"But what?" I sat up straighter, interested in find out what her so strained.
"There just has to be something different in your blood," Mae exhaled, exasperated. She was talking more to herself than me, which made it harder for me to follow. "There"s no other explanation for it. I don"t understand it. But there just has to be something that makes you all so eager to bond. Who was your father?"
"My father?" I wrinkled my nose. "What does he have to do with anything?"
"I"m trying to understand your ancestry, because there"s something so unique about you both. I"m 56 wondering if we"ve been looking at this all wrong. Maybe you weren"t meant for him. Maybe you weren"t meant for anybody. Maybe you were just meant to be a vampire." Mae chewed her lip, looking sad and faraway.
"Maybe we"re just a means to an end for you."
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "An end to what?"
"It"s just that you both bond so easily. It"s unlike anything we"ve ever encountered," Mae explained wearily.
"Milo"s just super possessive of Jack, right?" I leaned back in the seat and realized that I better just hurry up and resign myself to life of mortal celibacy. "Jack kind of told me the other day."
"It"s already lessening," Mae added hopefully. "These things just take time."
"Why is that the answer to everything?" I scoffed. "All I ever get from you guys that everything takes time and everything"s complicated."
"What else am I supposed to say?" Mae asked pointedly. "This is all very simple but you"re just too slow to get it? That this will never get better, no matter how much time we have? If that"s what you want to hear, I"ll be happy to tell you that. This is it, Alice. This is as good as anything is going to get, so don"t get your hopes up for anything else. You might as well just give up now."
"If that"s the truth, then yeah, that"s what you should say!" When she said it, it sounded far more melodramatic than when I thought it, but it didn"t feel entirely false.
"Of course that"s not the truth!" Mae rolled her eyes. "Alice, the only constant in life is that everything is always changing. And that"s a little scary, but it means that things can"t be bad or hard forever."
"And they can"t be good or easy forever either," I countered.
"Exactly! Because if they were, we"d never know to appreciate the moments when they were good!"
Mae turned to me, smiling warmly at me. "You"ve just got to trust me on this one. I don"t know how yet, but things will end up the way they"re supposed to be."
"Thanks for the blanket answer."
"Look, let"s just forget about all of this," Mae suggested cheerfully. "Let"s just go have a girls night!
Just the two of us."
"We"re not going to your house?" I asked, and I felt an awful pang inside of me. I was hoping to at least catch a glimpse of Jack but that wouldn"t be possible. I couldn"t go there. I couldn"t see him.
Despite their repeated claims that I wasn"t being banished, I really was.
"There"s plenty of fun things to do in the Cities," Mae a.s.sured me, ignore my question about her house.
"Its after ten on a Tuesday. How much do you really think is open?" I asked dryly.
"We"ll find something," Mae insisted. "We"ll make do."
57.
We made do with a Wal-Mart that was open 24-hours, a Denny"s where she watched me eat, and a Blockbuster. Then we went back to my apartment, even though the whole point of the evening was supposed to be to get me out of the house. Mae had never been inside before, but she ooed and awed over all our secondhand junk like it was astounding. Then she painted my nails and played with my hair while we watched Silence of the Lambs. It was one of my favorite movies because it was so terrible, and I felt better knowing that I was forcing her to watch something so terrible. And despite my best attempts to hate everything about the night, she did manage to cheer me up a little bit. Of course, that went away completely when she left, when I was alone again.
Chapter 10.
I wanted to run out and throw my arms around him. I couldn"t get out to his car fast enough.
When Jack texted me the next day and asked to hang out with me, I hated myself for getting so excited about it. Even though I felt rather ridiculous, I couldn"t help but spend an hour preening. If the t.i.tanic were sinking, I"d be making sure the deck chairs all looked lovely.
I did really miss him, but I had spent the last few days being completely bored out of my mind and spending every waking moment imagining the worst case scenarios of my life. (Hint: They all ended with me alone knitting afghans and dying alone, where my corpse was eating by my hundreds of pet cats.) I like to jump to conclusions. I can"t help it, or even if I can, I like doing it too much to stop.
When I finally did rush outside, Jack was sitting in the Jetta, grinning broadly. Pat Benetar, of all things, was blasted loudly at me when I opened the door. He turned it down when I hopped in, but I barely even cared.
n.o.body else was in the car. We were alone together for the first time in what felt like forever.
There was n.o.body to growl at me or to chastise us for being too close. I could just talk to him and be with him and not worry about anything.
"Hey," Jack smiled.
"I don"t wanna go to your house," I announced quickly.
"Why not?" He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow, but he looked intrigued and amused.
"Because." I pulled my knee up to my chest and just looked at him, refusing to elaborate on my answer.
I expected him to drive away or press me further, but he just looked at me for a moment and nodded.
"Okay," he smirked. "Where do you wanna go?"
"I don"t care where. Just drive."
"You got it." His eyes glinted mischievously and he sped away form my apartment.
