Chapter 39 Molly Fourteen months later
Molly
Fourteen months later
February in the city is a misery, bitter and cold and cloudy, making commuting the worst part of the day.
Commuting with a cake in your arms, even worse.
I do what I must, though, lugging a plastic tote of food and a cake box on the train home.
When I finally make it to the house, I’m for once thrilled to find the door unlocked so I don’t have to dig the key out of my bag with one hand.
‘Home!’ I call out when I step inside, my wind-chilled cheeks stinging in the heated entryway.
I put the cake down on the side table by the door that’s crowded with a stack of books, Elijah’s keys, his wallet, a stack of mail with both of our names on it, a sunscreen stick, and a bottle of hand sanitiser.
I kick my wet boots off and put them on the mat, locking the door before unwrapping the green scarf from my neck and hanging my jacket next to Elijah’s thick wool one on the hook.
Gemma circles my feet, rubbing her body against my legs and meowing that scratchy meow she’s always had. I pat her head and pick her up.
‘E?’ I call, and Elijah’s head pokes out from the kitchen doorway. Grinning, he pulls his earbuds out of his ears and meets us in the hall, kissing first me and then the cat, hugging us both. He has on the soft hoodie I love stealing from him and a thick pair of sweatpants.
‘Your cheeks are freezing,’ he says between kisses all over my face, hands rubbing up and down my arms to make some friction.
I laugh and Gemma wiggles out of my arms to jump back on the ground, where she meows an indignant meow, ungentle reminder that we’ve apparently never fed her once in her whole life.
‘Happy birthday,’ I say, and steal another long kiss on his lips.
‘Thank you.’ Elijah stopped celebrating his birthday long ago, but now that he’s ageing again, I’ve convinced him it’s something worth celebrating.
‘I brought dinner,’ I tell him against his mouth. ‘And cake.’
‘Cake, you say?’ He makes one more loud smooching sound against my cheek before stepping back and looking to the tote of Indian food and the brown cake box. ‘You spoil me.’
He picks up both offerings and brings them into the kitchen. I unpack the food and get plates while he clears the table of his laptop, notebook and books.
‘You only turn thirty-six once!’ I tell him. ‘Well, scratch that. You only turn four-hundred-twelve once; this will be your second time turning thirty-six.’
He comes behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, resting his head on my shoulder. ‘You are so dear to me.’
We’ll go out to dinner with our friends this weekend after his family gets to town, but this Thursday evening is just for us. And Gemma. Indian food, funfetti cake with vanilla icing, whatever he wants to watch on the TV until we both drift to sleep on the couch.
Elijah pushes his glasses up his nose absent-mindedly, those cute fucking glasses.
I may be selfish, seeing as I’m revelling in him having bad eyesight, but I adore those glasses.
That and the five o’clock shadow, the new softness to his stomach and limbs, all these human things–needing glasses, getting a cavity, having to shave.
In the months since becoming human, Elijah’s family has made sure he, and I by extension, have all the money we could possibly need for multiple lifetimes.
It’s a sickening sum, the kind of money that means never having to worry about rent or bills again.
My parents’ and brother’s mortgages are paid off completely, college and home funds for Hazel and her new little brother Jordan already plenty full.
Turns out, vampires are as rich as I thought they would be.
Elijah’s mother owns properties in major cities around the world, one of which is a brownstone not far from my old studio apartment. She had it gutted and renovated last year, and insisted we move into it because the whole family agreed that ‘Rent in this city is outrageous!’
I quit my job at Drummond, having got the one-year appointment as visiting faculty in the creative writing department.
James was thrilled to call me with the news the week after Christmas.
Elijah is a student there, taking classes across multiple departments, and I might guess he’ll be a student forever.
He loves it–the learning, the assignments, the discussions, meeting me on campus for lunch.
In our kitchen, we’ve started a list on the wall of places we’d like to see. It’s a collage of places, pictures cut from magazines with sticky notes about what we’ll do, where we’ll go, what we’ll eat plastered around each.
We’re making our lists of things to do, and we have our lives to do them.
We’ve made it a point to go back to Utah more.
Elijah adores Hazel, and her him. When Gabby and Caleb welcomed little Jordan last summer, Elijah held the tiny sleeping infant in silent awe.
The smallest things move him to tears–a very cold day, or a very hot one.
Good food, a fresh bagel–his mother came to visit and made him a loaf of bread like she did when they were human, the taste of which made him weep–he just feels so intensely.
He’s so wonderfully present in each sensation, and it makes me see the world differently, too.
I am still finding things I want to show him, to do with him, experience with him, and he is delighted by each and every one of them.
‘Do you ever miss it?’ I ask in bed on his birthday, Gemma curled up between our feet, already sleeping. ‘Being a vampire?’
He pulls me tighter to his chest, breathing in the scent of my hair, then kissing my head.
‘If I was asked to choose between living or an eternity as a vampire, knowing I would get to see history written and rewritten, get to see the greats of their times become the icons they’d be known to be, spend dozens of lifetimes learning and existing, I would choose this life with you every time. ’
And so he has, and so we will: choosing each other through the rest of our own little eternity.