CHAPTER eighteen
A few things about Edward.
One.
He doesn’t eat people. Unless you’re a murdering asshole from Seattle.
Two.
He actually eats animals. He likes bunnies. They taste like clover and sweet green grass and flowers. He likes mountain lions because their blood is rich and thick and tastes like the top of the food chain. He likes bears for the same reason. He likes foxes, the little red ones, because they make him feel slick and sly and somehow invisible.
He hates deer. They taste like dirt.
Three.
The image of him wrestling a bear is simultaneously the scariest and the sexiest thing I’ve ever imagined.
Four.
When he met that guy in the woods that night, in the dark, he hadn’t eaten in sixty-seven days.
Five.
He was starving. Literally.
Six.
There’s this thing called bloodlust. It’s like sex. Like the thrill of skydiving or delivering a baby or injecting yourself with speed. It’s blinding and wicked and completely incredible. It’s unstoppable, and you wouldn’t want to stop it anyway. Bloodlust is what made Edward attack that guy out there. He didn’t want to, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He was hungry and smelled blood - pure, clean, bright blood - and he just couldn’t help it.
Seven.
The blood Edward smelled wasn’t the guy’s blood at all.
It was Alice’s.
“How do you think it all began?” I ask him, leaning up against the shitty car. The dark is creeping in, and the shadows are melting together, and the evening birdsong is starting to slowly fade away. I’m trying to comb through my knotted hair with my fingers because if I don’t do something with my hands, I’m gonna go crazy. I’m pulling out more hair than I am untangling, dropping tufts of curls all around me.
“How did what all begin?”
“Everything. The earth. The sky and the sun.”
“Why?” Edward peers at me through the gloom like he doesn’t trust where I’m heading with this.
“Because I feel really fucking small right now,” I grumble.
“You’re not small. No one is small.” Edward sounds sad when he says it, staring off into the dark again, but I know he’s not seeing the forest, or the trees or the moonlight. He’s seeing a couple lifetimes worth of people and places and moments. “No matter how insignificant a life might seem, every person touches someone. Changes someone. For better or worse.”
“Am I changing you?” I ask.
“I can’t be changed.”
“So you’re changing me, then?”
“Yes.” He sighs before he nods.
“For better? Or worse?”
“I think that’s still up for debate.”
By the time I get home, it’s pitch black and nearly dawn. I stayed out in the woods by that car for a long, long time, Edward staring at me silently while I sat in the rotting leaves wishing that things could be different. Wishing that I could be normal, and he could just be some regular guy instead of this undead version of a person who drank blood to stay alive. Wishing that we didn’t spend what could have easily been considered a first date leaning up against the shitty old car of the guy who probably murdered my sister.
Edward walked me home. Actually, it’s more like he led me through the pitch black forest because I probably would have gotten lost on my own. Before he left, he started to reach for me, and I flinched. I didn’t mean it. It just happened. Like my body wasn’t prepared for anyone to cozy up to it. If I was a forest, I was cold and dark and full of animals with sharp teeth. If I was an ocean, I was the deepest, coldest part, full of icebergs and prehistoric monsters. If I was a castle, I was surrounded by moats, brambles, and dragons that breathed fire.
If I was a girl, I sure didn’t fucking act like it.
He left with his hands in his pockets and his chin on his chest.
I stand on the sidewalk, staring at my humble little home, and even though I know it’s ok, even though I know it’s nearly impossible it could ever happen again, even though I know that Alice is gone and can’t be murdered twice, I don’t want to go in. Everything feels the same. The air. The ground. The sky and stars and universe squashing me into the dirt. Everything feels just like it did that night, and I’m having a hard time separating the two. Then from now. Here from there. That version of me and this version.
This is the moment I decide that maybe I didn’t want to find Alice.
Mostly because I don’t know what I might find.
Dear Self,
The last thing you should be doing right now, the very last thing in the whole entire world you should be doing right now, is falling for a vampire. You probably shouldn’t be falling for anyone, while we’re at it, but a vampire is definitely one of the worst choices you could make.
Who even does that?
You.
You do things like that. Stupid things. Things that could probably get you killed. Or sucked dry. Or worse. I mean, what is eternal damnation, after all? Whatever it is, it’s gotta be kind of miserable and neverending and probably really fucking lonely. What happened when everyone you knew died, leaving you? When the whole world changed, and you either had to keep up or go crazy?
Edward is 107 years old. He’s been through two world wars. There weren’t even cars when he was born. Smallpox was still a thing. Prohibition and the Depression and Revolutions. Electricity and phones and televisions. His family has been dead for a century, so there’s a small part of you that feels bad for him and the empty existence he’s been shuffling through for longer than you’ve even been alive.
Another part, a bigger part, is full to the very brim with curiosity.
How the fuck could this ever even work out? How could a vampire, all stone and teeth and ancient, brittle feelings, ever fall for a human? Is that what is happening here? The way he looks at you, the way he reaches for you and then touches you like you’re the most fragile, breakable, on-the-verge-of-sudden-death thing in his whole existence. It’s sort of sweet and scary and a whole lot of fucking weird. Weird, like you want more, even when you want it to stop. Weird, like you’d eat yourself to death on something you hate the taste of. Like you’d sleep your life away, despite nightmares that will never let up.
Like you’re willing to scrap it all on the very thing that could quite possibly be the worst for you.
And how is a human supposed to love a vampire, anyway? He’s a million times older and probably a thousand times wiser and definitely a hundred times better-looking than you could ever hope to be. He’s the diamond, and you’re just cut plastic. He’s the Rembrandt, and you’re the crummy painting they bolt to the hotel wall. It’s the most uneven situation you could possibly put yourself in. You might never be enough. You might never be even. You’ll always be struggling just to feel equal.
The only way to ever be equal would be to let him turn you into a vampire too.
Which is scary as shit to your feeble human brain.
So what the fuck are you doing? Why are you encouraging this? Why are you lying in your bed at night imagining him wrestling a bear with your hand buried beneath your underwear and your breath all caught up in your lungs? Why are you wondering what it would feel like to be kissed by him? Bitten by him? Absolutely and utterly devoured by him? Pushed up to the point of orgasm or death or maybe even eternal life by whatever was hiding behind his lips?
Why?
Because you’re you, that’s why.
And even you can fantasize about something other than soap.
Sincerely,
You
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AN:
HH and I are slowly but surely plowing through a shit ton of work together, here and in various other documents. Sorry for the delay - we're still here!
On that note, have I mentioned lately that I love her?
Have I mentioned there's no one else above her?
I have?
Well, let me say it again.
I love her. There's no one else. She is my favorite.
Thank you for reading along.
XO
HBM
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XO
HBM