Chapter 32 Molly
Molly
Elijah’s been strange all morning. Quiet and pensive, melancholy even. He snuck out before the sun was too high and returned in a fresh outfit with two toasted bagels, both for me. I ate them at the table, and he sat across from me watching without speaking.
Whatever is wrong must be residual from what was wrong last night.
It makes me uneasy not knowing what’s on his mind, but I don’t pry, afraid of what I’ll find if I do.
Instead, I shower, clean my kitchen, change my sheets, make him help me carry my laundry to the basement.
He says less than a dozen words through all of this, and the sense of impending doom grows heavy over my head.
When I finish making my bed, he sits on the couch, eyes unfocused as he stares at the coffee table where a stack of books we’ve shared sits next to a half-eaten bag of Skittles he brought me last week.
‘I’m leaving New York,’ he tells me, the first words he’s spoken in an hour.
My stomach and heart seem to drop completely.
‘Why?’
‘I can’t stay here.’
My face freezes as I figure out the right question to ask. Why not? What do you mean? When? Why, why, why?
I settle on, ‘What happened?’ I’m staring at his face, searching for insight and answers, a hint that he feels anguish about this, but he won’t look at me.
‘I can’t do this,’ he says.
It’s so vague I want to scream. Can’t do the human reintegration thing? The soulless corporate job? The mess of a situationship we’ve found ourselves in?
‘Explain,’ I command, and my stupid voice wobbles. I should be cool, should feel casual displeasure at the news of my coworker-turned-friend leaving the city–I shouldn’t have a storm of anger and desperation boiling over in me.
‘Molly…’ he starts, and he sounds so tired.
‘Hold on. Just—I’m falling in love with you,’ I blurt before he can say more in what feels awfully like a breakup. My chest is rising and falling as if I’ve been running.
This admission earns his attention, his eyes darting to mine.
‘I am,’ I tell him. ‘I have been for a while.’
Elijah’s eyes fall closed, jaw clenching shut, throat bobbing with a swallow. He doesn’t look happy about this admission. He looks like he’s mourning.
‘Please say it back,’ I whisper. ‘You feel it too, I know you do. I can see it in the way you look at me, the way you touch me.’
‘Molly…’
‘Say it, Elijah. Admit it,’ I plead.
‘Of course I do, of course, but that’s the problem, Molly.’ I can’t even be happy to hear this, not when he looks angry at the admission. ‘What’s wrong with loving me?’
‘Nothing, it’s–that’s not what this was supposed to be!’ he says, too loud, too emphatic. I wince and it’s like the slight movement wounds him. Elijah lowers his voice, but is no less stern. ‘Love was not in the agreement, Molly.’
For a moment, I’m rendered speechless, completely lost for words, mind scrambling over these words so inconsistent with the actions he’s shown me.
‘The night you bit me, last night when you came through my window.’ I list them like pieces of evidence.
‘Thanksgiving weekend, every time you’ve kissed me, every time you’ve stayed in my bed, wrapped around me while I sleep. You feel this, Elijah, I know you do.’
‘That’s why I can’t stay.’
‘Because you love me? Because I love you too?’
‘You’re human! I’m immortal and you have another eighty years on this Earth tops. You’ll die like every other human I’ve become too attached to.’
‘Stop,’ I try. ‘Just stop it, okay? Eighty years is a long time.’
Elijah huffs an exasperated breath.
‘I’m not going to stick around and watch you grow old and die without having any of the things you’ve always wanted,’ he says, practically shouting at me now.
I recoil at his meaning, picking apart his words and trying to make sense of them. ‘What I wanted? Elijah, things change, what if I want you? Want to be with you?’
‘You would accept half a life?’ he demands. It makes me feel off balance to see his face, usually so gently amused and happy, now twisted into this agonised determination. Determination to leave.
‘Is that so wrong? Wanting to spend my life with someone who loves me?’ I ask.
I shake my head and reaffirm my resolve.
