Page 71 of My Roommate Is a Vampire

Thisone-personal-question-per-daything was something new we agreed to try after the night we’d stayed up too late watchingBuffy. After he said he wanted to know more about me so he could learn about the modern world, we decided one personal question per day would be a good way to accomplish that.

I knew, on some level at least, that thelearning more about the modern worldbit was just a ruse we were using to get to know each other better as people. But I tried to shut down that line of thinking whenever it cropped up.

I wasn’t quite ready yet to ponder what that meant was happening between us.

With each subsequent question he asked, though, the truth of what we were doing was getting harder to ignore.

Dear Frederick,

I have a lot of favorite foods! Lasagna, chocolate cake, honey nut cheerios, eggs benedict, and chicken noodle soup are probably the top 5.

Also, this doesn’t answer your question, but guess what? I got a job interview today! There’s probably no chance in the world I’ll get the job but it’s still exciting.

Cassie

Dear Cassie,

Wonderful news about the job interview! Why do you think you would not get the position? If it were up to me, I would hire you in a heartbeat (if you will excuse the figure of speech).

Thank you for answering my question about your favorite foods. That helps my understanding of what humans in their 30s enjoy eating in the early twenty-first century. My question for today has to do with color. Specifically: What is your favorite color?

FJF

Dear Frederick,

That’s very kind of you to say you would hire me in a heartbeat. But you can’t mean that. You don’t even know what the job is! It could be something I have zero qualifications for. In fact, it is.

I have two fave colors: carmine (which is a specific shade of red) and indigo. How about you? Do you have a favorite color?

Cassie

Dear Cassie,

This is probably extremely cliché, but my favorite color is red.

And I meant exactly what I said. Iwouldhire you in a heartbeat. For any job.

I still need to think of a good daily question to ask you, but in the meantime I want to let you know that last night while you slept I visited an all-night cafe with Reginald called “Waffle House.” I think you would be proud of how well I managed to order our food andbeverages without either mishap or drawing undue attention to ourselves. I daresay even Reginald was impressed with how fluidly I managed to extract my new credit card from my wallet and pay for everything. (As you may have guessed, impressing Reginald is nearly impossible.)

We did get a few stares from the table of young people adjacent to ours, but I suspect that may have been a side effect of the substances I could smell on them and not due to anything anachronistic Reginald and I were doing. In either case, I am eager to travel to another cafe soon to practice my fledgling skills.

Given that I would not have been able to order that chocolate chip and peanut butter waffle last night without your unending patience with me I wanted to let you know. I couldn’t eat it of course; but it still felt like a small victory.

Yours,

FJF

I picked up the pen that now lived permanently on the kitchen table and pondered what to write in my note back to him.

Sam had just texted me earlier in the day to invite me to a party he and Scott were throwing on Friday evening. Maybe Frederick could come with me. He could practice interfacing with people in public there.

I dashed off a quick note to him before I could talk myself out of it.

Hey Frederick,

Great job at Waffle House. Yeah, I’m sure those kids were only staring at you because they were high as hell (though I may be projecting a little from my own teenage years).

Unrelated—my friend Sam is having some people over Friday night. Do you want to come with me? It could be another opportunity for you to practice your talking with people skills around someone other than me and Reginald.