Page 44 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

Cole took a sip of water like he wished it would drown him, but this was neither the first nor last time someone had made that particular mistake.

“History,” Brennan answered. “And sociology, and a minor in English lit—”

“Oh, history, ” said Christopher. “That’s a tough field to get into. Tough degree to make use of.”

“Oh, sure,” said Deb, “Mary Bird from church, her son majored in history and now he works down at the Publix ”—she lowered her voice like she was saying a dirty word—“slicing meats for the deli. ”

“Mom,” Cole tried to scold.

She shook her head, sniffed like he hadn’t spoken. “I can’t imagine it’s very fulfilling.”

“Or lucrative,” agreed Christopher.

Christopher and Deborah McNamara looked like a stock photo portraying 1950s gender roles. Where Cole’s dad wore a business-formal suit and tie, his mom was in a tea-length dress. Where Christopher seemed to wear a permanent scowl, Deb always wore a pleasant smile.

“Cole was smart, choosing something so useful. Business is really so versatile,” Deb said.

“He won’t have trouble getting a job, assuming he actually applies himself,” said Christopher, giving Cole a pointed look that Brennan didn’t care for at all.

Cole shrunk into his seat beside Brennan, and Brennan reached to squeeze his hand under the table.

Cole clung to his fingers with a death grip.

Dinner went on like that, Cole’s parents speaking in passive-aggressive language that left Brennan out of his depth while Cole grew steadily closer to hiding under the table.

As conversation went on, Cole’s voice grew tense, his words short, his grip on Brennan’s fingers tight enough to hurt if Brennan were human. Cole’s jaw did a rippling thing it only did when he was deeply pissed, or deep in thought. Now, it was probably both.

“What exactly do you plan to do with a history degree?” Deb asked pleasantly.

Brennan swallowed down his annoyance, his anxiety, and tried his best to sound like he had his shit together. Like he was hardworking and somewhat intelligent and even halfway deserving of their son.

“Maybe something curatorial, at a museum. But you need a lot more education, or internships, and they’re really selective.”

“Oh, we couldn’t be prouder of Cole for landing his internship for this semester,” Deb said. “He’s been working so hard, haven’t you, baby?”

Brennan blinked and swung his head toward Cole, who was fiddling with the edge of his cloth napkin, studiously avoiding Brennan’s gaze.

“His internship?” Brennan hedged. Cole had mentioned his parents pressuring him about it, but not that he’d gotten one.

“At the Boston branch of my company,” said Christopher. “I had to make some calls, but Cole will prove himself in no time.”

Cole shrugged from where he’d lost another two inches slinking down into his seat. “It’s not a big deal.”

Of course. Cole didn’t want it. But why hadn’t he told him? When had this happened?

“Well, it may not be corner offices and executive assistants yet, but you’ll work your way up,” Christopher continued, oblivious to Cole’s turmoil. “That’s the good thing about business. It’s good old-fashioned, honest hard work.”

They had no idea Cole hated it. His degree, the life waiting for him after college. They didn’t seem to know Cole at all.

“I think the library is pretty honest work, too,” Brennan said, mouth moving faster than his brain. “And Cole’s really good at it.”

“Yes, I’m sure he excels at shelving books. He learned the alphabet in kindergarten with everyone else.” Christopher and Deb tittered together like it was hilarious.

Brennan’s grip tightened around his glass.

“You know, I’ve been at the library my whole time at undergrad,” Cole said, tentative, “and I’ve been thinking I might like to finish off at least this year there, so—”

“But how would you balance that with the internship and school?” Deb asked. “You can’t let your grades fall behind.”

“I know, of course. I guess I thought… maybe I don’t need to do the internship.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Cole,” said Christopher. “Of course you do. It’s the next step if you want to succeed in consulting.”

Cole’s shaking fingers squeezed Brennan’s under the table.

“Maybe I don’t want to do that at all. ”

And, wow, okay. They were doing this now.

“What are you talking about?” asked Deb. “This is your future, baby.”

“I know,” Cole said. “That’s why I thought I could have a say in it. And I’m not—I’m not just saying this, I have thought it through. I know business is not what I want to do and I feel like I was pressured to choose a path.”

