Page 25 of Road Trip with a Vampire
Becky and Lindsay exchanged a look.
“Before you go,” Lindsay said, a gleam in her eye. “I saw that Peter guy again last night.”
I swallowed. “Peter’s been taking a lot of classes,” I said, aiming for breezy.“And he’s handling some of the custodial work Robert can’t manage.”
“I didn’t see him in the studio,” Lindsay said.
My heartbeat kicked up.
I’d seen Peter outside the studio, too. Only twice, and both times at Perky’s, the coffee shop down the block from Yoga Magic. Each time he’d been poring over his journal with an intensity of focus that could have started a fire, oblivious to me watching him.
Aside from that, I didn’t know how he’d been spending his time when he wasn’t here. But I hadn’t heard about any mysteriously exsanguinated bodies cropping up, so whatever he was doing, he was staying out of trouble.
“Oh?” I asked, doing what I hoped was a passable impression of someone who wasn’t interested in this conversation in the slightest. “Where did you see him?”
“When I walked by the laundromat last night,” Lindsay said.
So he didn’t have laundry facilities wherever he was staying. A flash of sympathy went through me—before I remembered I didn’t care.
“He wears boxers,” Lindsay continued. “Or at least he was washing several pairs of them. One of them had flowers. I wouldn’t have guessed him the floral-print type.”
An image of Peter wearing nothingbutfloral-print boxers flashed unbidden in my mind. I gripped the pencil I was holding so hard it snapped in half.
“Oh,” I said, chucking its remains into the trash can behind me and trying for casual. “That’s…interesting.”
The shrewd look Becky gave me told me I hadn’t pulled off casual at all. “So what’s his deal?”
“How would I know?” I grabbed another pencil and began fidgeting with it. “I don’t know anything about him.”
Lindsay and Becky exchanged another look before Lindsay asked innocently, “So you don’t mind if I ask him out?”
I could tell she was trying to get a rise out of me from the tone of her voice and the twinkle in her eye. My blood went simultaneously hot and cold all the same.
“Don’t,” I said tersely.
“Why not?” Lindsay asked too innocently.
“Because…” I said, struggling to find the right words. How did I warn my friends away from the vampire without telling them that he was a vampire? “He’s a…a walking red flag.” True enough.
“I thought you didn’t know anything about him,” Becky pointed out.
Crap. “I know enough to know he’s the last person in the world you’d want to date.”
“She also knows he’s hot,” Lindsay stage-whispered to Becky.
My face was on fire. “He is nothot,” I stammered. Which was, of course, a bald-faced lie. But it felt important to contradict everything Lindsay was saying right then.
“Even if he’s nothingbutred flags, I’m not looking for anything serious,” Lindsay said. “I’m asking for his number the next time I see him. Unless you’re calling dibs, Zelda.”
My friends were both openly smirking at me. I felt like I was walking directly into a trap.
“I am notcalling dibs,” I said. “I just think you can do better.”
Becky snickered. “Whatever you say.” Then she looked at her watch. “All right, ladies. Scott has softball tonight, and I need tohandle dinner for the kids. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Scott was Becky’s neurosurgeon husband and one of the nicest men I’d ever met.
“And I have to go teach.” Lindsay stood from her chair, then kissed the top of my head with a loudsmack. “See you later, kiddo.”
I don’t know how long I stayed in the conference room after they left, trying to understand what had just happened.
