Chapter 7
Igasped as if I’d been slapped.
This was real. This was actually happening.
Robert didn’t want me anymore.
“Olivia?” Liz placed a tentative hand on my arm but took it away mighty fast as I spoke.
“Oh, hell no,” I snarled. “He does not get to hang up on me like that.”
I was going to call that disrespectful jerk back and get some answers. I didn’t consider myself an entitled person, but I felt I was owed an explanation beyond what essentially boiled down to: It is what it is. Deal with it.
The call failed to go through. I tried again. And again.
“What, did Robert and Serena use a burner phone? Did they throw it off a cliff after Robert dumped me?” I seethed.
“It’s a private number,” Liz pointed out, annoying me with her sensibility. I provided her a dour look and she fetched me a glass of wine. She set it down in front of me like a peace offering. “I still can’t believe it.”
I took a few angry gulps. “That makes two of us.” I swiped a tear off my cheek with my sleeve.
Liz sat back in her chair while I pounded wine and felt sorry for myself. When my glass was empty, I poured myself another.
“Man, I really thought Robert was one of the good ones,” she lamented.
“So did I.”
“Do you think it’s possible that Serena is behind this?”
“She obviously is. I mean, she didn’t twist Robert’s arm into leaving me, but she played a big part in our relationship ending.”
Liz shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. Don’t you think it’s kind of a strange coincidence that on the same night Nick was murdered Robert goes missing?”
I snorted bitterly. “What are you suggesting?”
“I have no idea, but she’s a crazy bitch. The timing is weird, is all I’m saying,” Liz said in a you don’t need to bite my head off kind of voice. “What about the signs of struggle you found?”
I took a swig of wine. “I’m sure they did it having sex. She probably waited outside for me to leave and then came in as soon as I was gone. They probably couldn’t wait to tear each other’s clothes off.”
Liz wasn’t buying it. “When have you ever destroyed the living room while getting it on with Robert?”
“It wasn’t exactly destroyed, but that only goes to prove my point. Robert thought I was boring in the sack because we didn’t have wild tornado sex. But Serena’s wild, isn’t she? That lamp-knocking, vampire skank!”
Too lazy (drunk) to go all the way to the bathroom for tissues, I staggered into the kitchen and grabbed a roll of paper towels. I honked my nose into a fistful of them as I sat back down at the kitchen table. Tears and snot were all over my face. What a prize. No wonder Robert dumped me.
“The pathetic thing is how oblivious I was,” I told Liz. “Robert and Serena probably started screwing right after we got back from Scotland.”
“He never gave you any signs that something was off?” she asked, sounding as bewildered as I felt. “You really had no idea?”
“Not a clue. I’m telling you, Liz, I’ve been completely blindsided, though I guess some part of me was always waiting for something like this to happen. Robert is gorgeous. And worldly. And filthy rich. But who am I? Some broke girl from Florida.”
“Crazy is what you are. He was the lucky one to have you, and don’t you dare try to convince yourself otherwise.”
“You’re only saying that because you have to,” I said with a flap of a hand.
“What did I think was going to happen? I can’t even turn into a vampire.
We tried to change me when Robert and I were in Bali, and it didn’t take.
It’s not like he would have forgotten. It’s probably been on his mind ever since. ”
“I thought you said he didn’t care about all that—that you guys could work around you not being vampire.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he’s reconsidered. Robert wouldn’t be the first man in history to change his mind.
It’s not like we signed a contract. He’s allowed to stop loving me.
What I can’t get over is him screwing Serena.
I can’t believe he’d do that to me, especially when he knew how devastated I was over Nick’s cheating.
Why didn’t he just leave me? Why did he have to go and cheat? ”
Liz sipped her blood, then said, “Men are bastards.”
“It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? She’s rich, beautiful, and a va-va-vampire.”
Liz rubbed my back as I broke into a fresh round of sobs.
“I can’t blame him for not wanting to stick around to watch me wither and die.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “You’re in your twenties.”
“Now I am. But what will things be like decades from now?”
I took a sip of wine and winced, feeling queasy. A hangover was no longer a possibility but a certainty. I decided that I didn’t care. Maybe feeling like shit would distract me from the fact that I’d been dumped and would soon be homeless.
