CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
JULIANA THE DEMON HUNTRESS
It’s not goodbye. In Megna we say, until our next battle.
BUD LEROY
Kind of pessimistic, Jules. You’ve been spending too much time with McKinley.
Vampire Falls. Season one, episode twelve – “Masquerade Brawl”
“I’m so glad I’d written driving tomorrow on my hand, so I’d remember not to do shots,” says Roxy, flashing me faint ink on the back of her hand. “I’d feel like absolute shit right now.”
I glare over her full English, trying not to barf at the smell of brown sauce (is she a middle-aged builder? Gross) and rub my forehead.
“Hmmm,” I manage.
“Do you? Feel like absolute shit, I mean?” she says.
“I do,” confirms another voice.
We both look up at Vivian. She lifts her sunglasses and places them on her head. She may feel like absolute shit, but she does not look like absolute shit. She’s stunning as usual. Makes me feel like absolute shit. I mean, if I didn’t feel like that already.
“Hey,” says Roxy, her face brightening.
Vivian sort of scrunches her nose and smiles at Roxy in greeting. It’s cute. They’re cute.
“Packed and ready to go?” asks Vivian.
I nod. We said goodbye to Dorothy and Dylan after swapping contact details with both of them. Dorothy asked Dylan to drive her to the railway station and he obliged, carrying her luggage out to his hire car. I think she may have been asleep for his big reveal and still not actually know who he is.
The restaurant is nearly empty now and the few that remain scroll through photos of the weekend or look over their signed merch.
I still haven’t told anyone what Damon Van Schwartz said about this being the final season, and I don’t think I ever will.
I know how much people love this show and I can’t be the one to break their hearts.
“Are you leaving now?” I ask, looking at Vivian, then glancing, again, around the restaurant.
“Yeah, but I had to come say bye to you bitches.”
She smiles down at me, and maybe it’s nostalgia for the final convention or the belief that by touching her she might transmit some of her beauty to me, but I stand up and give her a big hug, before sitting down very quickly due to the restaurant spinning of its own accord. Weird.
“Are you driving back with Charlie?” asks Roxy.
“He and Sadie left earlier,” says Vivian, glancing at me. “I got the train here anyway.”
Knowing that Charlie is no longer in the same building as me makes my body overflow with sorrow, and it takes everything I have left not to rest my cheek on the white tablecloth and go to sleep.
“Are you OK, babe?” says Roxy, stroking my hair, as apparently, I didn’t have enough of whatever it was to stop me doing just that.
I nod, and neither of them need to quiz me any further.
Last night was about the convention, about making sure Sadie got the ending she wanted, that we would remember the final night of the final convention being the best ever, so I didn’t really get a chance to talk to Charlie properly.
It was impossible to talk properly over all the singing, and once Sadie had got her confidence, she dragged him up to sing practically every other song of the night.
Every time I looked at him, he was already looking at me, smiling.
I’d planned on saying goodbye this morning.
Saying more than goodbye; saying sorry, and all the things I wanted to say since I lost him.
I pull myself back up and reach into my onesie pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper ripped from my notebook.
I hold it gently in my fingers, careful not to tear or rip it as if I’m holding my very own heart.
I look up and they’re both watching me. I hold it out to Vivian, who frowns but reaches for it.
“If you see Charlie, will you give this to him?”
“Of course,” says Vivian, gently putting it in her bag.
“Thank you,” I say, giving her what I hope is a genuine smile, and not a I-think-I’m-going-to-barf grimace.