The buildings were a blur of lights beside us, and he had this weird ability to hit every green light and weave through openings in traffic that weren"t even there. Jack had this insane driver"s intuition, and I didn"t understand how he ever managed to roll the Jeep before. He must"ve been really distracted by me, and I wondered dully if I still had the same effect on him.
58.
"So... how"s life with Milo?" I asked cautiously. I wasn"t sure if I really wanted to know, but I definitely needed to know. Partially because I wanted to make sure that Milo was doing okay, but also because I wanted to hear how Jack felt about everything.
"Good," Jack shrugged noncommittally. "I like your brother. I like having him around."
"Mmm," I murmured. He hadn"t really given away anything, so neither was I.
"He"s already much better. Pretty soon you"ll be able to be around all the time. And I"m sure it will be all the time. He really misses you too." Jack looked over to see if I believed him, and I wasn"t sure that I did. "He talks about you a lot. He just isn"t always thrilled when I talk about you."
"Really?" I raised an eyebrow curiously. "You guys talk about me? What do you say?"
"I don"t know," Jack laughed. As soon as the sound filled the car, I realized how long it had been since I heard that sound. My heart flipped happily, and I settled deeper into the seat. "Nothing bad, if that"s what you"re getting at."
"I just wonder what you say about me when I"m not around," I teased.
"What do you say about me when I"m not around?" Jack countered, grinning happily.
"Hasn"t Milo told you?" I was only half-joking. I figured that by now, Milo had spilled everything, and I wanted to get a read on what effect that had on Jack.
"Yeah, he has, because apparently, you"ve only said like three things about me. All you ever tell him is that you"re not interested in me." He tried to play it off with a smile, but I saw the hurt behind his eyes. "So yeah. I got all the juicy details."
"That"s not all I say." But that really was about all I said to Milo. A lot of times I felt like my feelings were too obvious, and my best way of dealing with that was just to say the exact opposite of what I felt.
"So then what do you say?" Jack pressed, looking at me from the corner of his eyes.
"That you"re the most dashing, handsome stranger I"ve ever met," I said with a dramatic Southern drawl and batted my eyes at him. He laughed again, and I smiled at him. "No, I don"t know. I try not say anything about you."
"Why not?" Jack asked.
"Cause." I shrugged. "I don"t know. It"s hard to talk about you."
"How is it hard?" Jack furrowed his brow when he turned to me.
"Well... what am I supposed to say about you?" I squirmed uncomfortably.
"You"re supposed to say whatever you want," he pointed out reasonably.
"Things are a little too complicated for me to say what I want," I explained finally.
Truthfully, I didn"t know exactly what I felt for Jack because I wouldn"t let myself think about it. To quantify it as something, that would put expectations and shatter things. I liked being around him and I missed him when he wasn"t there, and that was as far as I was willing to admit.
"Fair enough." Jack sighed and ran a hand through his sandy hair.
He turned to me, looking like he might say more, but then his phone began to ring in his pocket.
59.
Cursing softly under his breath, he reluctantly pulled it from his pocket and flipped it open.
"h.e.l.lo?" Jack answered. "Yeah. Yeah.... I"m with her now.... Yeah... Yes... Okay... Yes.... I get it... I got it.... No. I"m fine....Yep... Okay.... Okay... Bye." He sighed heavily and then shoved his phone in his pocket.
"What was that about?" I asked.
"We"re going to my house," Jack replied simply.
"What? Why? Who was that?" Reflexively, I had tensed up at the thought of going to his house. It suddenly felt like so much drama.
"Milo." He pursed his lips, debating on telling me more. "He wants to see you."
"Does he really? Or is he just against he idea of us being alone together in a car?"
"Both, probably," Jack replied honestly.
"You know, I"m a little offended actually," I said, watching out the window as the scenery changed as Jack switched directions towards his house. "Peter never got this jealous over the time we spent together."
"Yeah, well, Peter"s a total idiot," Jack grumbled dryly.
"Have you heard from him lately?" I asked offhandedly.
"Why are you asking him?" Jack had very little tolerance for even the mentioning of Peter"s name anymore, but I wanted to know anyway.
"I was just wondering if anybody had heard from him," I shrugged vaguely. "That"s all. I can be curious, can"t I?"
"I"d prefer it if you weren"t," Jack admitted wearily. I didn"t really have a comeback for that, so I just kept looking at the window. When I didn"t say anything for a little bit, Jack continued, "You took the book."
"Ezra said I could," I justified, but I knew that permission wasn"t really the issue.
"Is everything to your satisfaction?" he asked icily.
"It"s a book, Jack!" He was so infuriating sometimes, and I didn"t even want to dignify it with a response. "What do you think is going to happen? I"m going to run off with a piece of literature and leave you alone in the love triangle with my brother? It wouldn"t even be a triangle anymore.
It would just be an angle."
"An oblique angle," Jack interjected, and his bout of jealousy was quickly replaced with glee. "Ha!
I told you I would work that in!"
"What are you talking about?" I didn"t understand what he was getting at, but he was grinning foolishly and laughing, so I couldn"t help but be swept in it.