"Oh. Maybe you could teach me."
Teren looked over to me with wistful eyes and I remembered, once again, how things had changed. Here I was, asking him to teach me a complicated foreign language, when I wasn't even sure if we were still together. Silly me. It's sort of amazing how the brain can block out events, if they're bad enough. But as I watched his eyes drink me in, I remembered our fight, and I remembered why we probably wouldn't make it as a couple. He was a marked man. Death was stalking him and surely if I stayed to close to him, it would stalk me too.
"I would love to teach you someday, Emma."
His voice was quiet, like he understood the unlikeliness of that ever happening. His sad eyes turned back to the road and we made the rest of the sixty mile trip home in absolute silence.
When we got to my house, he wanted to walk me to my door, but I made him stay in the car. That was hard enough, having him at my door would be a near impossible temptation. Because a small part of me wanted to beg him to stay, to come inside and sweep me upstairs, and make me forget everything that was between us. The majority of me knew that was only a patch though, and wouldn't fix anything. It would only make it harder to separate, if that was what we were going to do.
Steeling myself as we sat in his car in the driveway, I looked squarely at him and stated as professionally as I could, "Please don't call or come over. I need time by myself."
He nodded, and his sad eyes glassed over. That nearly broke my resolve. His next sentence kind of did. "May I kiss you goodnight?" This time, I nodded.
That kiss, in the silence of his car, with the blue light from his dashboard splashed across our skin, would remain with me for the rest of my time on this earth. At the moment, it shattered my heart, but upon later reflection, it healed it as well. That one kiss made up my mind about him-it was that powerful. But not yet...that realization came a few lonely nights later.
As the tender warmth of his lips pulled away from me, I swear a piece of me was pulled away as well. I'd never been one to feel dependent on someone else for my own happiness, but gazing at his pale blue eyes, with the barely-there glow that only I could see because only I believed, I knew that I'd never fully be complete in this life without him. But I had so much to think about, and I needed him gone to do it.
I whispered goodbye and grabbed my bag from his trunk. He watched me the entire way, his hands gripping the steering wheel, like he was willing himself to stay in the car. It wasn't until I had my door closed behind me and I heard the electric hum of his car pulling away, that I realized that he never said goodbye to me.
I spent Sunday in bed. I spent Sunday in bed wallowing. I spent Sunday in bed sobbing uncontrollably into my pillow. I knew it was childish, and it wasn't solving any of my problems, but I was allowing myself a day to grieve. I grieved over our ending relationship, the could-be future that never would be, the black-haired, blue-eyed children that we would never raise, the growing old together that we would never do, the dinners we would never eat and the conversations we would never have. I cried over the spectacular sex that we'd never have again and of course, I replayed the last time we'd spent together over and over again, stupidly wishing that I had known it would be the last time, so I could have committed every detail to memory.
Mostly though, I cried for Teren. It's not every day that you hear that someone you care for only has months left to live. Granted, his death was not a permanent one, but it would drastically change things, as death has a tendency to do.
I was crying over the loss of his beautiful heartbeat, when I finally passed out from exhaustion. When I woke up, it was a dreary, rainy Monday morning, like the universe, in some small way, at least felt my pain.
Monday morning at work was like any other Monday morning at work. The people were tired and grumpy from their weekend being over. Clarice was particularly nasty to anyone who didn't seem one hundred and ten percent on their game. And over the thin walls, I could hear whispered conversations of sordid tales, some I'm sure were entirely made up. It was so much like every other Monday that it shocked me. So much had happened to my world that I had forgotten it had only been one weekend. It seemed like months should have passed, and everyone at work should be slightly different.
A grumpy Clarice leaving me with a stack of urgent papers that needed to be copied or faxed or both by noon, reminded me, yet again, how infinitesimal the time away had been. Tracey regaled me with details of her date with Hot Ben which, of course, had become a weekend with Hot Ben. Her blue eyes sparkled while she told me over and over that he was "The One" and they were made for each other; she could feel the lifelong connection already.
I'd heard this speech before. I'd heard this speech several times before, actually. I smiled in all the right places. I nodded, like I was really interested in all the right places. I laughed when she wanted me to and said "how sweet" when she wanted me to. I asked her about the sex, because I could tell she was dying to talk about it. I gave her the encouraging words for her "for certain this time" soul mate, in all the places she wanted to hear them.
Meanwhile, my head was calculating the possible flaws Hot Ben had that Tracey would find irreconcilable in the next three months. Maybe he snored. Maybe he left the toilet seat up. Maybe he spit uncontrollably when he was outside. Maybe he called his mom too much. Maybe he'd lose his magic in bed. Maybe his toes were too long. There was always something with Tracey, something that spoiled the blissfulness of first attraction, and had her dumping the man cold. I was fairly certain that whatever flaws Tracey found in Hot Ben...they paled in comparison to the dilemma I was facing. At least her boyfriend had a pulse.
