Chapter 6 Rowan #2
I forgot about my sorbet until it began to drip over my fingers, lukewarm and sticky along my skin. I probably would have ignored it completely if it wasn’t for my makeup allowing me to look like just a regular human.
Shit!
I hurriedly wiped it off with some of the napkins I’d shoved in my pocket when I bought the ice cream, then heaved a sigh of relief when I saw that everything was fine.
After so many years of walking among humans, I’d learned to seal my artificial skin color, but there was only so much one could reasonably expect from foundation.
Cosmetics had come a long way since I’d started using them in the fifties, and while I didn’t need them to get by, they made everything easier.
Especially when I was trying to appear “normal” with my lovely date.
I wasn’t an idiot about it; I knew there was a time limit on such a thing.
But I never expected my first date with a human to go so well.
Clearly, I was getting ahead of myself. We’d only spent about an hour together. Not exactly the stuff of legends. And I was far too old for any sort of Romeo and Juliet situation.
“You okay?” Naomi asked from beside me, all smiles. “Do you need some more napkins?”
“Nah, I’m all right. Just startled myself,” I said, laughing lightly.
I knew from experience that someone from the coven would roll their eyes at me and maybe huff some sort of dismissal, but the beautiful woman beside me just chuckled along with me.
Even being undead, I was well aware that my cheeks would be hurting from smiling so much.
Another quick glance at my hand told me I was fine. Perhaps I should have worn gloves instead. Then again, that would have been a little conspicuous with the scorching summer we’d been having.
“You really got lost in the music, huh?”
From anybody else I knew, aside from Iko, that might have been insulting or a backhanded compliment. But Naomi seemed pleased by the idea.
“I did indeed.”
“I wish I took more time to listen to live music,” she said, leaning forward, supporting that cute, rounded chin of hers in her hand. “It really is an experience unto itself.”
It was like she was reading from a script directly from my mind, and it was difficult to hide my enthusiasm. But then, why was my first instinct to hide my enthusiasm? So far Naomi had been nothing but kind and supportive.
How long had I been cutting myself into smaller and duller pieces, and it still wasn’t enough for other vamps? I couldn’t change Ibrahim’s choice to sire me, but what if I could change everything that was expected of me as a vampire?
Or what if I completely gave up trying to carve my way into spaces that clearly didn’t want me?
All right, Rowan, slow your roll a little before you think about completely and radically changing your life.
Clearly, I was even more lonely than I thought, because just a modicum of positive and genuine attention had me feeling like I’d fed from someone who was inebriated. Except my mind was quite clear, and almost standing beside itself, surprised at my somewhat visceral reaction.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, shoving my rising insecurities down and seizing the day—an act that was fairly antithetical to being a vampire.
“If you’d like, I could take you to some other performances that are coming up in the next month or two.
There’s a traveling string quartet performing at the community theater soon—I’ll need to double-check the date—and an a cappella group all the way from Finland doing a show at Suny’s toward the end of the month. ”
“Really? They traveled all the way here to our little city?”
“We’re just one stop on their American tour, but yeah, their music is successful enough for them to travel with it, and they’ll be selling vinyls of their last two albums, so I’m quite eager to go.”
This was where she’d lose interest, where she’d tell me that was a weird thing to care about and that a cappella was cringe. But instead her grin grew wide enough to nearly become its own light source.
“I would love that! Let me just double-check my schedule, but I’m, like, eighty-five percent sure I can make it!”
Huh.
Could it really be so effortless?
“Sure. No issue if you can’t, of course. Whatever is convenient.” Was that playing it cool enough? I’d been called a lot of things in my time walking the Earth, but I was pretty sure that “cool” was never one of the adjectives associated with me.
“It shouldn’t be an issue. I just like to double-check and triple-check before I agree to anything. I hate having to flake out on things, so I try to avoid it whenever possible.”