Elijah is scared, he doesn’t mean this, he’s afraid, he’s been hurt before–fuck, the last time he was in love, he ended up alone in an abandoned castle for a century.
‘I want to be with you. I’m sure of it.’
‘The same way you were sure about Matt?’ he asks. He shuts his eyes, obviously regretting the words immediately. If cruelty is his intention, the words hit their mark, but he’s not winning this one, not when the thought of him leaving makes me realise I never want him to leave again.
‘Just talk to me,’ I say, begging.
Elijah stands and paces to the window, threads his fingers into his hair briefly, then returns to my side, picking up my hands in his as he does.
‘I can never grow old, Molly. I cannot give you normal, or comfortable. I can’t stay in the same place for more than a decade, and that’s pushing it.
I can give you no children, no grandkids, no beach vacations, no days at the pool in the summer.
All I can give you is nights, tables set for one and infinite immortal angst. And then, one day, after a miserable half-life with me, you’ll die and I’ll be alone.
Again. I won’t do that to you, and I won’t do it to myself, either. ’
‘And what if I was a vampire?’ I ask, the words sucking all the oxygen from the room. He goes completely still, not breathing, not blinking.
When he speaks, it’s so quiet. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘And why not? Would it really be so bad to have me forever?’
‘You would never have the life you’ve wanted, Molly–the life you have always wanted.’
‘I could have you!’ I hold his hands tighter so he can’t pull away from me. ‘There are worse things than a life of love and companionship.’
Elijah tugs his hands from mine and plants them firmly on my shoulders. I brace, knowing nothing I’ve said has moved him an inch towards convincing him to just stay, just try.
‘Molly, listen to me.’
I shake my head, not wanting to hear it.
Hot tears blur my vision and one spills onto my cheek.
Elijah makes an anguished sound at the sight.
I feel ashamed and embarrassed, my heart is pre-emptively shattering.
I have no idea how we got here when just last night we were having a great time after nearly two months of learning each other, of falling for each other.
‘Think about what you’re saying,’ he commands.
It’s like when he’s tried to use compulsion on me, but this time he’s trying to get me to hear him through sheer force of will.
‘Think about it. Turning into a vampire isn’t a guarantee, it might not even work and then you’d be dead for real, so that’s the first risk.
If it works, you have to live an eternity with no food, no sleep, no rest, no days in the sun–you must drink blood to survive and you will always be hungry.
Every human you meet will die, every human you already love, everyone.
You’ll never have children, never get sick, never grow old, never feel the urgency of mortality again.
You’ll exist as I have, haunting the world instead of living in it. ’
Elijah’s hands slide to my neck, holding my face like he does when he wants to kiss me, but now he shakes me lightly.
‘Now tell me, do you honestly want that life? Do you want to be a vampire?’
I’ve thought about this, of course I have. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a hazard of finding myself increasingly entangled with a being so diametrically opposed to myself. But I shouldn’t have to decide now, there’s time—
‘Molly.’
‘No!’ I admit in a rush. ‘No, I wouldn’t choose it.’
Tears fall heavily down my cheeks over his thumbs, and I’m torn between wanting to pull away from him and fearing that if I do he will never, ever touch me again.
I grew up with stories of mortals falling for immortal men, being chosen by them before getting to live their eternities side by side, and I dreamed of that.
I wanted nothing more than to know magic is real, to experience it, to have it in my hands.
And faced with the reality of having it so tangibly, he’s right that the magic of an ordinary life would be devastating to lose.
‘I don’t want it, but I don’t want to lose you, either,’ I say.
Elijah wipes my tears with his thumbs, then pulls me to him. He presses his lips to my head for a long time and I know what this means, know before he does it what comes next.
Elijah pulls away from me, lets his hands drop down my arms, my wrists, my hands, then stands with no lack of visible pain.
‘Elijah, please don’t do this.’
Walking away from me, Elijah stops and turns his head over his shoulder. I try to commit his profile to memory, a dreaded certainty that this is the last time I’m seeing it.
‘I do love you. How could I not?’
And then, he leaves, not once looking back as he goes.