Page 28 of This Blood That Binds Us
“You don’t have any other options. It’s either the door or the window.”
She kicked the air sheepishly and walked in closer. Her arms wrapped around my neck from behind.
“Don’t say I didn’t try to do it the normal way.” I chuckled, effortlessly lifting her legs. “Ah, okay. I got you.”
Nervous laughter escaped her lips as we stepped into the rain. The tall three-story house loomed above our heads. Her heartbeat radiated through my skin, the sound of her pumping blood flooding my ears.
“What’s wrong?” I said, walking us over to a wall, where water was running like a waterfall over the red bricks.
“Not trying to be that girl, but I’m kinda afraid of heights.” She buried her head in my shirt, shielding her face from the rain. Her legs squeezed harder around my waist, and I forced myself to think only about the wall in front of me and not the cute girl hugging my back. I definitely didn’t want to think of how warm she felt or the feeling of her breath on my neck. No. The brick was a really nice shade of red, and the rain made the color pop away from the mortar. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” Kimberly sighed, strengthening my resolve to keep focused.
I glanced behind me to make sure no one was looking, scaled the building in two seconds, and plopped us onto the steel fire escape near my window. Being a vampire was fun sometimes.
“You can’t believe what? The vampires or scaling a three-story building in the rain?” I said, attempting to lighten the mood.
“How did I end up in some angsty teenage novel?” She looked up at me through wet eyelashes. “This is not what I wanted to do today.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her expression, and I led us to my window around the corner of the house. “Well, don’t fall in love with me, and there won’t be a problem.”
We reached the window, and she swayed anxiously, waiting for me to open it. My window was locked but pulling it up and breaking the plastic was no harder than picking up a pencil.
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t,” she said, teeth still chattering.
I offered my arm to her and motioned toward the window. “Oh, it’s so easy for you, then?”
She turned her head to the side to look at me before putting her feet through my window. “Oh, yeah. Simple. I don’t have time for that.”
I couldn’t hold back my laughter as I stepped in after her into my dark room. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”
A small lamp on my nightstand illuminated a small corner of my room. Kimberly stepped forward and tripped over something in the darkness.
I grabbed her arm and steadied her. “Shit, sorry, hold on!”
I dashed across the room in a split second and hit the light switch. My dorm was nothing special. It was a reasonable size, not much smaller than my room back in Brooklyn. The corners were still bare. Nothing but old nails hung on the white walls. My bed was pushed up close to the window, fixed with a cheap white bedspread I had bought on Amazon. On the other side of the room was my TV, accompanied by a tangled pile of wires and a large stack of video games. The TV stand was a completely different color than my desk, which was littered with textbooks and loose papers.
In Brooklyn, my room was filled with knickknacks. My mom had a love of collecting things and passed it on to me. I had shelves filled with my childhood action figures I wouldn’t part with, and energy drink cans that I thought looked cool. The blanket on my bed was a hand-me-down from the twins’ room. A large quilt of different-colored patches. It was a chaotic space filled to the brim with color, including the walls that my mom let me paint neon green when I was in middle school. It contrasted the stop sign hanging above my bed that Presley and I stole in high school.
My new room didn’t feel like home, but it would do.
“Wow,” Kimberly said.
“I know my room is dirty. You don’t have to rub it in.” I went to work, picking up various dirty clothes off the floor, being extra quick to pick up my old underwear first.
“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised.” She leaned down and removed her soaked shoes. “Your room isn’t what I expected.”
I chucked my dirty clothes into a huge pile in my closet. “What do you mean?”
She marveled at the walls. “It’s so empty. . . and boring.”
“Oh, that...yeah, uh, when we moved, I didn’t get to bring anything, even my rock collection, which was like my prized possession. I just haven’t felt like decorating—it hasn’t been my top priority.”
That was an understatement. I missed all my things from home. Everything I had collected as a kid, I would never see again. All my Pokémon cards and my rocks I had spent every summer combing local ponds for the coolest rocks were gone. It was stupid, and I should have been too old to care, but I did.
She opened her mouth to speak, but a yawn took its place. Her wet clothes swallowed her.
“Way ahead of ya!” I turned around and rummaged through my small dresser, picking out what I thought would be most comfortable: sweatpants and the freshman orientation T-shirt I was given when we arrived. I then headed back toward the window.
“What are you doing?”