I couldn’t help but give her a bit of a wry smirk. It wasn’t intentional, but there was so much about the woman, from the way she expressed things, to what she said, that just tickled me the right way. “I feel like that’s an increasingly rare thing in the most recent generations.”
“Recent generations? You mean our generation that really popularized the trend and then the younger generations for just perfecting our precedent?”
Whoops, another little slip-up. “I suppose there might be some truth in what you are saying,” I retorted cheekily, another half-lie to make it seem like I was bantering rather than trying to dodge around the age thing.
It would probably make things so much easier if I was more comfortable with lying, but I really did want to avoid it as much as possible.
I was well aware of what a conundrum and how stupid it was, and yet it did indeed make my conscience feel quite a bit better.
“I like to think there usually is.” Suddenly, her expression went from excited to something more akin to bemused. It was only a slight variation in her pretty face, admittedly, but how could I not notice it with how caught up I was in everything about her?
“What?” I blurted rather inelegantly. But whatever. It was becoming increasingly obvious to me that Naomi expected no false posturing to impress her.
She blinked at me a bit. “I like to think that there usually is truth in what I say.”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant. It was your smile. Something changed in it, which made me curious. I wanted to know what you were thinking.”
“How did you even notice that?” She sounded so incredulous that I had to wonder what kind of people she was surrounded with if they weren’t caught up in all of her thoughts and expressions.
“Should I not have?” I lobbed back to her, wondering if I was being far too intense far too soon. I suppose that outside of the micro adjustments I had to make to instruments, subtlety wasn’t exactly my forte.
“It’s not that, no. I was just surprised. And to answer your question, I thought it was pretty amusing that we’re already planning our second date and maybe even a third, when we haven’t even finished our first one.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. How had I not even thought of that? If I had the ability to blush, I was sure my cheeks would be crimson under my makeup. I guess I had gotten a bit ahead of myself despite trying very hard not to.
“Sorry about that. I hope I didn’t make you feel—”
“You have nothing to apologize for. It was a good sort of amusement. I meant it when I said I’d love to go to that concert with you.
It sounds really wonderful.” It was her turn to look rather sheepish, and while it was somewhat strange across her features, she still looked just as lovely.
“I’ll admit, I haven’t had this much fun on a date in a long time, and all we’ve done is walk around and eat ice cream.
I don’t know if that says something about me, something about the modern dating world, or just a little bit of both, but it’s.
.. nice. This whole night has been really, really nice. ”
It was such a simple thing. Four little letters. A phrase that was more often used as a throwaway than anything substantial, but to me? To me, it was so much more.
A mutual understanding. A shred of acceptance in a world where I’d struggled to find any. A hint at the possibility of something grander, perhaps even something I had assumed I would never have. Sometimes nice was worth so much more than we ever gave it credit for.
“Do you want to dance?”
I had no idea where the gumption came from to ask that, and somehow, it was as nerve-racking as the time I’d held off a group of feral witches, who had been storming the ancestral lands of Ibrahim’s old coven for some ancient relic.
But the words were out of my mouth before I could think twice about it, so there was no use pretending I hadn’t said anything.
I may not have been exactly the smoothest Casanova in the world, but I was a man of my word.
I said what I said, and I liked to think I meant what I said.
“Really?” Naomi said, eyes going wide as she nearly choked on her last bite of her waffle cone.
I had been trying to be the perfect gentleman and not watch how that pink tongue of hers had been licking all up, down, and around her dessert.
Difficult, but doable. But it was impossible for my eyes not to chase how the tip of that petal-pink, delicate muscle traced the deep red of her lips.
I might not have been human, but I was only a man.
“Absolutely,” I said, taking the final bite of my cone before offering her my hand—after another quick glance to make sure my makeup was still in place, of course. “But only if you want.”
“Yeah, I’m down. But I warn you, I’ve got two left feet.”
“That makes sense.”
“Does it?” she asked, tilting her head again.
Goodness, what an adorable habit.
“Well, all your clients have two left feet, don’t they?”