Page 32 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
So you finally going to tell that vamp you’re into him?
LordOfTheWin
First, I think I need at least twelve hours to process things. Second, I don’t know if he’s gay. And third, I’m not into him, so one and two don’t even matter.
KendallCanoodles
You’re a river in Egypt.
I bet you back your hundred bucks that you won’t ask him on a date.
LordOfTheWin
I’m going to bed now.
As he typed it, he slippedoutof bed instead, but it was the sentiment that mattered.
KendallCanoodles
Is that code for my pingly is tingly and I have to find the lotion.
LordOfTheWin
Scratch that I’m going to bed FOREVER.
KendallCanoodles
;))))
Wesley returned her message with angry purple imp-faces, which started a ten-minute series of obnoxious emojis and gifs, until Kendall finally stated that Leoni was “incoming” and her icon went gray. It seemed like everyone was getting tingly in their pingly but Wesley. He thought of Vincent and swallowed.
Kendall was wrong. Wes wasn’t in denial, just a whole lot of guilt, which he was aggressively trying to ignore. He had a healthy admiration for Vincent to top it off. Vincent was just—he was so—damn him, he was a perfect mix of adorable and dangerous and sexy, and Wesley was already emotionally three inches inside the vampire and wanted very much to be physically three inches inside him too. But he was never going to tell Kendall that, because he and Vincent were never going to go there. If they did, he’d have to tell the vampire just how much of an asshole he’d been and whatever Vincent may or may not have felt towards him would vanish in a puff of smoke, making the whole ordeal a gratuitous tragedy.
Wesley shoved on his mother’s oldest, fluffiest bathrobe that he’d stolen from her in high school and shuffled his way groggily through the dark, down to the couch. He booted up the vampire dating sim on instinct. Or, maybe it wasn’t instinct, exactly. Maybe it was the tingly his pingly was sorely missing right now. And maybe, if he focused on that enough, he could finally make the pain in his heart subside.
5
They were messaging again—he and Vincent—like nothing had happened. Of course they were, when Vincent didn’t actually know whathadhappened. And what it had almost led to. His ignorance lulled away Wesley’s guilt; he seemed so happy, so unhurt by it all. But every time Wesley would fully settle into their upbeat back and forth, Matthew Babcock would check in.
Wes kept putting him off with vague replies that the vampire hadn’t come around again and he was still interested in the job but he needed to find a new target to lure in. He couldn’t make himself shut down the conversation entirely. It was still his best bet in proving his mother’s death and taking down Vitalis-Barron. Even if he couldn’t use Vincent to get the job, maybe hecouldfind some other vampire instead. There were thousands of them in San Salud after all. Not all of them could be decent people. If there were genuinely asshole humans, there had to also be genuinely asshole vampires; Wesley would just take more care in judging them next time.
Since Vincent had explained his feeding situation, Wes had started on a bit of research. Searching for certified blood banks that served vampires came up with nothing but frantic news stories of vamps stealing from human-designated ones. Less-certified charitable organizations working through legal loopholes revealed a few more options. All were located in large cities, and all run by humans. They had cute little logos, and cute little front-page anecdotes about how vampirism had touched the lives of the humans who worked and donated to them, and every third article about them had a major focus on how few humans actually wanted one in their neighborhood, and the ones who did were only happy so long as the charities worked strictly with their own local vampires and didn’t draw in any new ones. The opinions of the vampires themselves didn’t seem to factor into this.
And there were none in San Salud. Not anymore, anyway. There had been a vampire-accepting day shelter, a trio of mobile religious-run blood banks for vampires, and for a few years in the 90s a little place had presented itself as a safe location for humans to get bitten, but that seemed more geared toward human intoxication than actual vampire feeding. The other two had done alright for themselves, funds waning and waxing over time, but seven and a half years ago they both changed hands, and it was reported that the vampires slowly stopped showing up, until their underuse prompted their closure.
That sounded strange to Wesley. While vampirism in San Salud had started decreasing around that time, there were clearly still those who couldn’t afford black market blood. On impulse, Wesley looked up the owner of the blandly named company that had purchased them, and his gut twisted, his vision narrowing around the edges. Vitalis-Barron. No wonder the vampires had avoided it. That was probably about the time they’d kicked their vampire research into high gear.
And they were still at it, expanding from just vampires to humans as well. The knot in Wesley’s stomach twisted tighter, seeming to grow a gravity of its own that threatened to pull him inward. He didn’t have time to succumb to it though; Vincent would be here in an hour. There had to be something to preoccupy him until then.
Something that would make Vincent happy.
5
Wesley waited in the foyer for Vincent to arrive. He leaned against the wall with his phone as they sent back and forth an overall useless yet entirely wonderful series of texts that consisted of Vincent ascribing stories to random things in the neighbor’s yards he passed, giving special attention to his old house. Wes replied to every message with a bad joke. He half expected Vincent to be rolling his eyes on arrival, but as Wes opened the door, he found the vampire with one hand raised to knock, staring at his own phone with the widest lopsided smile Wes had ever seen on him.
Vincent dropped his hand. The expression dimmed, but it seemed to cling to the corners of him, pressing into his eyes and loosening his shoulders. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Wesley replied. He just stood there then, his gaze dragging across Vincent’s face and down his usual grunged-up coat and back again, before he managed to jerk himself back into focus. Grinning, he motioned inside. “Hope you’re hungry.”
