Page 23 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Intimidation won’t save you. You have to actually *earn* pictures of the princess.
Hell Creature Extraordinaire
Well FINE how about this:
It’s 7:30pm on a Tuesday and I’m drunk and unemployed and my boyfriend is nowhere to be seen. Send me the fucking cat pics you miserable asshole.
Andres paused, rereading the text with a sinking stomach. They never really talked about important life details anymore—he knew she’d lost her job recently, but he couldn’t actually remember if she’d mentioned where or how. Their conversations, including that one, were all dramatics and memes and goofy insults, and that had felt deep, because the two of them had been deep, once, but standing alone in his home, imagining the baby cousin he’d cherished as a teenager—picked on and loved on in obsessive intervals—grown into a sad, lonely adult broke his heart.
They could hang out again, he reminded himself. He could sweep her into his arms and tell her he’d always love her even when no one else did. They’d managed it on and off since he’d turned nearly a decade before, and she still hadn’t realized what he was yet. But she’d been so outspoken against vampires lately that he worried…
In the end, Andres replied with the single wordfine, then a stream of his most recent pictures of Camilla, her little pink toe beans surrounded by fluffs of white fur.
Hell Creature Extraordinaire
She deserves better.
Cat Mom
You’re right: there is no one good enough for her, and we both know it.
He closed the thread and, after a final kiss to Camilla’s head, he forced his thoughts elsewhere.
It wasn’t hard, not with Shane still lurking at the back of his mind.
The rest of his body followed that rabbit trail, and this time he didn’t bother fighting it. The thought of Shane settled so low and steady, a pounding need Andres had little reason to ignore. This was his day off, and he had no further obligations now that he’d seen Shane. Touched Shane. Sunk his fangs into his little swan’s neck and felt him shiver.
He left his coat draped over his desk and his leggings on the floor, settling into bed with the kind of sigh that only a massive mattress and a hoard of pillows could bring. He felt like a goddamned queen against the luxury, a beautiful creature of the night, genderless but feminine and perfectly himself. The bed could have easily fit Shane beside him, spread out and clothed in a similar red silk to his sheets, but embroidered and sheer, chains at his wrist and a—
Fucking hell, he was not supposed to be thinking aboutthat.
As he tried to refocus on more realistic thoughts of Shane, though, his phone chimed. He would have left it alone—whatever it was could wait fifteen minutes—but he made the mistake of glancing at the screen as he prepared to toss it across the bed. His blood went hot and cold, his heart leaped into his throat.
Unknown Number
Hey Andres! This is Shane Cowley from the bar.
If this is weird, you can just ignore me, but I thought maybe we could get friendly drinks sometime? And not spill yours everywhere.
Oh, was all his brain seemed capable of for a moment, then a sputtering of joy and another bubble of fear. Because he wanted this: wanted to go sit with Shane at the bar and laugh and joke and tease in all the ways he couldn’t behind a mask and a sultry voice. But the more Shane witnessed him as Andres—Andres, whom he clearly didn’t want anything more than friendship with—the more likely it was that he’d put two and two together.
Andres
I’m kind of busy with work at the moment, but if you don’t mind friendly texting instead, I believe that has a pretty low risk of spilled drinks?
That sounded casual, right? It was direct, but considerate, returned Shane’s implied request that this be platonic, and included a joke. Andres folded his legs in and stared at the screen. Surely his pulse was not meant to feel like this, loud and rough like his blood was trying to burst out of his body. Shane was already in his life, for better or worse. Whether he replied to the fool he’d met at the bar didn’t actually matter.
It didn’t.
But when the text came in, Andres’s stomach still fluttered.
Shane
I think you underestimate my abilities. I have spilled plenty a drink during a precarious texting conversation ;)
Andres
Oh have you now? And how would you rate our spill, compared to those.
