Chapter 26
I can’t believe you’re calling it a soft launch,” Lorenzo grumbled, his hands slipping under Charlie’s shirt.
“That was in one text!” Charlie protested. They were in a quiet corner of the kitchen, avoiding their guests so Lorenzo could berate Charlie. And grope him.
“Three texts,” he muttered, stroking Charlie’s skin.
“It was the same text to three different people,” Charlie said. “My point is, it is a soft launch.”
Lorenzo had, at long last, agreed to have a party and invite all of his supernatural—well, mostly his clients and acquaintances, and only potentially friends.
It was part of Charlie’s idea for Lorenzo to embrace the idea of community, which he felt was a bit hacky and probably unrealistic, but.
He didn’t hate parties; and he didn’t hate Charlie pushing and prodding him, and taking an interest in his life that felt real.
But a soft launch? “How dare you,” he said, drawing closer to Charlie, intoxicated by his body heat. “I should threaten to rip your throat out just for that.”
“Please,” Charlie whispered, pulling him close.
“Mmmm,” Lorenzo said. “We have people here.”
“I don’t care,” Charlie breathed into Lorenzo’s mouth.
So far, their rudeness aside, the soft-launch-slash-regular-party was actually going well.
Gray had come, thankfully no longer reeking of wolfsbane; so had a few of the succubi Lorenzo had met briefly at their art show; and a few of Kenny’s pack.
The young druid they’d watched bomb his initiation was there—he was a necromancer, apparently; not something particularly welcomed by the nature-worshippers.
Sal was there, the bartender from the demon pub, and he was chatting with one of the werewolves in a way that made Lorenzo think he’d dumped his fae girlfriend after all.
Lorenzo had also invited Roberta, mostly because he’d been worried no one else would show, and she was happily eating most of the finger sandwiches Maggie had helped him make.
It was a bit of a motley crew, but they all seemed to be mingling happily; and Charlie was smiling up at him even as Lorenzo forced his hands to behave and tried to put a respectable amount of distance between them.
The party could have been a total disaster, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Charlie was wearing a collared shirt, but Lorenzo had watched him put it on; he knew his bite mark was there, just below the collar. Charlie had asked Lorenzo to bite him.
He knew a lot of vampires thought of the whole idea of bites between lovers as mere superstition.
But Lorenzo could swear there was a magnetic pull between them that hadn’t been there before.
Charlie was a part of him now, like a hook under his ribs, drawing him close.
This party was a terrible idea, he decided suddenly.
He should have canceled all their plans and kept Charlie close all night, all week, all month.
Isolde cleared her throat loudly, making him realize that she was standing right next to them, by the sink. “Could you two keep it down, please?” she said, sounding irritated.
Lorenzo was mortified. To someone like Isolde, who sensed sexual energies, he and Charlie must have been excruciating. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. It’s just . . . like you’re shouting right next to my ear,” she said, imitating the woman from Clue with the flames on her face.
The image made him smile, and he hid his face in Charlie’s neck while Charlie swatted him away. Isolde winced. “Have you seen Rachel?” she asked in a strained voice.
“No.”
She sighed and wandered away, and Lorenzo took the opportunity to drag Charlie out of the kitchen and to the edge of the living room, so they wouldn’t be at risk of fully humiliating themselves. They got drinks and took in the atmosphere. “So,” Charlie said, grinning. “This is going well.”
“Seems like it.”
“Do you think you should,” he said, and waved a hand vaguely at the room. “Y’know?”
“What?”
“Give a speech?” Charlie asked. “Or something?”
“A speech?” Lorenzo asked, his stomach plummeting.
“Yeah. Just—welcome everyone,” Charlie said. “Tell them why they’re here.”
“I, uh . . .” Lorenzo said.
“You don’t have to,” Charlie said quietly, and he took one of Lorenzo’s hands in his. He instantly felt steadied. “But I think you’d be good at it.”
He sighed, and Charlie leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. From that angle, Lorenzo could see his bite mark on Charlie’s throat below his collar. His cheek was still warm after Charlie pulled away.
It quieted his nerves enough for him to raise his glass, gathering everyone’s attention and waiting for the noise to die down.
“Okay,” he said. “Uh, hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. And, uh, welcome. I don’t . . .”
A dozen faces looked at him expectantly, and he took a calming breath. “I’ve, uh, known most of you for years,” he said. “And. I feel sort of . . . silly . . .”
He trailed off again, but a few feet away, Charlie nodded at him firmly. You can do this.
