by the warmth radiating from him and the way his peacoat scratched against her cheek.

“You all right?” Victor asked, his voice low and gruff, his breath stirring her hair.

She nodded mutely, words feeling impossible right then.

The world around them slowly resumed its noise and motion, but, in that moment, she was caught in the cocoon of his presence – suddenly, achingly aware of how easily he could affect her, even without trying.

When she finally forced her head to tilt up, she found him tantalizingly close, his features framed by the golden glow of a nearby street light.

The sharp line of his jaw, the slight curve of his lips, parted as though he wanted to say something but hadn’t decided what yet, and his eyes …

They snatched every thought from her mind.

They were an intense, unguarded mix of concern and something else that made her stomach flip-flop.

His gaze seemed to search hers, trying to reassure himself that she was unharmed when she didn’t answer.

But beneath that, she could swear she saw a flicker of heat.

A whooshing sensation thundered in her ears as a comforting warmth enveloped her.

He was close enough for her to see subtle flecks of gold in his irises, to feel his breath whispering over her hair.

For one short, fleeting moment, the world around them blurred back to irrelevance, leaving only him and the sense that this was the first time they were truly seeing each other.

“Careful,” he murmured, voice low, almost soft, and the sound of it sent a shiver down her spine.

She wanted to think of something witty to say, some way to laugh it off. But her thoughts were still tangled into an incoherent mess. All she could manage was a quiet, “Thanks.”

Those charming little creases formed next to his eyes at that, like her reaction amused him. Or – dare she hope – pleased him.

But then, little by little, he released her, making her arms fall from his.

The absence of his nearness was almost startling. The crisp autumn air washed over her, leaving her feeling shaken and unsteady, while Victor lingered for just long enough for Pandora to wonder if he felt the same way too.

“Perhaps we should head back,” he said, gaze sliding away, like he was examining the horizon, seeing things she didn’t.

“OK.” She tried not to allow the disappointment to take root and grow.

But with each awkward, silent stride back toward Luna Bean, it was hopeless. Not only did the roots grow deep, but the vines twisted around her, squeezing until she felt like she might burst.

“So … tomorrow?” Victor asked, his voice after a lengthy silence making her jolt.

“Tomorrow?”

“Second date.”

“Oh, right. Yeah.”

It would be the first time they’d interact in the daylight. Except, of course, she’d checked the forecast. There wasn’t supposed to be any sun. It was going to be a rainy, dreary day. The kind that made her want to curl up with some tea and her romance novels in front of a window.

“Three?” he asked. “I have a lecture until half past two. I can be here shortly after.”

She had no plans, save for her usual shift at the coffee shop later that evening.

“Are we going to just sit here and talk?” she asked, waving back toward Luna Bean.

“No. I’ll plan something,” he said. “It’s … been nice getting to know you, Pandora.”

Then he was turning and striding away.

Taking another piece of her heart with him.