Page 3 of Road Trip with a Vampire
An awkward quiet settled between us after that. If I were smart, I would thank this stranger for the help and go home. The pinprick tingles in my fingertips were now spreading up through my arms. I couldn’t ignore them for much longer.
But I didn’t want to say good night. Maybe it was just because it had been so long since I’d encountered someone so attractive, but there was something about this man that compelled me.
I wanted to keep him there. Keep him talking.
“So, Peter,” I began. “What do you do when you’re not either helping strangers with their trash or avoiding the sun?”
He slid his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels as he considered the question. “You could say I’m engaging in a…How did I hear someone put it the other day?” He pursed his lips, searching for the right words. “A journey of self-discovery.”
He said it like he was speaking an unfamiliar language. I laughed. “Sounds like something a person around here would say.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It could have even been someone who takes classes at my studio.”
“Your studio?”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, in the direction of Yoga Magic.“We hold yoga classes six days a week. Pilates, too, on Tuesdays. All ability levels.” The smile I gave him was one part sales pitch, one part my continued weak attempt at flirting. “If you’re engaging ina journey of self-discovery, yoga could be just the thing.”
He frowned. “How so?”
How much truth should I offer this guy? Some partial truths would probably be all right. “I’m not sure where I’d be today without yoga. My students share similar stories with me all the time.”
He considered that. “Do you think someone like me, who, as far as I can recall, has no yoga experience, might benefit?”
“Definitely,” I said. “First class is free if you want to try it.”
“I do appreciate free.” Then he added, so quietly I didn’t know whether I was meant to hear, “Right now I’ll try anything.”
There was pain in his expression, in the way his brows knit together for just a whisper of a moment. When a car horn blared some distance away, it seemed to bring him back to the present. He shook his head slightly, as if to shake off an errant thought.“Thank you for the invitation.” His voice was back to the warm neutrality it had held before. “I’ll think about it.”
“I hope you do,” I said.
Silence again. I needed to get started on my bedtime routine to have any chance of sleeping that night, but Peter was still watching me like I was a puzzle he was determined to solve.
I couldn’t look away.
Would it be a bad idea to ask for his number? To invite him up to my apartment? Probably. But it had been ages since my last hookup. I didn’t do real romantic entanglements with anyone with a normal human lifespan, but perhaps spending one night with this guy was just what I needed to blow off some steam.
I closed my eyes for the span of a handful of heartbeats, gathering the nerve to ask if he’d like to join me upstairs for a cup of coffee.
When I opened them again, he was gone.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
I’d seen this kind of silent speed before. People who could justdisappearlike that were usually very bad news.
Renault, the dog who lived in the apartment complex next to my studio, started barking. It snapped me out of my irrational wave of paranoia.
I was being ridiculous. There had been some false alarms, particularly recently—but no one from my old life hadeverfound me here.
There was no reason to think they would now.
My one-bedroom apartment wasn’t much.It was small and mostly furnished with things I’d picked up at Redwoodsville’s sole consignment store over the years.
I loved it, though. It was directly upstairs from the studio, making my commute nonexistent. More than that, though, it was home. Just when I’d given up hope of anyplace feeling like a refuge again, my apartment had slowly become the only space in the world I could truly be myself.
Or at least as muchmyselfas I ever allowed the person I’d become to be.