“Maybe slow down on the wine there, champ,” Liz said, reaching for the bottle. She went into the kitchen and got me a glass of water, which I chugged down.
“It would be kind of gross,” I prattled on. “Imagine me old and frail, getting it on with Robert. Put yourself in his position. He’d probably be worried about breaking my hip the whole time. Not sexy.”
Liz grimaced and I realized my faux pas.
Me and my big mouth. Liz’s love life mirrored mine.
She, a vampire, was the Robert in the situation, and her human husband, David, was me.
However, unlike me, David had flat-out refused to even consider changing over.
I suspected he might even detest all vampires beyond his wife.
Liz and I had never discussed how she felt about David’s refusal to change.
The topic had never come up in conversation, and I hadn’t wanted to upset her by broaching it.
I had no idea if Liz had ever deliberated on what would happen to her marriage as David aged.
I certainly didn’t want to be the one to put the idea in her head if it hadn’t crossed her mind, as unlikely as that seemed.
“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” I said. “I’m so caught up in my own drama that I haven’t asked how you’re doing.”
She waved the apology away. “Don’t worry about it. Funny thing is that I was going to call you tonight to talk about things.”
“Oh?”
She sighed. “Maybe now isn’t the right time. You’ve got a lot going on. You don’t need me unloading on you about my problems.”
“Honestly? I’d be happy for the distraction,” I said with sincerity. “But, first, can we move to the sofa? I can’t feel my right butt cheek.”
Once we moved into the living room and had gotten comfortable, Liz said, “I can sum everything up with this.” She held up her left hand—her bare left hand.
How hadn’t I noticed it before? “Where’s your ring?”
She provided me a sad smile.
“Are you and David . . . no! Separated?”
“I wish I could say we’ve separated, but I don’t think David is ever coming back.”
“Whoa, wait a minute. David left you?” Well, knock me over with a feather. David worshipped the ground Liz walked on. Or so I’d thought. “But you were, like, The Couple. You guys just got married!”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” she said dryly.
“Sorry, I’m just shocked. I’ll shut up now.” I really was a jackass, wasn’t I? Way to make a girl feel worse.
“Trust me, I can hardly believe it myself,” Liz said with a sad smile. “Things were perfect between us when I was human. I thought we’d be together forever. Everything started to fall apart after I became vampire.”
“In what way?”
“For starters, David has always wanted to be a father. You know that I’ve never been too wild about kids, right? I don’t hate them, but I could take them or leave them.”
“Right. We’re on the same page about that one.” I’d pretty much resigned myself to not having children, being with a vampire. Things might change, though, now that I’d been ditched by Robert.
Liz said, “Back when David and I first started dating, I was undecided about getting involved with him because of the kid thing. I mean, he really wants kids. Every time I’d interact with a kid out in public—like say hello or something—I swear I could feel him sizing me up as a mother.”
“Weird.”
“Totally,” she agreed. “But then as I grew to love David, I started to change my mind. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted kids. But I figured, hey, if it happens, it happens.”
“Sure.”
“But now that I’m vampire, I can’t have kids—it’s physically impossible, right? And it doesn’t upset me in the slightest. It might even make me happy. Like I said, I was on the fence about having kids anyway.”
“But David is bothered,” I gathered.
“Bothered isn’t a strong enough word. He was beside himself when I told him I could no longer get pregnant.”
“What did he think—that you were going to have a vampire baby? How the hell would that even work? You’d have to put blood in its bottle.”
Liz twisted her lips to one side of her mouth. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Maybe he figured it was a problem that would go away if he ignored it long enough.”
“Except my inability to make babies will never go away. It’s outrageous that David would fool himself into believing this was something that would just—” she raised her arms to her side and cocked her head “—work itself out.”
I asked, “You told David about the no baby thing prior to your wedding, right?”
“Of course! I wanted him to enter the marriage fully aware of what he was signing up for.”
“Then this one’s on him, isn’t it?” I pointed out.
“I suggested adoption and even fostering, but he wasn’t having that. He said being an adopted kid these days was hard enough without having a vampire for a mother.”
“Ouch. That’s harsh.”
