Chapter 6 #3
“I didn’t want you to come to my room in case you thought that wasn’t... proper. You know. Guys can pull that ‘come back to my place’ stuff.”
“Hate to tell you, girls can pull that ‘stuff’, too.” Her eyes roamed the room.
It was still furnished in the same style as the lobby, with mass-produced lamps, cheap tables and chairs, and neutral carpeting and paint.
Some touches had made it uniquely Jesse’s.
There was a huge stack of books on the corner desk, a couple of posters taped to the walls.
There was a framed photo by the television with Jesse and a beaming man and woman.
As Jesse put down the bag on the table and shook out her jersey, Sophie’s eyes tried to move in two directions at once. She half-registered his laughter and thanks at her gift, his playful voice telling her he would never “cheat on the Lumberjacks” like that.
The other half of her brain seemed to be zeroing on that photo.
Jesse. Golden-peach skin, almost about the same age as he was now. It was a high school graduation photo she realized as she spotted the cap in his hand.
So he wasn’t always this way. She thought of their pale hands clasped.
The man and woman were his parents. He had his mother’s sparkling blue eyes and his father’s abundance of dark hair.
There was something instantly wrong about the couple. Jesse was in college. The picture shouldn’t have been more than four years old, maybe five at the most.
The mother’s huge hair and floral dress with a big flouncy bow came straight out of the eighties, along with the dad’s suit and tie, his hair fluffed up and gelled ala Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon movie.
“I didn’t get you anything, Soph. I ended up helping some friends of mine move into their new apartment. Are you okay?”
“Yep. Yep, I’m fine.” Sophie hastily redirected her eyes back to his, smile tight. Maybe his parents are really into the eighties.
His blue eyes followed hers as they darted. “The picture,” Jesse said it like a curse.
“It’s okay. My parents are totally unfashionable. My mom refuses to buy anything for full price. Dad tells me when she first came to this country, she and my grandma would try to talk down the cashiers at Wal-Mart and JCPenney,” she giggled nervously.
He didn’t laugh. “You’re too smart. You’re too sweet. If I... I wanted to stop myself, but I...”
Sophie found her hands clenching, mirroring his. “You’re starting to freak me out.”
“I don’t let people get close for a really good reason, Sophie. They’ll leave me when they find out.”
Her eyes turned back to the picture. Pink lips. Spring-gold skin. “You didn’t always look like this.”
“Nope.”
“I don’t care about why you look this way,” she suddenly declared. “I care about you.”
Jesse’s face screwed up in frustration. “I care about you! I care about you a lot and I barely know you.”
“You can get to know me better. It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay,” she whispered, reaching out to stroke his silky hair. He half-shuddered under her touch.
“No one... not in a long time,” he mumbled.
“No one before you,” she confessed.
The tension in the air switched gears, morphing from nervous to sensual. “Did you mean it?” Jesse asked softly, coming closer, stepping into her touch.
“That I love you? Mhm,” Sophie found her voice breathless as she tilted her head up, drinking him in.
“That it doesn’t matter why I look like this?”
“Of course it doesn’t matter. Does it matter to you why I look like this?”
His eyes were weary but hopeful. “Not a bit.”
Lips met. Hands tangled. Arms slid around sides and backs.
Her pocket buzzed angrily.
“One second,” she gasped, yanking her phone out and responding to her mother’s text of, “Everything okay?”
I’m fine, he loves the jersey. Talk to you in the morning!
“Worried parents,” Sophie explained.
“I get that. I’ll walk you back. Oh. You have your car with you. Well, I could—”
“—go back to kissing me?”
THEY MADE OUT ON THE couch, long, searching kisses, hands kneading through hair and massaging necks.
For the first time in her life, Sophie felt truly hot, overheated.
She wanted to take her shirt off, but she didn’t dare do that.
She wondered how Jesse managed to do this without gasping for air or even breaking a sweat.
I am so pitifully unathletic. Even making out is a workout. How can someone who can run up three flights of stairs in sixty seconds get winded sitting down?
The words of a song that her parents often danced to when they thought she was asleep suddenly entered her mind. He takes my breath away... Leaves me breathless.
“Wait,” Jesse pushed her back gently, his own breathing seeming ragged, body still leaning towards hers. “I said light. This isn’t light.”
“I... Well, ‘I love you’ isn’t light, either.” Sophie blinked, genuinely puzzled. “Jesse, I won’t push you to do things you don’t like. I’m new at this, though. Don’t change the key in the middle of the song.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I don’t want to risk...” he stopped.
