Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
BOZ
Being a math whiz wasn't the prestigious gift my parents' friends said it would be.
"You'll have no shortage of job offers!" One had raved.
"You'll have a stable career, none of the uncertainty that goes along with an obscure major," another said.
Meh. I was about to embark on my first job out of college, and maybe the search was easier for me than it was for my liberal arts friends, but I wouldn't have called it easy. Nothing about MIT was easy. Many of my classmates were savants, and I envied them. They knew the answers before I did, and with a lot less processing.
Soft skills, though … that's where I suffered. I was about as blunt as a goat eating a Volkswagen dashboard. I struck out more often than I scored a guy's ph one number. Even when I attained the coveted digits, they rarely texted me back and usually ghosted me before the first date.
It was me, not them. I didn't know how to break through to the person on the other side of the phone screen, not even to get laid.
That's how I ended my college career at MIT as a virgin. There were plenty of women who wanted to pop my cherry, but when I approached guys, more often than not, I wasn't what they wanted. Nobody seemed to want a virgin top, and I was too grumpy to be the ideal bottom.
Well. The few times I thought I'd negotiated hookups, they took one look at me and ran. Fuck those guys. Except I wanted to and couldn't.
That's how I ended up at a vampire bar in Boston with two guys I thought were my friends. They'd been to the VIP room and said it was as good a place as any, and paying for it would guarantee I got a wonderful ride and the guy wouldn't ask questions.
Until he did, the fucker. How was this my life? I felt sorry for myself as I downed my third drink. Come morning, I would probably puke it all up. I'd started with a pina colada, switched to a rum and coke to numb my feelings, and switched again to a gin and tonic to try to entice a silver fox vampire at the bar with no luck.
Then this creepy vampire showed up at closing time. He stood far too close when he shared he'd overheard the conversation in the VIP line and wanted to help.
The vampire I would have voted least likely to intervene did so at the perfect moment. The VIP room Santa told the vampire to take a hike and tossed him outside. I thought the vamp would rip the door off its hinges in retaliation, but nothing happened. Then Santa disappeared, and I still had nowhere to go.
He surprised me when he returned. After hours, he looked completely different from the hot elf of my dreams. He wore a Grinch shirt and jeans that left little to the imagination. I wanted to fall to my knees, pull his cock back out, and worship it, even knowing where it had been all night. Vampires couldn't carry human diseases, which was the main reason I'd agreed to this trip.
Even when he called me an asshole, he was a better friend to me than the jerks who'd left me at Fanglory. And his car … holy fuck, a '66 Chevelle, and he was the original owner. I'd wanted to ask him how many miles she had on her, but I didn't want to know. If she were mine, I'd baby her, but he'd owned her before anyone knew she'd be collectible, and I bet some of those miles were harder than today's city driving.
No, I wasn't in love with his car, or anything about him, but when he asked me for my number, I gave it to him. Especially when he offered me exactly what I wanted. He said he wouldn't give me a quick fuck, either. He wanted to take me out, show me a good time, and then have mind-blowing sex.
I wanted him too much already. He was too good to be true, and he wasn't boyfriend material.
Still, I had a stigma about sex. I needed to break its hold over me, so I had something to offer a casual hookup. Eventually, I wanted a boyfriend, but I'd settle for some confidence so my hookups didn't run at first sight.
I texted Santa once I felt human again. Drinking always seemed like a fun idea until I puked the next morning. I swore to never do it again, same as always.
"Feeling like shit. Never drinking again. How's your day going?"
I assumed Santa had ghosted me when he didn't respond after a few hours. I'd forgotten the whole vampire thing, though. Once the sun went down, my phone pinged with a text.
"Day just started. If it makes you feel any better, alcohol makes me feel the same way, but for different reasons. How do you feel now?"
How did I feel? Santa cared more about me than my friends did. They'd finally texted me this morning to see where I spent the night and to laugh at me because I was a lightweight and still a virgin.
"Better, thanks."
"When are you moving out of the dorms?"
"This weekend." I had planned on moving all my stuff home after finals.
"Do you have a place?"
"Moving in with my parents in Somerville." I planned to stay only for a few months until I got my shit together and found a place of my own. Still, it stung to admit I had nowhere else to go to the vampire who owned his own apartment building and didn't have to pay rent.
"I have a vacancy. My building is five blocks from Imperial Accounting."
"How much?"
"I'll cut a deal for anyone working for the empress."
Holy shit, what? "That's a joke, right? There is no empress."
"I assure you, she's very real and scary as fuck. I'll tell you about her during our nighttime tour."
This was moving way too fast. I stared at my phone for a few minutes, wondering if I should cut off all contact with him. For all I knew, he wanted to turn me into a vampire sex worker at the club, or maybe a day servant.
"I'm not going to turn you into a vampire," Santa texted a few minutes later.
While I contemplated that statement, my phone pinged again.
"I'm not recruiting you to work at Fanglory, and I already have an apartment manager ."
