Chapter 30
“Tiffany, you look fab!” The bartender was eyeing my outfit. She had on a huge curly wig, a short red dress, and sky-high heels.
“Gary?”
“Make that Mariah B. Gary. During the holidays, I’m Valentine’s reigning queen of Christmas.”
“Don’t we crown a queen at the SugarBoo?” someone yelled.
Mariah B. Gary waved off the suggestion as preposterous. “Stop being haters. You know those teenagers can’t be queens.”
“You look great,” I said. “You haven’t seen Tyrone, have you?”
Mariah shook her head. “Nope. He better show his butt up, though. This is a tradition.”
There were so many traditions in Valentine. It was almost worse than having a family. Or better?
Mariah turned down the music and called everyone to order. “It’s game time! I know I said it was Friendsgiving, but I don’t have Thanksgiving questions so we’re starting Christmas early with the rest of the country.”
A couple people booed at the early holiday threat, but Mariah carried on. “Tonight, we have the SugarBoos, the Santas, and the Mostly Jews.”
“We’re the SugarBoos,” Jessica practically yelled to me over the din.
Mariah B. Gary shouted, “First question. Which reindeer is named for thunder?”
People started yelling answers. Between the game, the side conversations, the music and clinking of silverware, it was a cacophony.
I felt eyes on me and looked up to see Dr. Rosetti watching. I didn’t know where to put my hands or what to say. But look at me, sitting in a group at trivia.
“Who was the first president to put a Christmas tree in the White House?”
Focus, Tiffenie! I’d lived through history. I should know this bullshit.
The door swung open and a newcomer spoke. “Franklin Pierce.”
“I thought that was a department store?” I said to no one. No one answered back. All conversation had stopped as everyone gaped at the newcomer. When I looked up, I saw the cause of the commotion: Vlad.
“Hello to Mr. Dead Sexy,” Mariah crooned. “Franklin Pierce is the correct answer, and just so you know, I am single.” She was batting her false eyelashes in Vlad’s direction. Vlad, meanwhile, was stomping snow off his boots.
“Ohmygawd, who is that?” Jessica practically swooned.
Vlad squeezed between me and Jessica at the SugarBoos table without even asking if he was invited, Founding Father style. Jessica exhaled a little too obviously and held a limp hand out for him. “I’m Jessica.”
Mariah B. Gary sashayed toward us with the mic and leaned over the table suggestively. “Who’s the new SugarBoo?”
Vlad offered his hand. “I’m Vlad, Tiffenie’s—”
“Ex,” I filled in loudly. “We broke up three hundred years ago.”
Mariah said, “Mmmm. I bet that’s how it feels. What are you drinking, Vlad? Because it’s on the house.”
Must it always be like this?
A moment later, Mariah handed Vlad a cocktail that he graciously accepted as though it was his due.
Focused on the game, Vlad said, “The Battle of the Bulge,” apparently the answer to a question I hadn’t heard. “Christmas Day 1944. The snow was red with blood.”
He slid his hand under the table and gripped my leg.
For a second, I shut my eyes and enjoyed the firm pressure.
I let my mind drift away with thoughts of our night in front of the Christmas tree.
He could be mine. He was mine if I wanted.
Gloria in excelsis Deeeeeoooooo. I leaned closer to him, the air between us heavy as a gathering storm.
Desire burned through his palm. He gripped my flesh like he wanted me, wanted to bury himself in me.
Heat surged as he kneaded my thigh with intent, but what would become of us?
We could never be happy. Together, we would suffer.
Nothing but house fires and breakups. That was our pattern.
The room was filled with merry people. None of them burned at the lord’s name. They were the kind of people who enjoyed pancakes and maple syrup, opening presents on Christmas morning. Wore hand-knit scarves. Had simple pleasures.
But tonight I had paid a bill, played cards with the elderly, and now I was playing trivia. I wasn’t going to be crowned queen of the small-town festival or anything, but I was passing. Vlad knew me. He was the only one who could truly know me.
Mariah B. Gary cut through my reverie. “What percentage of men start their shopping on Christmas Eve?”
Vlad held his hands up defensively. “We don’t celebrate.”
Maybe he didn’t.
“One in three men doesn’t do anything until Christmas Eve,” Mariah B. Gary said. Telling on herself, she said, “Gary doesn’t do shit.”
I laughed. Mariah B. Gary and I had something in common.
Vlad nudged me. “We should go. I need something to drink, and I bet you do too.”
I was thirsty, not that I was going to tell him.
