Page 7 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

“Oh, a B, the horror —” said Tony.

“Wait, where is it now?” asked Cole.

“Proudly in Epsilon Epsilon Phi’s trophy room, god help him,” Tony said, and made a sign of the cross over his chest.

Brennan remembered to breathe again with the spotlight off him, glad to let Tony recollect his shenanigans as long as he wanted. But of course—

“Anyways, what about you, Brennan?” Tony asked.

On one hand, he appreciated that Tony was trying to include him. On the other hand, fuck.

Brennan floundered under the weighted gazes from all three of them. The alcohol sloshed in his stomach in warning.

“I stole the key to the top floor of Smith,” Brennan said, and it wasn’t a lie.

Smith’s tenth floor was a fancy event space with floor-to-ceiling windows and open spaces for tables or dancing.

It was mostly reserved for fancy highbrow events for big donors, which meant the best view on campus was eternally locked and restricted. “I used to go there to hang out.”

To stargaze and people watch and get away from everything on campus that left him feeling overwhelmed and alone. He’d bring snacks and drinks, sitting on the floor and watching campus from above, making up stories about the people who passed. He didn’t feel so lonely that way.

“Not anymore?”

Brennan blinked away the memory. Cole’s head was tilted with the question, and he wasn’t watching Brennan like it was a test anymore. He seemed interested. Maybe a little sad.

Suddenly Brennan regretted saying anything, regretted having tried to hang out with them at all. It was far from the first time Brennan had started what sounded like a fun story only for it to turn dark and depressing and uniquely embarrassing.

“I got caught last semester, they took the key back,” Brennan said, simple, like it was no big deal.

But it had actually been a big deal to him, at the time.

The top floor had been his safe space to think and be alone and let the vastness of the universe comfort him instead of scare him.

But he’d slipped up and ran into a janitor, and that was the end.

Maybe two weeks after that, he went to the woods to the bridge to nowhere and made the big attempt.

“Too bad, that would’ve made a great party spot,” Tony said.

Mari jumped in with her next Never Have I Ever, but her voice went out of focus as Brennan’s thoughts turned loud and fast and the world tilted sideways.

It was the classic, unfortunately familiar feeling of folding into himself: spiraling.

The physical sensation of depression and anxiety washed over him like a wave.

This was ridiculous. What was he doing here, playing these games and pretending these people were his friends, pretending he could be normal? He wasn’t normal before he became a bloodsucking monster, so he sure as hell wasn’t now. Brennan knew it. Cole knew it, too.

Brennan set his drink down when he realized his hands were shaking. The ringing in his ears turned louder. He stood up from the floor and barely mumbled an “excuse me” before fleeing the room.

Coffee, he thought, coffee was a distraction.

Coffee helped. Step-by-step helped. He could hide himself in the kitchen, blessedly out of view from the others but not separated by a door.

He heard some whispered concern but couldn’t let himself focus on it.

Mari and Tony were probably lamenting what a weirdo he was.

Cole was probably telling them everything, that he was a monster, that he had the audacity to think he could handle being a bloodsucking creature on his own—

Coffee filter, he commanded. His limbs didn’t want to cooperate.

The absolute worst thing—the thing he refused to think about or process until he was confronted with undeniable evidence that it was true: vampires tended to be immortal. That was their whole schtick. They drank blood in exchange for endless life.

Endless.

Life.

He moved for the filter, put it in the machine.

The world is big, filled with billions of people, all with a finite time on earth to make their lives matter.

It was something that kept Brennan awake at night through the end of high school and most of college so far, when the heavy weight of understanding his place in the world settled over him in a dark curtain.

What did anything he did matter?

Coffee grounds from the cabinet, lid off.

This was the problem with majoring in history. He knew how much got lost in it. He would, too. Another unremarkable person in a sea of billions that exist now, have existed, will exist.

How was he supposed to do that forever ? He wasn’t even sure he wanted to commit to the normal seventy-odd years.

He dropped the canister. Coffee grounds spilled across the tile floor. Brennan stared at the mess, immobile. He didn’t feel capable of cleaning up. No, easier to stand there, staring, letting his head go straight into that particular void of his brain he called Do Not Fucking Touch .

