Page 18 of Road Trip with a Vampire

He trailed off and took a long pull from his Diet Coke. Earlier, he’d explained that he needed something to take the edge off if he had any hope of enduring this place. He was already on his second, and although I hadn’t noticed him acting drunk , I wondered if I should cut him off.

What did a drunk vampire even look like? I had no idea, but he had been staring at my lips and smiling a lot at things I’d said over dinner when he thought I wasn’t watching. Maybe he’d been off his ass this entire time and I hadn’t realized.

“I think I may not have been a good person before,” he said after he’d drained his glass. His words came out slightly slurred. His eyes—glassy now—fell to my lips again and stayed there a beat too long. “Gosh, you’re pretty.”

My cheeks flamed at his words. My mind shorted out.

He…thought I was pretty?

No. It had to be the Diet Coke.

“Um…well, a lot of vampires aren’t good people,” I said. “Vampires need to drink human blood to survive. It’s kind of hard to do that without doing bad things at least occasionally.”

I tried, and failed, to ignore the way he was still staring at me. Then I took his glass from him to cut him off, watching his full lips form the most adorable pout I’d ever seen when I set it beside my plate.

He shook his head as if to clear it. “Not like that,” he said, sounding more sober now. “Even for a vampire, I worry I may have been…bad.”

I opened my mouth to tell him it was okay if he hadn’t been a good person.

Or at least it would be. That self-forgiveness and new starts were both possible.

That I was living proof of it. But the words wouldn’t come.

He hadn’t asked for my story when we’d set out on this trip.

If I was being honest, I wasn’t ready to share it.

“You sure you still want to go through with this trip?” I asked. “Sometimes the past just holds us back.”

“I can’t know who I am without knowing who I was .” He must have misinterpreted my blank look for confusion, because he added, “I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to understand.”

If only he knew that I understood perfectly.

After the chickens cluck-sang the worst rendition of Elvis’s Don’t Be Cruel I’d ever heard, our server— Sharon , according to her name tag—approached with our bill in one hand and a pot of coffee in the other.

“A refill for the road?” she asked.

The coffee here was garbage, but I didn’t care. We still hadn’t found a hotel for the night. I needed caffeine to stay awake until we did.

“Please,” I said, pushing my mug towards her.

Peter frowned. “You shouldn’t drink so much coffee.”

I bristled at his paternalistic tone. “Why not?”

“You have trouble sleeping,” he said. “Caffeine this late in the evening won’t help.”

I stared at him. I vaguely remembered telling him about my insomnia issues the morning after he’d spent the night at my place. Had I mentioned it since then?

I didn’t think I had.

His eyes were full of a knowing concern I didn’t know what to do with. I looked down at the remaining dregs of my dinner, ignoring the way my cheeks flushed.

“Caffeine doesn’t affect me as much as other people,” I said honestly. “It’ll help me stay awake until we find a hotel.”

“I’m driving tonight. Remember?” Then he added in a quieter voice, “So you can skip the caffeine.”

Sharon chuckled as she poured my refill. “You’ll have trouble finding a hotel near here either way.”

“Why’s that?” I asked. I sipped my coffee, ignoring Peter’s disapproval. It tasted like they’d made it that morning and left it on a burner all day, which was probably exactly what had happened. But I wasn’t about to give Peter the satisfaction of not drinking it.

“Rodeo,” Sharon said, as if that explained everything.

Peter looked at me blankly, then back at our server. “Rodeo?”

“Yep.” Sharon set a handful of creamers on the table.

“For the past thirty years, every second weekend of October we have a big rodeo down at the county fairgrounds. Thousands of people come in from all over for it.” She gestured to the dining area, still packed despite it being past nine in the evening.

“At this hour we’re normally empty. Not during rodeo week, though. ”

My stomach sank. “You really think everything will be booked?”

“There’s a half dozen motels within about twenty miles of here,” she said. “None of them have got vacancies tonight. Next time you drive through this time of year, book in advance.”

There was no way I’d be through here again if I could help it, though there was no need to tell her that.

Before she turned to leave, Sharon added, “Check out the rodeo before you leave town if you can. Buffalo Bruce is making his first appearance in five years. He’s great.” She leaned closer to me and, in a conspiratorial whisper, added, “He’s hot , too.”

Peter started coughing into his hand. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

“Want to go to the rodeo with me and check out the hot cowboy?” I asked Peter innocently.

If he’d looked annoyed before, he looked murderous now. “No.”

Sharon laughed. “Aww, hon, that’s no fair, teasing your boyfriend like that.” She clapped me on the shoulder, though I barely registered it over the way the word boyfriend rang in my head like a bell.

“He’s not my—” I spluttered, but she was already walking away from us, chuckling to herself.

When I turned back to face Peter, my face was on fire.

“That’s…well, I guess that may happen a lot on this trip,” I mumbled, just for something to say.

Peter was meticulously rearranging all the ketchup packets in the dispenser at our table. “Um. What’s going to happen a lot?” His voice remained unnaturally calm, like we’d just been discussing the weather.

I swallowed. “What the waitress said,” I clarified. “People—waitresses, hotel staff, people at rest stops—they may assume we’re a couple.”

He paused his ketchup packet ministrations but still didn’t look at me. “Oh.”

“It makes sense, I suppose. Two people traveling together and all that. I’d likely jump to the same conclusion if I saw us sitting here.

” I was babbling at that point—an old nervous habit I’d never been able to break—but I couldn’t stop.

“But we’re not together,” I added emphatically.

“I mean, yes—technically, we are traveling together. But we’re not together together.

So it doesn’t matter what they assume.” I swallowed, pausing for breath. “Right?”

“Right,” Peter said. And then: “Zelda?”

I swallowed. “Yeah?” I asked, nervously.

One corner of Peter’s mouth lifted in a small smile. “You’ll break that gods-awful mug if you keep squeezing it like that.”

I looked down at my hand, and—sure enough—I was gripping the mug’s handle so hard my knuckles had gone white.

“Oh,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “I…hadn’t noticed.”

Before I could order my hand to relax, Peter covered it with one of his own. Our hands were such a study in contrasts, just like us—hot and cool, small and large. A shiver went through me as he gently pried my hand from the mug—then, without warning, twined his fingers through mine.

“It would have been no great loss if that had broken,” Peter said, eyeing the mug and the cartoon chicken it bore with barely concealed disdain.

We were still holding hands. One of us needed to let go.

Neither of us did. My heart was racing so hard, surely he could hear it from across the table.

“But if it broke, you could cut your hand and hurt yourself.”

His voice was so warm, his dark brown eyes full of what looked like genuine concern.

All around us, people talked animatedly and ate their dinners.

At some point the animatronic chickens started up again, clucking a frankly criminal cover of Baby One More Time to the cheers and groans of the rest of the room.

But I lost track of everything but the press of Peter’s palm against mine and the heated look on his face I would have given anything to parse.

Then, as suddenly as he’d taken my hand, Peter yanked his back like my touch had scalded him. Breaking the spell.

“We…should get going,” he said stiffly, not meeting my eye. Vampires couldn’t blush—but if they could, I wondered if he’d be doing it now.

I certainly was.

“Agreed,” I said. I fumbled for my bag with shaking hands, unwilling to look too closely at what had just happened.

I didn’t want to think about what I might find if I did.