“I have to go to the bathroom, will you come?” Jessica grabbed my hand and pulled, looking a little drunk.
“Jessica and I are going to the ladies’,” I told Vlad.
When a stall opened up, Jessica said, “You go first.”
For some reason, as soon as I got in the stall, the bathroom went silent.
You could hear a pin drop and my bladder seized.
Three hundred years old and here I was, trying so hard to be normal that I couldn’t even make myself pee in front of a girl I was trying to impress.
A vampire with a shy bladder—my feelings swirled the drain that I was hovering above.
But also, No Fear wasn’t very hydrating.
Jessica went into the stall next to me. Her pants dropped, and she said, “Oh, fuck. You don’t have a tampon, do you?”
“Sorry, no.” I hadn’t had to deal with all the messy, uncomfortable parts of being alive in so long. I didn’t get my period—no cramps and messy pads and tiny overflowing trash cans in public restrooms. “How about wadded-up toilet paper?”
“It’ll have to do.” After she’d flushed, washed her hands, and probably touched up her lipstick, she asked, “You doing okay in there?”
“Yeah, go on ahead. I’ll be right out.”
When the bathroom finally emptied out, I relaxed enough to pee and then exited the stall to find Dr. Rosetti at the sink.
It was just the two of us so I sidled up next to her.
The bathroom had no mirror, probably to discourage lingering.
Either way, there was no evidence of my condition, which was a bummer.
It would have been nice if she understood that I wasn’t kidding.
Dr. R washed her hands and said, “Tiffany, I’m impressed. Trivia night.”
“You too, Dr. R,” I teased, and she laughed in a way that made me think I’d hit a nerve. My therapist might not be as much of a socialization expert as she had led me to believe.
As we walked back through the tavern, Mariah B. Gary read the next question. “What is the Epiphany?”
For the first time since Vlad had shocked everyone into silence with his vampire magnetism, the bar was silent. No one recognized the holiday I was named for.
“Google says”—Jessica cleared her throat—“that the Epiphany is the manifestation of a divine or supernatural being, a sudden revelation.”
Were vampires supernatural? Maybe on TV.
“It’s a holiday,” I said in a frustrated tone. “January 6.”
“That’s definitely not a holiday,” Mariah B. Gary said.
I didn’t have any energy to explain. Fitting in was exhausting. I needed something to satiate my thirst and some quiet before my fangs came out.
Outside the bar, a guy offered me a cigarette. It wasn’t blood, but at least it was something.
I sat on a retaining wall, the unlit cigarette dangling from my lips. The music and light filtered out to the empty street, making it feel lonelier than silence, a reminder that there was a warm, welcoming community only two feet away.
“Need a light?” someone asked. I looked up to see Tyrone in a wool coat with the collar flipped up.
Tyrone was not the guy you’d look at in a crowd and say, “He’s definitely got a lighter.” That had probably been Jeff, at the skate park with the high score on Street Fighter II.
Tyrone pulled a Zippo out of his pocket and I leaned toward him. He sheltered the end of the cigarette, cupping his hands around it so it could burn, even in the wind.
I took a drag. The nicotine filled my lungs and calmed me almost immediately.
He sat down next to me and I scooted closer until my thigh was pressed against his. His breath was coming out in icy puffs. Mine wasn’t. Oh, well, if he noticed, he noticed.
“You want my jacket?” he asked.
I said “Yes,” because the gesture was nice. I wanted to be a girl who needed a jacket. I did, emotionally speaking.
“You’re a little late for trivia night,” I commented.
“I came here hoping to run into you,” he said. “No one was answering your door, even though I could definitely hear Heaven singing inside.”
“She’s going through a real Doechii phase.” I took another drag and watched the smoke curl up from my cigarette, soft curls of ethereal gray going up, up, up to—nothing. “Can’t get me off your mind, huh?” I laughed half-heartedly.
“No, I really can’t.” He said it like it was a burden.
Why so tortured, Tyrone? What could this handsome, smart, land-owning, patent-holding man have to worry about?
Leaning my head against his shoulder, I inhaled the scent of hard work, hay, horses, and Christmas. “Everyone around here thinks you’re a saint.” It was a statement, not a question. “Are you?”
He swallowed a laugh, not a joyous one. Tired, sardonic, jaded. I turned to get a better look.
“If people knew me, knew what I’d done, they wouldn’t call me a saint.”
“It can’t be that bad.” I stopped before telling him I’d almost killed Heaven in LA and basically gone on the run with her mostly dead body.