He realized, a beat too late to be helpful, that he wasn’t breathing, and, and, maybe vampires didn’t need to breathe, Brennan had yet to test that theory, but, but, Brennan, he definitely needed to breathe, right then, probably, for his sanity maybe, but he couldn’t.

“Brennan?”

Great, fucking fantastic, really. Him a-fucking- gain . Cole kept stumbling into Brennan’s worst moments, all concerned and charming and possibly lying his ass off.

He must have thought Brennan was a monster. He had to, the way he saw him that morning, blood on his lips.

He shook his head, shaking off his immobilization. “I’m sorry, I—” Brennan gasped. “I can’t be here right now.”

“I wanted to see if you were okay—”

“I want it on the record that you have, consistently, the worst fucking timing,” Brennan spat.

He spun around, moving for the door and not letting himself look at Cole as he pushed past to make his escape.

“Hey, breathe,” Cole said, reaching out to touch Brennan’s arm, to stop him, and Brennan flinched away like his touch would burn him, and it would, right then, to his fucking core—

“Just don’t, Cole,” Brennan said, and he didn’t think he’d ever heard his voice go that low and cold before. He fucking hated it.

But it got Cole out of his way.

He didn’t remember slamming the apartment door behind him, or going out into the evening air, but somehow he ended up riding out the rest of his panic attack against the side of the building, tucked out of sight, running through every grounding method Dr. Morris had ever taught him.

Things he could see: a bird in a tree, like the ones he’d been drinking, and a couple laughing across the street, people who would become dust while Brennan lived on.

Things he could hear: too much. The laughter, and the birds, but also a dozen TVs and Bluetooth speakers in the surrounding apartments, all buzzing in his ears.

Okay, Dr. Morris would say he could recite something, a poem, maybe, but the only thing he could think of was the part of a poem that goes, Nobody’s going to save you.…

He leaned weakly against the brick wall.

He’d survived worse.

The good news was, Brennan thought weakly, six months ago something like this would have driven Brennan straight to thoughts of doing something destructive. Anxiety never went away, the too-logical voice of Dr. Morris reminded him. It was okay to have attacks, to have bad days.

But it didn’t stop the wave of exhaustion that came over him as soon as he could breathe again, collapsing to sit against the wall, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. He needed a nap. Or the coffee he’d set out for initially.

He sighed, almost huffing out a laugh at the whole situation.

He was such an asshole, he realized, now in the post-panic-attack clarity that always came with that deep shame.

That feeling that something was wrong with him, that he broke down in the first place, that he let himself yell at Cole who, really, outside of Brennan pointing fingers at him, had done nothing but try to help.

He should give Cole some space after all this.

You can only see a person at rock bottom so many times before losing patience, and surely Cole was at the end of his.

Brennan would have to avoid him at the library.

And, well, he could avoid Bachelorette Night.

Cole would be glad for it, and Tony and Mari had little reason to care either way.

He considered going for a long walk or waiting until everyone left before returning to his room with his tail between his legs.

But the exhaustion of all the panic and anxiety Brennan had been shoving down for a week (fuck it, his whole life ) was catching up to him, and the call to collapse in his bed was strong.

Or maybe, the Dr. Morris in his mind coaxed, you could apologize instead of running away.

Brennan hated the Dr. Morris in his mind.

He pushed up from the ground, dusting off his jeans and going up the porch steps. Just as he reached for the door, it swung open, nearly smacking Brennan in the face.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Cole said from the doorway, because of course it was him. His hands, one wrapped around a pack of cigarettes, fluttered in the air around Brennan, like he wanted to make sure he was okay but was afraid to touch him.

“No, you’re fine, I was—I mean,” Brennan said helplessly. His brain was fried, okay? Which was why he followed that up by blurting, “Did you send that text?”

Cole blinked. “What text?”

He reached for his phone, tapped until the text was on-screen, and held it out to Cole.

Cole leaned forward, his free hand moving to the phone to stabilize it.

His fingers brushed Brennan’s, and that made something horribly fluttery go off in his chest. Cole’s eyes scanned the screen, the blue light illuminating his freckles.

It seemed unfair that he looked so handsome while staring at something that could ruin Brennan’s life.