“What are you going to do, then?” Christopher demanded.

Cole withered. “I don’t know yet.”

“It doesn’t sound like you thought it through.”

“I thought maybe I would take a gap year. Get a normal job while I figure things out. Work at a coffee shop or something.”

Deb gasped.

“Just for a little while! Or, I dunno, maybe making lattes is fulfilling and I stick with it. Would that really be the worst thing?”

Deb started crying.

“Cole, give it a rest,” said Christopher, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re upsetting your mother.”

“You’re throwing your life away”—Deb sniffled—“like Noah did.”

Cole reared back like he’d been slapped.

Then something magical happened. Cole straightened in his seat, gaining some six inches of height. The defeated frown that had been on his lips all dinner hardened into a line of determination.

“Noah made his choice. And so have I.”

His words hung heavy in the air for a long moment. Across the restaurant, a family erupted into “Happy Birthday.” The whole song dragged by, Deborah and Christopher staring at their son with matching blank expressions.

The restaurant erupted into polite applause for whoever’s birthday. And then, in the relative silence that came after, Deb’s quiet sobs turned to a low moaning wail.

Cole was blinking rapidly, mouth twisting, jaw working. His lip quivered and his hand in Brennan’s slackened.

He stood then, so abruptly that his chair clattered over behind him. “I think maybe,” Cole said, his voice the strongest it had been all evening, “you need some time.”

He turned on his heel and fled.

Brennan spared a moment to realize that most of the restaurant’s staff and patrons were watching their table before he followed Cole’s footsteps.

The cold air was sharp as Brennan emerged from the restaurant. “Cole!” Brennan tried calling, but Cole didn’t stop moving until Brennan had caught up with him and put a hand to his arm, at which point he stopped in his tracks so suddenly he must have been waiting for it.

“Cole,” he said again, but now that he’d caught him, he didn’t know what to say. His heart ached in empathy for everything Cole must be feeling.

Cole stayed facing away for a long moment, shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly.

“Admittedly, that could have gone better,” Brennan tried, his voice soft even as he winced at the words. Why didn’t he know what to say? Cole always knew what to say, but whenever the tables were turned, Brennan didn’t know how to return the favor.

Cole let out a weak little sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob, and his shoulders shook harder.

Then he finally twisted around in a flurry of motion that Brennan barely processed before his arms were full of Cole. Cole buried his face in Brennan’s chest and Brennan’s hands hovered a second before settling on Cole’s back, tugging him close, burying his nose in the scent of his hair.

“It’s okay,” Brennan soothed, but it felt cheap.

“I made a huge mistake,” Cole gasped, the words muffled against Brennan’s shirt. “They’re my family, I can’t lose them.”

“Look at me, Cole. You did nothing wrong.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“Hey, no. It’s your life. It’s on them if they can’t accept the idea of you as a barista. Give them time.”

“But everything was fine, everything was okay and I had to go and ruin it and now they’ll be upset and—”

“ Fuck them being upset. They don’t get to be upset. Their happiness isn’t your problem.”

Brennan wracked his head for something to say that could soothe the hurt riding over Cole in waves.

“You can’t change the way they react, or control the way they feel. It’s their job to figure it out, and it’s your job to be yourself and fuck everyone else!” He paused, wrinkled his nose. “Well, not everyone else, and not literally fuck, for a few reasons.”

Cole snorted a wet laugh and pulled back to look up at Brennan. His eyes were red-rimmed, tears streaking his cheeks.

“I should have told you about the internship,” he said.

Brennan said, “I wouldn’t have been opposed to a bit more warning of what I was walking into.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep me on my toes.” Brennan sighed, hands dropping from Cole’s shoulders to his waist. “It’s part of the charm.”

Cole opened his mouth to respond—

And Brennan’s world underwent a violent twist.

In the distance came people shouting and car horns beeping, followed by an assault on Brennan’s nose by the tangy iron scent of blood. It was so much, so strong, he was nearly bowled over with the force of it.

He’d fed before dinner to avoid any fang-related mishaps, and he’d gotten good enough to not react strongly at small amounts of blood.