"Are you psychic or something?"
The response took longer than the others. He probably paused to laugh at me.
"Some vampires are psychic, including the empress. I am not one of them."
I don't know why I believed him, but I did. "Okay."
"Okay, you're moving in?"
"Okay, I'm glad you won't turn me into a vampire, and you're not recruiting me."
"But … "
Santa already knew me too well. I wanted to live on my own, and Santa had a vacancy. Might as well ask more questions.
"How much?"
Santa didn't lowball me, but it wasn't too expensive. The cost per month was a little over a quarter of my monthly take home pay from Imperial Accounting.
"What's the room like?"
He sent pictures worth far more than a thousand words. The building was an old brick walk-up, five stories, but inside, the rooms looked modern and pristine. I wouldn't be sharing a cupboard with a rat colony, unlike my best friend from high school, who had moved to Long Island after graduation the previous spring.
"Third floor," Santa added. "No elevator, but you're in good shape."
"Is that your way of flirting with me?"
"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."
I was still laughing at his honesty when his next text came through.
"Do you want the apartment or not? I have thirty minutes to list it on apartments dot com or I miss the window for their weekly email."
"That's a scarcity marketing tactic," I replied.
"Is it working?"
I'd never even spoken to a vampire before last night, that I knew of. Here I was, considering moving in with one, or moving into the building he owned.
"Do you live there?" Okay, so maybe I was flirting, too.
"Maybe."
My phone rang a moment later.
"Dude, nobody talks on these things anymore," I said in lieu of greeting. "Wait. Can you hypnotize me with your voice or something?"
He laughed. "Hello to you, too. If I had mind control, I wouldn't need to call you. You would already be here."
"Seriously, is this your version of flirting?" My tongue felt too large for my overheated mouth .
"Is it working?"
He laughed again, and my chest felt light.
"Yes," he continued, "I live in the building, along with three other vampires and ten humans. Two humans work for the council. The other eight work at the club. One vampire is an overnight dock authority for Massport. The other two work at another vampire club in town." He paused. "You're too quiet."
"I'm still trying to process a two-hundred-year-old vampire flirting with me." I didn't know where those words came from, since they managed to bypass every fucking filter I'd ever put in place.
"Do you have a car?"
"No."
"Trains take forever and vampires are an impatient lot to work for. Didn't anyone offer to find you housing when you got the job?"
"They were fine with me living at home."
"You haven't met your vampire employers yet." Santa's statement implied he had met them, and that they would have a different story from the human recruiter who said I could live at home.
"I haven't."
"When is your last final?"
"Thursday at two."
"Come to the bar around seven. I'll buy you a celebratory drink and introduce you to Colette. She's a regular and a manager at Imperial Accounting. "
"Please don't mention drinks," I said as my stomach lurched. "It will be awesome to meet someone from the office before I start, though."
"Don't worry about the trains. I'll drive you back to your dorm."
"Thanks," I said. "And thanks again for last night. I don't know what I would have done."
My friends had taken my wallet under the ruse of keeping it safe while I was in the VIP room, and then they'd left with it, along with my bus pass, my credit cards, and everything else. I still had access to my ride share apps on my phone, but getting a ride from Boston to Cambridge in the middle of the night was bound to cost more than I could afford, at least for the first few months.
"I need to get my wallet back from Jared," I said.
"Which one is he? Fauxhawk or flattop?"
"Fauxhawk."
"Good luck with that. You might want to cancel all your credit cards and scrub your information off the dark web, if he had your wallet."
Wow, and I thought I was paranoid. "I don't know anyone who has access to the dark web."
"What are they teaching you at that brainy school of yours?"
"Business Analytics," I reminded him. "Not hacking."
"I know a guy. What's your full name? "
I laughed. He was persistent, I'd give him that. "Blaine Bostwick."
"Blaine?" Santa laughed. "Yep, I'd go by Boz, too, if my parents had graced me with that shit stain."
My parents and professors called me Blaine, but they were the only ones. I'd taken the job at Imperial Accounting because they never once called me by the wrong name, even when I'd included my full name on my resume.
"Your parents didn't name you Santa," I said, fishing for a returned favor.
"Nope. I did. That's the only name that counts now. Gotta get ready for work, sweetness. I'll see you Thursday."
The call ended before I could utter goodbye. "Touchy subject," I said to no one. I studied my phone screen, wondering if any of that conversation had happened, or if I had moved on to the hallucination phase of my hangover.
The call log said it was real. Santa really wanted to rent an apartment to me, a complete stranger, even after my asshole behavior at the club. I still expected him to ghost me, or maybe send a follow-up text saying he changed his mind.
A moment later, my phone pinged with the apartment address and a link to a tenant information form. I scrolled through it. Everything seemed legit, including a space for me to upload the front and back of my driver's license. Fuck.
I grabbed my jacket from the hook on the outside of my closet door and hooked my book bag over one shoulder. Time to retrieve my wallet from my shitty friends.