She blushed. “I get it.” He doesn’t want to risk the things that come along with sex. “In case it matters, for later— we could get tested. I mean, I’ve never... Like I said, there was no one before you, so I’m clean, but we can go get a blood test on campus together. The health center—”
“Stop. Oh, God.” Jesse put his head in his hands. She heard the muffled groan of “blood test” before he pushed himself off the couch. “I’m going to tell you something. You are going to run out of her and probably never want to see me again. Okay?”
Sophie rose, too. “What? No, don’t be silly!”
“I’m not what you think I am.”
Her spine sent a warning zap as he paced away from her. “You’re scaring me.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “Yep. That’s one reason you’ll run.
Before I say it, I want you to know that I meant what I said.
You are beautiful and deserve the best things in the world.
You’re special. I love you. I thought I could pull this off, but I can’t.
Not with you, because I want to be close to you. ”
“Then let’s be close! If you took some vow of celibacy, if you’re some undercover priest, that’s okay! I don’t need to—”
“I’m a vampire.”
Sophie’s throat closed over her protest at once.
Jesse looked at her motionless form and moved to the dormitory door. He opened it softly and returned to the other side of the room. “I’m a vampire.”
“You’re a jerk!” Sophie hissed back.
It was obvious he hadn’t expected that. “What? I’m not! Well, I’m not one on purpose.”
“You are! What the hell is wrong with you? Was this all a game to you, mocking the pale girl? I’ve been called a monster, a ghost, a vampire, a banshee, everything you can think of! I thought you of all people would show a little compassion!”
“Sophie, I do! But the closer we get, the less likely it’ll be that I can keep the secret. I had to tell you.”
“You had to tell me a lie? A fairytale?” Sophie grabbed her stuff hastily. He hung back without trying to stop her. “I’m leaving, but not because you’re a ‘vampire.’ I’m leaving because you’re a massively cruel person. I can’t believe you’d do this to me! Was it fun, leading on the freak?”
Jesse was silent.
“I guess you’ll laugh later,” she spat, struggling into her coat, trying to hold back tears.
“No. I won’t. I would never laugh at you,” Jesse whispered. “I know you don’t believe me, but—”
“Don’t but. There is nothing you could say that would excuse a lie of that — of that magnitude!” she struggled for a word that would encompass the scope of pain and betrayal she felt.
They don’t make words for a lifetime of pain, followed by a few weeks of joy that is crushed right in front of you. Heartbroken is the closest I can get.
“I’m not lying. I wouldn’t lie to you. Everything I’ve said has technically been true because I didn’t want to—”
“Save it! Stop it! Just— stop.” Sophie scrambled out of his room and back to her car in seconds, locking the car door behind her.
With shaking hands, she fumbled for her keys and jammed them in the ignition.
The engine cranked hard and the car screeched haphazardly into the deserted avenue, reeling back to the relative safety of her dorm.
She dragged herself inside, her cello listlessly trailing her with none of her usual care. As soon as she locked the door, she dropped the case and her bags, and let her knees give out.
She curled in a ball, sobbing her heart out, her broken, betrayed heart.
“I’M NOT COMING TO PRACTICE today. I’m sick. I’m sorry.” Sophie hung up the phone. She emailed her other professors, but she left Grigoryan a message on his office voicemail. It was true. She was sick.
Sick of thinking she was going to get to stay happy. Sick of thinking she could change her life, make a friend, that people wouldn’t shit on you.
The phone rang.
It wasn’t Jesse.
That was good. She didn’t need a liar.
It rang again.
Izzy. Aunt Izzy.
Aunt Izzy wouldn’t stop calling until she got an answer. She had mentioned to her “aunt” that she didn’t have early morning classes on Monday, so there was no use pretending that she was in one.
The phone rang a third time. Sophie listlessly answered, dimly aware that if she didn’t, her aunt would notify her cop husband and her overprotective parents. It was a choice between a thirty-second phone call or a visit from campus police.
“Hi,” Sophie murmured, throat raw. “I’m sick, I’m not going to class.”
“Oh! Oh, sweetie! Are you okay? Are you really ‘sick’?”
“I don’t lie,” Sophie answered harshly. Heartsick was a very valid kind of sick.
There was a surprised pause before Aunt Izzy collected herself. “I’m sorry, hon. How bad is it? Do you want me to get in touch with your parents? Do you have a good health center on campus?”
Jesse had lost it when she mentioned getting tested at the health center. Obviously, the idea of sex with her was so repulsive that he made up that truly ludicrous lie. It was easy to check, too.