Page 23 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends
THE THINGS WE WANT
brENNAN’S PHONE
KeepItSunny
[A group shot in front of a space-station set, with Sunny, Nellie, Brennan, and Dominique shaping their hands like guns in a Charlie’s Angels kind of pose. Sunny and Nellie are glamorous and posing. Brennan and Dom are mid-laugh.]
I never lose. (Except for when I do.)
@laserblazeboston
Nellie
Don’t take it personally! Sunny’s a sore loser. —N
Brennan
Can you promise there won’t be an attempt on my life?
Nellie
Hahahahaha—N
They’d spent the whole train ride melodramatically reenacting the game and laughing over the look of shock on Sunny’s face at being defeated.
When Dom was about to get off at her stop, she had asked, “So, you wanna come get drunk, or not?” And, with the train doors threatening to close, Brennan had gone against every instinct and hopped out after her.
They had won, after all.
They were two drinks in and still slightly damp from running through the pouring rain from the train to Dom’s apartment in Roxbury. They both had been soaked to the bone, but cold no longer seeped into Brennan like before. He had felt the rain wash over him but wasn’t bothered.
She’d led him up three flights of stairs, down a narrow, mildew-scented hallway to a small apartment. Then she’d beelined to a bottle of whiskey and force-fed Brennan two shots before letting him sit at her rackety kitchen table.
The apartment was small, messy, and lived-in in a way that could generously be called cozy.
Stuff covered nearly every surface: dishes were piled in the sink and on the coffee table, papers and unopened letters littered the kitchen counters.
A few had big red stamps on them flagging missing payments.
Dom returned from the fridge with a pint bag of blood. She got to work mixing shots of blood into their drinks, and Brennan reluctantly admitted it was a genius idea.
“You do this a lot?” Brennan asked. “Getting drunk on a Monday with your friendly neighborhood vampire?”
“Getting drunk on a Monday, sure. I usually do it alone, though.”
Brennan grimaced. “Sounds healthy.”
“What’s it matter? We’re never gonna die. It doesn’t matter if I take care of my stupid liver or keep a stupid job or pay my stupid rent.”
“That’s a pretty extreme form of nihilism to adopt.”
“Oh, do not go philosophy-bro on me. I’ll kick you out, I swear to god.”
Brennan lifted his hands in surrender and tried the drink. The sweet tinge of blood warmed his chest at the first sip, a subtle flavor underneath the alcohol that lifted the whole cocktail. Brennan made a note to try spiking his coffee.
“Besides, it’s not nihilism,” Dom said. “It’s not like, nothing matters and everything sucks. Nothing matters, so I can focus on what I care about, and stop giving a fuck about what I don’t. It’s freedom. It’s a chance for a new start.”
“I love that for you,” Brennan said dryly, “but I can’t say I feel the same.”
“Yeah, you don’t exactly give off well-adjusted vibes, to be honest with you.” Dom raised her eyebrows and took a long sip of her drink as if to say, But that’s none of my business!
It was true, but hearing someone say it did not feel great. He tried hard to at least have a mask of normalcy, but he was always being reminded that mask had cracks in it.
After a moment, Dom excused herself to the bathroom, leaving Brennan alone in the living and kitchen area.
Not wanting to snoop but deathly curious, Brennan turned away from the kitchen and crossed to the living area, which had a small TV and a stained, beat-up couch that looked like it had last been clean in the nineties.
The walls were bare except for the photos next to the entryway.
A few were framed, with smaller ones tucked into corners of the frames, but most were pinned and taped up haphazardly in a growing collage.
Brennan scanned the photos, taking them in.
There were Dom and Evelyn posing in front of a roller coaster, Dom looking happier and lighter than he’d ever seen her, her hair still long and wavy before she’d chopped it off.
Evelyn looked like her, the same skin and long hair, the same jut of her nose, the same round face.
There were Dom and Evelyn over and over again, sometimes looking younger and more baby-faced, sometimes closer to the detached-looking girl Brennan knew.
The two at a concert, at a fancy restaurant, at a bowling alley, at the beach.
The younger girl, alone, flipping off the camera and laughing.
In almost all of them, Evelyn wore that pink scrunchie.
At the base of the photo wall was a cardboard box full of more frames, photo albums, and loose papers that Brennan could only assume were more photos. Next to the box, a photo frame was on the floor, face down, a glass shard poking out from beneath.
Curiosity won out and Brennan lifted the frame.
The glass cover of the frame was shattered inward from the center, like it had been struck.
The photo showed Dom and Evelyn, both much younger, with a couple that must have been their parents.
Dom couldn’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen.
It was a posed shot, with forced, closed-lipped smiles and stiff spines. The photo radiated unhappiness.
“Anything interesting?” Dom said, her voice close behind Brennan. He nearly jumped out of his skin and turned around to face her.
“I, uh.” Brennan went to make an excuse, but, “Yeah, a little.”
“You can ask me things. I’m an open book.”
Brennan raised an eyebrow. “Are you? I thought I was a ‘judgmental asshole’ earlier.”
“Oh please, you think I’m a murderer.”
“You did kill someone.”
“And you are a judgmental asshole, so I guess we’re both right.”
For a moment, Dom glared at him over her glass and Brennan wondered if he maybe shouldn’t be alone with a murderous vampire, even if he was one, too. But then Dom snorted a laugh and the tension shattered, and Brennan allowed himself to relax.
They settled on the couch and Dom took the shattered frame from Brennan’s hands, looking down at it.
“You just seem… pretty okay with the vampire thing considering it made you…” Brennan had the social capacity to not say the bite and kill your sister part out loud.
“Let’s get this straight,” Dom said. “I loved my sister more than anything. She was my everything. She was the only good thing that came out of my parents’ shitty existence. And I’m always going to remember—” She stopped, staring back at the picture. “I’m gonna live with what I did forever.”
Maybe Brennan wasn’t the only one terrified of what forever meant for them now.
“You know I can’t even mourn her? Or mention her? Nellie and Sunny swept it under the rug like she never existed at all. You’re so high and mighty, but you have no idea—”
Dom broke off with a shaky sigh, gripping the frame so hard he thought she might break it further.
“But I can’t change that she’s dead, and hating myself won’t bring her back or change the fact that I’m a vampire,” said Dom.
She set the photo face down on the coffee table among a pile of old magazines.
“I’m powerful for the first time in my life.
And she would want that for me. That’s what Travis says.
If vampirism is the only thing that comes of her death, then it has to be a good thing. It has to. Otherwise it’s just…”
“A punishment,” Brennan finished the thought. His chest squeezed unpleasantly, so he shut it up with a long gulp of his drink.
Dom pursed her lips at him. Maybe Brennan was drunk, but this might have been the first time Dom looked at him with understanding instead of contempt. Like they could be on the same team, and not just in laser tag.
“Is that why…” Dom started, speaking carefully. “I mean, why do you hate it so much?”
It seemed so obvious, the question was absurd. It wasn’t in the fucking plans, for one, and it was an unfair, random wrench in what was supposed to be Brennan’s first normal semester. And who would want to be technically dead, surviving on drinking human blood?
Not to mention, it seemed like another thing wrong with him. Another thing that made it feel impossible for him to relate to or communicate with his peers, another slew of symptoms to deal with and problems to solve. He’d always been afraid of being a monster, and now he was one.
But he was afraid if he said that, Dom might not understand.
Or maybe he was afraid she would.
“I guess I mostly miss Italian food,” Brennan said, and finished his drink.