Page 61 of Thirsty
All your options seem rich with possibility. Running a magical bookstore means being surrounded by knowledge, potential,and imagination—but the kind that you can only ever put back on a shelf. Taking their offer and walking away would mean cracking the spine on your own life. No wonder it feels dangerous.
And speaking for myself, I understand the magnetic pull of the risky choice; the lure of giving in to temptation. After all, we only live once—or at least, humans do. It’s romantic to think about fate picking us up like a leaf on the wind and depositing us wherever we’re meant to be next. There’s a relief in danger, isn’t there? The relief of giving in; the freedom that comes with ignoring that cautious voice within.
All of which is to say that if walking away is what’s calling to you, I’d give it serious consideration. I’d tell you to go with your gut, but I don’t think instinct holds any particular wisdom. More to the point, I don’t believe there are right answers to questions like this. You’re not trying to figure out what’s “correct” in any cosmic sense; you’re choosing who you want to be.
In other words, if you’re going to make the dangerous choice, make sure you do it with your eyes open.
Sincerely,
Crone
Chapter 17
Over the next few weeks, Charlie became very familiar with Lorenzo’s ceiling.
Really, he became familiar with the entirety of Lorenzo’s bedroom, which was just as stunning as you’d expect a vampire’s bedroom to be. The floor and walls were slick poured concrete, but the furniture was classically elegant, with the standout piece being his enormous four-poster bed, which had black cotton curtains whose edges wrapped around the posts of the bedframe like ivy on an old stone wall. The room was huge—it took up the entirety of the top floor of the apartment. There were bookcases everywhere, five separate dressers, and a fireplace big enough for Charlie to stand in. Thick, sun-proof black curtains covered every window.
The ceiling, however, was a mess. It looked as if it had been under construction for years or even decades, covered in a haphazard quilt of tarps and plywood, all of which were weathered with age. Sometimes Charlie worried it would collapse on them one day.
But he never did get around to asking Lorenzo about it, because, well—they’d been busy. Lorenzo kept taking him to meet new groups of supernatural creatures all over town: There were the river sprites who’d shown them some elemental water magic, resulting in sodden clothes they’d stripped off each other later. There was the magic historian who’d given them a lecture about the history of covens while Lorenzo and Charlie played footsie under his heavy table laden with spell books. And the werewolves had invited them back to witness the peace summit that was eventually convened between the packs after their brawl at the wedding. There had been lots of long, boring speeches about peace and familial duty, and Charlie hadn’t been able to stop staring at Lorenzo all night, because the werewolf brawl was the first time he’d felt the strength in Lorenzo’s arms as he’d whisked him away from danger, the first time he’d felt the urgency in how Lorenzo had touched him, how important it had been to Lorenzo to keep him safe.
They hadn’t even made it back to Lorenzo’s place that night; they’d fucked up against a tree in the woods half a mile from the werewolf grotto, the rough bark digging into Charlie’s back, the stars spread out above them.
They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other since the succubus art show. Every once in a while they abandoned Charlie’s research quest entirely and stayed in, spending hours in Lorenzo’s bed, reading and talking about nonsense when they weren’t all over each other. Sometimes they would stay up past sunrise; Charlie had been mildly surprised to discover that vampires could do that, although it was difficult for them, and didn’t last long. After sunrise, Lorenzo got drowsy and vulnerable in a grumbly way, which Charlie found adorable and kind of hot. He liked coaxing sunrise Lorenzo into foolingaround with him before he drifted off to sleep for the day—it was the vampire version of morning sex, and he loved it.
He’d learned a lot about vampires since he’d started spending every night in Lorenzo’s bed. He’d learned that vampires didn’t need to breathe, but they still did sometimes in stressful or exciting situations—muscle memory, Lorenzo called it. He’d learned that vampires’ cool skin could feel just as exciting as a human’s warm touch, and that they actually did tend to warm up somewhat when they exerted themselves. His “education” with Lorenzo was working, and then some.
And every morning when he got back to his place, he wrote column after column, and sometimes even little short stories or essays that he had no idea what to do with. It was the most prolific he’d ever been, and he thought it might’ve been some of his best writing ever, or maybe he was just high on all the sex. Either way, his notifications as the Crone were insane—the column was a genuine hit. It was incredible to be recognized, and to be able to breathe for the first time in months, at least where his job was concerned. But he wasn’t engaging with it—he’d abandoned almost all of his social media.
Because what if Lorenzo found his Insta or his TikTok, and figured out who he really was, and what he’d been doing?
Better to focus on how proud he was of the column, and how easy writing had been lately. The creative process felt joyous for the first time in years.Hefelt joyous.
He and Lorenzo had made a halfhearted effort to keep their situation a secret from the others, but it’d only been a few days before Rachel had stormed up the stairs one night and banged on the door for them to keep it down. Other than that, though, it hadn’t really changed much about the group dynamic. Maggie mooned at them every chance she got and made horriblejokes about their portmanteau couple name; Lorenzo thought if they ignored her she’d eventually stop. Rachel and Isolde still seemed more interested in thinking up coldly polite but insulting things to say to each other than in Charlie and Lorenzo’s relationship status.
Not that they were in a relationship. It was a change in their...well, some other status.
Charlie sighed. He was lying in Lorenzo’s bed again, with Lorenzo snoring alongside him, but he couldn’t sleep. He kept staring up at the ceiling, covered in half-finished detritus and cobwebs.
It couldn’t hurt to look, right?
The only way he could reach the ceiling was by crawling up onto a dresser and standing on his toes until he could reach just high enough to pull one of the tarps down and peek under it. He craned his neck, straining to see. Eventually the moon came out from behind a cloud, bathing the ceiling in silver light, and Charlie realized it was—
A skylight. There was a skylight in Lorenzo’s ceiling—and a nice one too. It took up almost half the area of the ceiling, with a sharp, triangular, art-deco-looking shape. It was made of wrought iron and that old glass that looked like it had just been poured, bubbled and wavy.
Lorenzo snored loudly and Charlie jumped, twitching the tarp back into place and crawling back into bed. But he still couldn’t sleep, as the curtains flapped quietly.
Lorenzo was working his way up Charlie’s body slowly, kissing his calves, rubbing his thighs, and nuzzling his hip bones as Charlie shifted impatiently. Then he turned and dipped histongue into Charlie’s belly button. It startled a giggle out of him, and he panted, “This is not what I thought sleeping with a vampire would be like.”
Lorenzo lifted his head, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Shit, sorry, I—” Charlie winced. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”
“How did it sound?” Lorenzo asked. Before he could answer, Lorenzo trailed a finger down Charlie’s inner thigh, and he gasped, distracted.
“I just meant—I didn’t mean...” Charlie trailed off, entranced at the sight of Lorenzo drawing his tongue in lazy circles over Charlie’s skin. “Fuck.”
“You were saying?” Lorenzo asked.