But this was something else. This was a lot of blood. More than Brennan had smelled at once since turning.

“Brennan? Are you okay?” Cole’s voice sounded foggy, as if from a distance, and it pulled him back to reality.

Brennan focused on Cole, eyes still puffy but widened in concern. His gaze flickered between Brennan and the distant sounds of shouting. Brennan followed his gaze. There was lots of movement—people gathering near the harbor, or scurrying away as quickly as possible.

“What is it? Are your vampy senses tingling?”

It was such an adorably Cole thing to say that Brennan almost found comfort in it. But something cold clutched his chest, the shaky feeling of anxiety coursing through his veins.

“Come on,” Brennan said, and the cold gripping his chest must have come through in his voice because Cole didn’t ask questions, just took Brennan’s hand.

They approached the mass of people gathering around the edges of the harbor. A few teenagers were filming on their phones, while the crowd watched the water with shock and awe.

Brennan tuned out the noise of an approaching news helicopter, as well as all the gossip behind him. He pushed through the crowd, pulling Cole along by the hand as they shimmied between people like at a rock concert.

When they finally got to the edge, Brennan froze. Cole ran into his back and then squeezed next to him to see what everyone was looking at.

The water was a river of red, bright clouds of what was unmistakably blood, the scent mixing with sea salt and burning Brennan’s nostrils.

Red for a whole expanse of harbor, petering off to black in the distance.

Even if Brennan couldn’t smell it, even if he could fool himself into thinking it was food dye, or some other strange effect, the water was undeniably littered with floating empty plastic blood bags.

His brain spun. If this was what Dom had been doing at the blood cache, then it hadn’t been one blood cache. It had to have been a lot of them. All of them. Was this her plan? To attack the blood supply? If it was, it was a good one. The urban clan’s ability to lay low was dependent on it.

Brennan’s mind was racing faster than he could keep track of with all the dominoes tumbling through his brain of all the ways this was very, very bad.

Cole waited to speak until they were back on the T, the train car empty save for one guy sleeping across a row of seats at the other end.

“I’m guessing this is a vampire thing.” Cole sat across from Brennan on the edge of his seat, drumming his fingers incessantly on his knees, desperate to pace.

“I saw Dom earlier,” Brennan confessed. “Messing with a blood cache near the restaurant.”

Cole did a double take. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why didn’t you say anything about the internship?”

“You’ve had a lot going on!”

“Well, right back at you! I didn’t want to derail your thing.”

Cole laughed dryly. “I would’ve taken vampires over disappointing my parents any day.”

Brennan winced. He might be panicking, but his boyfriend had gone through a tense experience of his own.

He wished he didn’t have to deal with this shit.

He wished he could ignore it, take Cole home and lie in his bed and listen to records and let Cole be as sad as he needed so long as he didn’t do it alone.

He wanted to hold his hand and say supportive things.

He wanted to be normal. He wanted to be a good boyfriend.

But it always came back to this: he was a vampire. Maybe that was all he could be.

“I’m sorry,” Brennan offered weakly.

He finally checked his phone, but there was no response from Sunny or Nellie. He tried each of them again while Cole gradually drooped in his seat, arms crossed and leaning against the window with a crease in his brow like he had a headache building.

“No answer.”

“Then what?”

“I think we should get you back to campus,” Brennan said. “I mean—you’ve had enough drama today. I can look into it.”

“No,” Cole said, whipping around from where he’d curled into himself.

“No, I want to help. This is the perfect distraction. Please, if I go home I’m gonna put on my sad Taylor Swift playlist or watch Love, Simon and cry at the coming-out scene because my mom can’t be Jennifer Garner, so please, please, can we deal with the vampire problem so I don’t have to do that? ”

Brennan squeezed his eyes shut. Whatever Dom had done, she’d done it because Brennan hadn’t stopped her.

She was right there. And he couldn’t do a damn thing.

Still, he didn’t regret for a second staying to support Cole.

But maybe that meant he would never be able to have both things.

To have love, and humanity, while also being part of a vampire clan. He would always have to choose.

He prayed he wasn’t choosing wrong.

“Okay,” Brennan said, reluctant. “I guess there’s one other person we could go to for help.”