Liz sighed. “There were other things, too—things maybe David hadn’t thought through before we got married. In all fairness, living with a vampire is hard.”
“You’re telling me.” Sourly, I added, “Looks like I won’t have to worry about that any longer.”
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” she said halfheartedly. “Your situation still might resolve itself.”
I pursed my lips and gave her a dubious look. “Just like yours might.”
“Touché.”
Liz pulled the chenille throw from the back of the sofa and smoothed it over her long legs, more out of residual human habit than coldness. Vampires were impervious to weather and environmental conditions, the only exception being the sun, which would fire-roast them to a crisp.
She said, “It was rough for David having a wife who couldn’t go out in the sun, didn’t eat, and kept bottles of human blood in the fridge. I totally get that.”
“Sure, but it’s kind of—and I hope you don’t mind me saying this—bullshit how quick he was to abandon ship.
Look, you know I love David, but you think he would have given it more time.
You guys have been together for years as boyfriend and girlfriend, but now that you’re a married couple, he bailed on you after a few months?
That’s not cool, especially because it’s not even your fault that you became a vampire.
It’s not like you asked for any of this. ”
Back when she was still human, Liz had bitten a vampire attacker on the arm to defend herself, inadvertently swallowing his blood. Though she’d been killed during the assault, she’d later awakened in the morgue as a vampire. She hadn’t even known vampires were real until she became one.
Liz adjusted the blanket, pulling it up under her arms. “After I became vampire, David and I changed as a couple. He was happy that I’d come back, of course, but we were never the same.
And then we went and got married anyway.
I think it was our desperate way of trying to fix something that was broken beyond repair.
The final nail in the coffin was when David was hospitalized after the VGO break-in. ”
“I’m so sorry, Liz. Maybe it would help things if he knew Nick was dead?”
She shook her head. “Doubt it. David started berating me for being involved with vampires the instant he was released from the hospital. I’m not exaggerating.
He literally started in on me in the hospital parking lot as I was pushing his wheelchair out to the car.
Like I was the one who ordered the VGO to beat him up. ”
This was all news to me. I’d been under the impression that David and Liz were living in domestic bliss. “What did he say?”
She scowled. “That we would never be safe as long as I was vampire. That our life was becoming nothing but endless lies. That he didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the charade.”
“The charade?”
“Well, yeah,” she said in a tone that implied it was obvious.
“Everyone David and I know, barring Robert and Marlena, are human. David’s super-close with his family.
His parents are always putting on barbecues at their place.
All his brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles—basically everyone in his entire family goes to these things.
I had to stop going once I turned vampire because they get together while the sun’s out. ”
“Makes sense. Unless you want to be the one barbecued,” I said, and Liz laughed hollowly.
“Anyway, David had to start making up stories about why I wasn’t going.
The whole ‘she had to work last minute’ excuse can only be used so many times.
He hated it, lying to his family.” She shrugged.
“I guess he took a hard look at the life he was building with me and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. ”
“What is it, national Dump Your Woman month?” I sniped.
“Apparently.”
“Keep talking,” I said, heading to the kitchen pantry. “I’m just grabbing some aspirin. My head is killing me. You want another drink?”
“No, I’m good. I should go soon. I’m sure you’re tired.”
“Don’t be silly,” I assured Liz when I came back.
I popped the aspirin and chugged down another glass of water, which I’d learned was the best way to prevent a hangover.
That and not consuming alcohol to begin with.
“It’s nice having the company. I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight anyway.
I’ve got somebody from the VGO coming tomorrow night to take my blood, so I’m nervous. ”
“You don’t think they’ll send Serena?”
It hadn’t occurred to me. “God, I seriously hope not,” I said with a glower deep enough to hurt my face. “I have no idea who they’ll send. Why would the VGO tell me anything? I’m just a trifling human.”
“If they do send Serena, you should stake her.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
After a moment of silence, Liz asked, “Think you’ll go back to dating human men? Or will you stick with vamps?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I’m so sick of men that I might get a thousand cats and move to Siberia.”
“Now you’re taking things too far,” Liz said with a snort. “At least go somewhere warm with your thousand cats. Hawaii, maybe.”