Page 33 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

CONFESSIONS OF A VAMPIRE

brENNAN’S PHONE

Dr. Mom

Happy thanksgiving love! Wish you could be here!

Tony

GOBBLE GOBBLE to all my FILTHY NASTY TURKEYS ! I’m thankful to have all you SLUTTY PILGRIM BITCHES in my life!!! Send this to THIRSTY THOTS who deserve to get STUFFED like a TURKEY this HOE-vember!!!

Brennan

Thanks Tony, happy thanksgiving to you too.

brENNAN’S JOURNAL, THE BACK PAGE

Cole Apology

I really like you and liked kissing you and want to date you. You’re beautiful and kind and deserve better than me but

But I’m a vampire and that entails weird things sometimes and you need to know that and be… not okay with it, maybe, but at least, willing to understand.

Waiting for Thanksgiving break to tick by on a mostly empty campus felt like agony, but once Sturbridge was back in full swing and on the downward path toward midterms hell, Brennan steeled himself and headed to the library, which felt like neutral ground, with no (or, less) danger of sucking blood or sucking face.

He paced in front of the library, trying to convince himself to go in.

With the background chatter of stressed students and people entering and exiting in droves, it was still busy with midterm season.

Brennan was, admittedly, nervous. Not the usual weighty anxiety, but the old-fashioned, middle-school-crush, store-bought variety.

Wondering if Cole still liked him back seemed silly in the wake of everything else, but it mattered.

Seeing Cole felt like the only thing that mattered.

God, what was wrong with him? He liked Cole so much it felt unreasonable, and he needed to know if Cole felt it, too. If Cole could see Brennan’s whole picture and still feel it.

Dr. Morris would ask him why he was so afraid of rejection. Nellie would tell him that he had to communicate with Cole if he wanted to move forward. Tony or Mari would tell him to stop being a coward and do it, but with more colorful language.

Weirdly, that one worked. Pull yourself together, Brooks.

He straightened up and went to the door, flung it open, and—

Ran right into a walking stack of boxes. The boxes started to topple but Brennan’s arms shot out reflexively and caught them, scooping up the top one and stabilizing the rest of the pile in the kid’s arms.

It all happened in a second and, with the top box in Brennan’s hands, Cole’s face poked out above the stack, and Brennan forgot to breathe.

“Hey,” Cole said, and he sounded kind of breathless, too.

All of Brennan’s preplanned speeches left from his mind with an audible whoosh.

“Hey,” said Brennan.

“Good catch,” Cole said, flushing. But maybe that was from carrying the stack of boxes, which Brennan realized, glancing at the box in his own hands, were full of heavy textbooks.

“Let me get those,” Brennan said, and scooped up the boxes in his other arm, stacking them on top of the box he already had. The tower of boxes was heavy, but being a vampire came in handy on rare occasions, it seemed.

Cole watched Brennan in something of a daze, eyebrows shooting up at the display of strength. He was definitely blushing now, and not just from exertion. Interesting.

In a more devastating turn of events, Cole was wearing a suit, navy jacket over white shirt with a printed bow tie.

Cole really was unfairly handsome, boyish but angular, eyebrows thick and expressive, unruly curls and old Converse the only part of his usual wardrobe that had made the cut. Was it the light, or did Cole’s hair have a reddish tint?

“Can you, like, not block the door?” a disgruntled voice rose from behind them.

A cluster of students stood a few feet behind them in various degrees of annoyance, and Brennan and Cole sheepishly darted away from the door, lingering outside the library. It was starting to get dark and, as if on cue, the streetlights that lined the path around the quad flickered on.

At least Cole looked half as flustered as Brennan felt, shoving his hands in his pockets and then taking them out again and then fiddling with the sleeve of his jacket while Brennan carried the boxes.

“Where do you want these?” Brennan asked.

Cole directed him to a side storage room around the corner from the front entrance, and Brennan followed him, heaving the boxes up onto the shelf Cole pointed out, feeling Cole’s gaze on him the whole time.

“Thanks,” Cole said.

Without the boxes as a shield, the nerves came back full force. And there was Cole, looking every bit the sexy librarian he was, and in all Brennan’s contingencies of how this might go wrong, he had not accounted for that suit and the way his brain short-circuited.

“What’s with the suit?” Brennan asked. Did not wince, did not facepalm, but it took effort.

“I had an interview for an internship,” Cole said, waving his hand dismissively.

“Oh, how’d that go?”

“Fine, it was good, it’s, you know, kinda stuffy.”