“I just thought it would be nice to get together a group of—um, well.”
It all sounded so stupid when it was time to say it out loud. He took a deep breath and started again. “It can be a lonely thing, sometimes. Being one of us. We’re not human—though we welcome our human allies.”
Charlie wooed quietly, pumping his fist.
“Um . . . but we’re . . .” He sighed. How to put words to the feeling of being an unaging artifact of foul magic; a silly pretense of immortality, when all his many years had afforded him was a view of how vast it all was, and how insignificant he was in comparison?
“Sometimes, even if you’re a powerful immortal being, or a creature that everyone has read about and whispered about and watched in movies,” he began, cautiously, “it can still be lonely. You can feel like you don’t belong.”
He glanced at Isolde, stone-faced in the back of the room. “Maybe you’re . . . not welcome among your kind.”
Rachel looked lost in thought, staring down into her drink.
“Or maybe you . . . maybe you just feel like you’ve lost your way.”
He swallowed. “Maybe you feel like you live in the shadow of this . . . this idea . . .”
He caught Charlie’s eye again, and then it was just the two of them in the room, Lorenzo’s words safe in the sudden silence, spoken just for Charlie. “This idea of—everything you could be. And you feel like you’re just not doing it right.”
He blinked, and suddenly felt ridiculous; they weren’t alone, and he was being sorrowful and dour, bringing down the mood of the party.
But . . . the guests didn’t seem discouraged.
They were staring at him. Waiting for him.
Listening to him. Other strange creatures like him, coming together in this world that was cruel at best and at worst, indifferent and impossibly empty.
Why shouldn’t he ramble about his sad nonsense and see if anyone else felt the same? Discover if anyone else shared this mournful feeling in his soul that he just couldn’t shake?
Correction, he thought, as he met Charlie’s softly smiling eyes. Had trouble shaking.
“Well . . .” He raised his glass. “Here’s to dealing with all that, with all of you.”
He toasted, and the room joined him. And suddenly he was very glad he’d hosted this silly party.
Charlie bounded over to him and wrapped him in a hug. “That was great!”
“It was stupid,” he mumbled, blushing.
“No, it was perfect,” Charlie said, and leaned in to kiss him again.
Lorenzo wrapped his arms around Charlie and deepened the kiss, even though his rational brain knew he shouldn’t maul him in the middle of a crowded room.
He pulled back and nuzzled at Charlie’s neck, thinking this a fair compromise, before he realized he was snuffling at Charlie’s bite.
It was healing nicely, though the mark was still a lovely, vivid red. His mouth watered.
He wondered if Charlie would be up for another bite tonight—maybe from his leg. He wanted as much of Charlie as he’d give. Charlie looked up at him, his amber eyes dark, and he knew he was thinking the same thing.
Then Charlie stiffened, and Lorenzo pulled back.
He was startled to see Charlie’s face frozen in a horrified grimace.
Lorenzo looked behind him and saw a middle-aged man who’d just arrived to the party; and after a moment, Lorenzo put Charlie’s horror in context and realized who the man must be. “Oh, wow,” he said. “He came.”
Charlie jerked toward him. “What—you—”
Lorenzo frowned. “Didn’t you say you were going to invite your father?”
“I,” Charlie stammered, as his father spotted them and started heading their way. “I didn’t—actually—”
“Oh, is that your dad?” Maggie asked, wandering over. “Lorenzo told me you’d invited him, so I added him to the Facebook group.”
“You made a Facebook events page?” Rachel asked scornfully. “Jesus, you sound a thousand years old.”
“I’m only four hundred. And it’s helpful to give people a heads-up about food allergies and stuff,” Maggie was saying, though Lorenzo had tuned them both out. Charlie looked beyond strange—he was stock-still, almost as if he were frozen in panic.
Maybe Lorenzo had been wrong to push this idea on him.
He had just hated the thought of Charlie feeling as lonesome in his own family as Lorenzo did in the world.
He’d thought maybe they could even fix both things at once, if Charlie brought someone from his own life to this silly little party he’d made Lorenzo throw, in a genuinely sweet attempt by Charlie to fix Lorenzo’s life.
But Charlie did not look happy; in fact, the blood had drained from his face. “You . . .”
“Do you want me to ask him to leave?” Lorenzo asked.
Before Charlie could answer, his father approached them. He looked just like his photo on the UB faculty page—like an older, faded version of Charlie, with curly salt-and-pepper hair at his temples and deep creases around his sharp eyes. He seemed wary as he approached them. “Charles.”