Page 88 of Thirsty
“Lorenzo,” Charlie said. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he sounded desperate. “Can you get my dad a drink?”
“Oh, that reminds me,” George said, holding up an expensive-looking bottle of wine. “I brought this for the host.”
“Thank you,” Lorenzo said, taking it. Charlie was acting very strange—more than just awkward or tense, he seemed fidgety. He was almost twitching.
“Charles,” George said heavily, taking a deep breath. “There’s something I wanted to tell you. I’ve, well—I’ve been reading your column.”
Charlie’s eyes closed.
“Your column?” Lorenzo asked.
Charlie was staring at the ground as his father spoke, but Lorenzo could see the color leaching out of his face. “I’m one of your subscribers, actually,” George said.Subscribers?“I don’t really go in for that sort of thing usually, but—well, I was thinking of you, and I started reading them, and...they’re quite good, I think. I mean, you could be doing more with your life than writing relationship advice for strangers on the internet. But, for what they are...”
Lorenzo stared at Charlie, waiting for him to make sense of this. But Charlie still wouldn’t look at him. He hadn’t looked at him once since he’d spotted his father at the party.
“What are you talking about?” Lorenzo asked quietly.
“You don’t know?” George said. He took his phone out—an old flip phone, but it seemed to have web browsing. “I have to say, they’re really quite well-written for, ah, aDear Abbysort of thing. Where’s the latest one—oh, I liked this part.”
He tilted his phone so that Lorenzo could see the screen, and read the chunks of text out loud.
What does it mean that your partner glows while he’s dreaming? I’m sorry to say that there’s no satisfying answer here. I recently learned that vampires are burned by their own tears—likely a progenitor of the holy water myth. How often magic seems to feel cruel in that way, mirroring our inner lives with gut-punch accuracy: turning regret or yearning into mercuric acid or literal phosphorescence. It’s tempting for us humans to treat these signs and omens as representing some sort of inherent truth about the supernatural creatures we associate them with, but that’s where we go astray. Magic isn’t an exact scientific equation so much as a dusty relic of everyday life; for all the symbolism baked into their very essence, paranormal people are disappointingly, inspiringly, and reliably still just people. In other words, as I’ve been reminded so often lately: magic is intent.
So what does it mean about your partner? It could mean anything. Intent is as complex and murky as the human heart—or anyone’s. There could be as many reasons for a glowing faerie as for a vampire’s tears.
Charlie remembered when he’d written that one. He’d been proud of himself for what he’d thought was a well-written piece, and for telling his readers that supernatural people were just people. After all, he thought of Lorenzo as avampireless and less; more and more, he was just the guy he was seeing, who happened to be a vampire.
The guy he’d fallen in love with.
And he hadn’t been able to resist using the part about his tears, because it was so beautiful; how could he not?
“I never knew that,” his dad was saying. “The thing about vampire’s tears. Isn’t that clever? Oh, sure.”
“Wise...Old Crone,” Lorenzo muttered blankly as he took the phone from Charlie’s father, using the keys to scroll up and down. Charlie’s heart was pounding.
“Ah, yes, hisnom de plume,” his dad said, nauseatingly. “Isn’t that smart? It’s his initials backward—Charles Owen Wever.”
Lorenzo still hadn’t moved, except for his eyes flicking over the tiny screen. For a second, a wildly optimistic part of Charlie thought that maybe he wouldn’t be mad. Surprised, sure, maybe a little thrown, but—maybe he’d be proud. Maybe he’d be impressed.
Then Lorenzo looked up at him.
“I—I was going to tell you,” Charlie said, the words scraped out of him like they didn’t want to be heard. He was ashamed to even say it.
“This is what you were doing?” Lorenzo asked. Quietly. Brittle.
“I can explain,” he said.
“You wrote about me?” There was almost a gentle curiosity to the question, like he couldn’t quite believe it. “You wrote about me...crying?”
“I...” Charlie said. “I...”
What was there to say? He’d been lying to Lorenzo for months—mining his most sensitive, intimate moments as fodder for his career. Spilling his secrets to the whole world, if not by name.
There was nothing—absolutely nothing—to say in his own defense.
“Wait,” Rachel said, peering over Lorenzo’s shoulder and then back at Charlie. “You’reWise Old Crone?”
Charlie felt like his skin was shrinking around him, turning to ice. Others at the party were starting to notice the tension building between them. Charlie’s dad frowned. “Charles? What’s going on?”