“Let’s just say everything I’m doing now is atonement.”
“I bet you haven’t even killed anyone.”
He swallowed another laugh. “Uhhh.”
“Well, that was a pregnant pause.” I decided to steer us in another direction. “Did you work with Jeff before he died?”
He flicked his lighter and stared into the flame.
“To the extent Jeff worked.” He glanced up at me to gauge my reaction. “You know Jeff, he mostly came around with big ideas and then disappeared.”
That tracked. “What happened between you two?”
“You don’t know?” He searched my face, which probably looked as blank as I was.
I shook my head no.
“Nothing?” he asked again.
“Nothing,” I answered.
“What did you two talk about?” he asked.
“It was more of a physical connection,” I said.
With a shake of his head, he said, “Jeff and I met on Reddit. I was looking for someone with land to grow a crop of Santa’s Choice in the Northeast. We talked, and I shipped him a bunch of saplings.”
I nodded like what he was saying was interesting.
“When I showed up in town a few months later to check things out, I found the saplings half dead.”
Now that sounded like the Jeff I was coming to know.
Someone opened the tavern door and I got an earful of some Kacey Musgraves Christmas song.
Tyrone didn’t even look up. “I was trying to get my own branch of the family business up and running, take things in a new direction, build on the work my grandparents had done, not to mention convince them that expanding was a good idea. And here goes Jeff—taking money and killing trees.”
“What?”
“The idiot—sorry to disparage your fiancé—thought I was setting him up with a weed-growing operation or something.” He shook his head. “Don’t ask me.”
“What the fuck?”
“Maybe you don’t know, but tree is slang for weed.
Between the dumb ad I wrote, the tree thing, and the fact that my profile photo was me, a Black man, Jeff’s brain went straight to ‘Imma be a drug kingpin.’ ” With a shrug Tyrone said, “In his defense, who expects a twentysomething Black guy to be looking for a farm lease operation in Vermont?”
I took another drag off my cigarette. “What was he going to do, plant marijuana between the Christmas trees?” Tiffany with a -y had worse taste in men than I did.
“I should have known something was up when he kept calling them ‘Cripmas Trees,’ I thought he had a speech impediment.” I didn’t laugh with Tyrone on this one. It’s not like I could say the word.
“At least you just went into business with him,” I said. “Me, I was going to marry him. I was just a few years out of high school.” Tiffany with a -y had really been rushing that one.
“Everyone loved Jeff,” he said. “You weren’t the only one. Dude was the life of every party.”
We took a moment of silence for Jeff whose idiocy seemed as obvious as Tyrone’s goodness. Why Tyrone was angsty about him still made no sense.
“I don’t want Jeff to come between—” I started to say, but Tyrone reached for my cigarette, cutting me off.
“I didn’t know you smoke,” I said, watching him take a puff.
“I don’t.” He coughed. “It’s a nasty habit. But you make it look so good.”
For a moment we sat in companionable silence, both of us fraying at the edges, too damaged for real commitment to trivia. We were alone together.
Alone together was better than alone. Maybe this could work.
He was about to resume his story when Jessica burst through the doors.
“There you are! Come on, I need a ride home,” she said to me.
At the sight of Tyrone with a cigarette, Jessica gasped. “Tiffany! Stop corrupting that angel.” She took the cigarette and ground it into the sidewalk with her boot.
I looked helplessly at Tyrone, who seemed amused.
He waved as Jessica dragged me down the sidewalk.
When she saw the Happily Ever After hearse on the street, she started laughing—like doubled-over laughing. “Tiffany, I always knew there was something a little off with you.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely perfect, but I saw you in the park vaping back in the day, and who could forget your balance beam tricks on the railing with the big drop behind the school? It’s like you were taunting death.
” She shuddered at the thought. “I couldn’t even watch.
” With a smile, she said, “You seem good now.”
You could have knocked me down with a feather.
“Shotgun,” she called. More seriously, she said, “For real, don’t make me ride in the back.”
“Don’t worry, I only make my roommate ride back there,” I joked.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” she asked.
“Tomorrow?”
“Yep. I would invite you over, and probably Tyrone because his sad butt is going to be sitting at home missing his momma, but I’m working. Getting that overtime pay, baby.”
She turned up the music, singing loudly to “Pink Pony Club.”
Maybe I had a shy bladder and no hidden talent for trivia, but sharing secrets with Tyrone and giving Jessica a ride home filled me with the spirit of Friendsgiving.