“Right, yeah.”

This was awkward.

Then Cole said, “I’m really glad you came by.

I wanted to see you.” Cole searched Brennan’s face for some response and Brennan didn’t know what his face was doing, but it encouraged the rest of the words to spill out.

“I feel so shitty about what happened with Mari. She’s so insistent and protective, and I don’t know how to say no to her.

And I didn’t know how to talk to you, after I let her say all those awful things about you—”

“Hey, you’re not responsible for what she said.” Not that Brennan could even blame Mari, when her reaction was the most normal response so far.

“But more than that,” Cole insisted, “I fucking missed you. Isn’t that pathetic? I missed having someone to shelve books with, and I missed watching you organize the pamphlets you don’t even let me touch, and I kept finding Twilight memes I wanted to send you but wasn’t sure I was allowed.”

“You can always send me Twilight memes,” Brennan said, because his brain was stuck on I fucking missed you and might be there for a while.

And god, how casually Cole could say something that made Brennan dizzy.

It made him want to be honest, too. Maybe that was why he blurted, “I’m sorry I scared Mari. ” That I’m not normal.

“ No, ” Cole said. “I’m sorry she spoke to you like that. I’ll talk to her. She—you’re—”

Instead of words, Cole reached out and took Brennan’s hand. Brennan was flooded with relief. Somewhere during the conversation, they’d started swaying toward each other like magnets.

“Well, I care about you,” Cole finally admitted. “I know the vampire things are weird and new to you, to us both. But we can figure it out together, yeah?”

“That sounds good,” Brennan managed. It felt like a massive understatement when figure it out together was much more than good. “What—how can I be better?”

Cole rolled his eyes, but there was something so affectionate about it that Brennan warmed instead of getting defensive.

“You don’t have to be so careful around me.”

“I just don’t want to mess this up,” Brennan said, and it came out too honest.

The thing was, Cole deserved for someone to be careful with him.

Cole was so special, and he didn’t even realize it.

Cole was smiling up at him, soft and sappy, and Brennan couldn’t believe that this was his life.

That it could be this easy. That Cole could like him, and Brennan could like Cole, and that could be enough.

“Oh, thank god, Cole! There you are!”

Brennan jerked away from Cole to see the blue-haired librarian darkening the doorway to the storage room, hands on her hips.

“We’re dying in there, what are you doing?” she asked.

Cole tugged at his suit jacket and his cheeks went red. She was raising a brow, somewhere between amused and judgmental, like she had an idea of what Cole might be doing with Brennan alone in a storage closet.

“I—” Cole started, pushing a hand through his hair. “Brennan was helping me carry out some boxes. I’ll be right in. One minute?”

The girl huffed. “Hurry, though. You know I can’t stand crying freshmen.” She disappeared from the doorway with a last meaningful look at Cole.

And they were alone again, but Cole wasn’t smiling anymore, mouth twisted in a frown.

“I really should go. I don’t mean to blow you off—”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re working, I should be leaving.”

They crept toward the exit, Brennan holding open the door for them as they settled in the frame.

“Are you free later tonight?” Cole asked. “I still need to convert you to the magic of music on vinyl. I just—I do want to talk to you.”

And that made Brennan giddy enough to tease, leaning in under the orange glow of the streetlights from outside. “Aw, you wanna talk to me? You might give a boy ideas.”

Cole beamed. “Maybe I want you to get ideas.”

“I might have a few already.”

“Save them,” Cole said. He rolled forward on his toes, rising an inch. “So, you’ll come?”

“I’ll be there.”

A Pamphlet

So You Want to Date a Human: A Vampire’s Guide to Interspecies Relationships and Sex

BY NELLIE ADAMS

Communication Is Key

Vampire or human, the most important part of any relationship is communication, and that takes work from both parties. Talk to your partner, and think about important questions, such as:

What do you want to put into this relationship?

What do you want to get out of this relationship?

What expectations do you have of this relationship?

Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten? One hundred? One thousand?

Do your views and wishes align? What obstacles are there, and how can you overcome them? What compromises are you willing or unwilling to make?

(For more information about communicating your unique needs as a vampire, see “How (and When!) to Have the Vampire Talk With Your Loved Ones.”)

Safe Sex Practice—Frequently Asked Questions

Humans and vampires may look alike, but in addition to fangs, many bodily functions differ. You can read more about the physical changes of a vampire in the pamphlet “Your Vampire Body and You: A Guide to Vampiric Puberty.”