Finally, her exuberant reminiscing ended and she seemed to notice my mood for the first time, even though I was trying very hard to be upbeat and normal. "You okay? How did the weekend with the In-laws-to-be go?" Her blue eyes narrowed in concern, and while they weren't the same shade as Teren's, they were close enough that my heart physically ached.
"We left Saturday," I stated meekly.
She cringed. "Oh, that bad huh? Were they real monsters or something?"
I inadvertently giggled, which in turn made me cry a little. I dabbed my eyes while she put a hand on my shoulder. "No, they were fine...I guess, but Teren and I kind of broke up."
She immediately hugged me and I swallowed, so no more tears would flow. Really, tear-apalooza all day yesterday was quite enough. "Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry. I thought he was such a good one too. Well, there's always more in this town." She pulled back and got a wide grin over a thought that seemed to suddenly leap into her mind; if she were a cartoon character, a light bulb would have been suspended over her head. "Hey...Ben's got this cousin who's single. He's really not as attractive as Ben, but he's not bad. Want me to set up a double?"
I gave her a very pointed look. That was her fix to my heartache-a "not-bad" cousin?
"Too soon?" She backed off a bit and shook out her pale hair.
I patted the stack of papers on my desk. "I should get back to work." Tracey gave me another encouraging squeeze and then started to turn to leave, but I stopped her. "Trace?" I pointed to the calla lilies wilting on my desk. "Could you throw these out for me?"
"Sure, hun." She grabbed them and took them away with her and I swallowed about five times in a row to settle my emotions. I would not cry anymore today.
And technically I didn't cry anymore that "day." I did however, skip kickboxing. Tracey said Hot Ben was subbing again, and the last thing I needed to see was them all dewy-eyed at each other. I curled myself into a blubbering fetal position on the couch instead. Since it was after five, I was considering that "evening" and at least giving myself kudos for making it that long. Tomorrow was always another shot.
Tomorrow turned out to be my dwelling day. I woke up, put on my work pantsuit and a moderate blouse top-I didn't feel like being ogled by men...well, maybe by one man, but he wasn't currently an option-and dwelled. While I brushed out my hair and pinned half neatly up into a clip, I dwelled. When I ate my breakfast of cream cheese on a toasted blueberry bagel, I dwelled. As Clarice got after me for missing one tiny slip of paper in a finished report, Tracey gushed over her after-hours kickboxing session with Hot Ben, and the coffee pot in the break room leaked all over my conservative top, I dwelled.
I dwelled about the odds. What were the odds that I would run into a vampire-human mix? What were the odds that he'd ask me out and I'd accept a date with a perfect stranger? What were the odds that he'd expose himself to me and I'd sleep with him anyway? What were the odds that his family would adore me...as long as I bore an heir? What were the odds that my mostly human vampire, that I was falling head over heels for, would also be dying...? At least his body was dying anyway.
All of those odds seemed like one in a million to me. I seriously considered buying a lottery ticket on my way home, but honestly, with my luck, I had better odds of being hit by a stray meteorite.
Tuesdays were my dinner with Mom and Ash. I considered baling, but I missed them, and I didn't feel like repeating last night's fetal position anytime soon. I walked into the cafe with my head down. I walked over to their table with my head down. I walked just up to the corner of their table with my head down and then I lifted my chin up and put on my most award-winning smile. Faking it...that was my plan to get through dinner this week.
Unfortunately, I forgot that Ashley could see right through my mediocre acting skills. Her scarred face immediately frowned upon seeing mine. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I automatically spat out, as I sat down beside her.
Now, there is something that happens to most women when asked that very simple question. Our answer, regardless of our true feelings, is almost always the same-nothing-but our bodies' reactions are vastly different. If nothing is truly wrong, nothing happens. However, if something actually is wrong, the eyes betray the tongue and immediately start to water. My traitorous irises were now streaming like Niagara. At least I wasn't in a fetal position.
Ashley instantly put her arms around me and held me close. "What happened?"
As is usually the case when you've dwelled in sorrow for a while...I embellished. "Teren and I are through. We went to his parents' place over the weekend and had a horrid time and we fought constantly and it's just completely over." The story I just spat out actually took about five minutes through all the embarrassing blubbering.
My sister calmly patted my back as I told my slight fable. My mom got right to the point. "You met his parents over the weekend? Why didn't you mention you were doing that last week?"
I cried some more while Ashley interpreted my tears. "Mom, does that matter now? They've broken up."
"They only dated a month," my mom whispered.
I cried harder and sunk my head to the table. God, this was getting beyond ridiculous. My mother seemed to agree, but grudgingly tried soothing me the same as Ashley. Eventually my tears stopped and we resumed our weekly meal. They didn't ask me any personal questions for the rest of the night...thank God.
That evening, I apparently had no tears left, since I went straight to bed and straight to sleep.