Nice Girls Don't Live Forever (26 page)

He gasped as I swallowed the first mouthful of blood. The connection, the flow of blood seemed to open up some little window between us. I’d never caught so much as a hint of what Gabriel was thinking before. And now I could feel everything he felt—the love he had for me, his relief at being able to touch me again, the pleasure I was giving him. It was all laid open for me. And when I thought, “I love you, too,” he gasped again, as if he heard me. The thought sent him toppling over the edge and dragged me with him.

In my head, the lesser, dream version of Gabriel was sent packing with his stupid tuxedo jacket thrown after him.

13

There comes a time to accept that some relationship patterns will never change. The problem with being a vampire is that it can take hundreds of years for that time to come.

—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships

Mama had outdone herself.

With little effort or prompting on my part, my mother had pulled together a baby shower that would have made Martha Stewart turn chartreuse with envy.

“Oh. … my.” Jolene sighed as I helped her waddle through the front door of my parents’ house.

Since the ultrasounds had been unclear as far as the twins’ gender, Mom had kept things charmingly gender-neutral. A hand-sewn banner shouting “Congratulations!” in appliquéd pink and blue letters hung over the foyer table. On the table, guests could “sign in” by autographing a little baby album for Jolene and offering her an invaluable piece of parenting wisdom. To our left, the parlor’s chairs were arranged in a circle around a small pile of beautifully wrapped presents. A clothesline was strung on one side of the room, artfully hung with little gender-neutral baby outfits, matching socks, and hats I knew Mama wouldn’t have been able to resist buying for the twins. To our right, Mama had dressed the dining table with little votives of wildflowers between plates of rattle-shaped cookies and candy-colored petit-fours.

“It’s all so beautiful.” Jolene sighed again. “And no one’s naked.”

“Well, if that’s not a baby shower prerequisite, it should be,” I said, shuddering as Mama came into the dining room with a huge bowl of her special strawberry “shower punch.” I groaned. Every Southern woman prides herself on her own special shower-punch recipe, whether it’s combining lime sherbet and ginger ale or creating a frozen ring of pulverized pineapple in a bundt pan and letting it slowly melt in a punchbowl full of orange juice. Mama had never revealed her secret punch formula to me. Personally, I’d never understood the appeal of combining bizarre ingredients in unnecessarily complicated ways when popping the top of a Coke can was so much easier.

That’s probably why I wasn’t in charge of the shower.

“Oh, Mrs. Jameson, it’s so … thank you.” Jolene sniffled, throwing her arms around Mama’s neck. Mama, who was not familiar with werewolf strength, winced in Jolene’s grip but patted her on the back.

“Oh, honey, I’m happy to do it. Zeb means a lot to John and me. That means you do, too,” she said, gently peeling Jolene’s arms away so she could breathe. “Now, Jane said you’d had a pretty hearty appetite lately. So I made you a little snack to pick at before everybody gets here. Why don’t you go make yourself at home in the kitchen?”

I arched an eyebrow as Jolene followed her nose into the kitchen. Through the door, I heard her squeal, “She baked me a ham!”

“Zeb told me Jolene could go through a lot of food,” Mama said, carefully placing the punchbowl on the table. “You sure do have an interesting group of friends, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Mama,” I said, kissing her cheek. “Really, it’s beautiful. Hey, what did you mean by ‘everybody’? It’s just going to be me, Gabriel, Dick, Andrea, you guys, Aunt Jettie, and Mr. Wainwright. You’ve put together a gorgeous spread for a bunch of people who don’t eat.”

Both Jolene’s and Zeb’s relatives were conspicuously absent from the guest list. I think we can all agree that was for the best.

“I may have invited a few more people,” Mama said. “There are a lot of parents who know Zeb from school, people my age who knew him when he was little, who want to help him celebrate the babies. Plus … I may have sent invitations to all your aunts and cousins, making it sound like Jolene was somehow related to them.”

“Mama!”

“Well, I had to go to all their showers and their daughters’ showers,” she huffed, looking slightly embarrassed. “And you’re not going to need one, so I’m calling in all your chips for Jolene. No one can remember half of the names in this family anyway. They’ll show up, give her a present, and walk away thinking they’ve done their duty for a distant relation.”

“That’s …” I laughed. “Actually kind of brilliant. I underestimate you.”

“Constantly,” Mama told me. “Now, I don’t want you to worry about the boys. Your daddy’s got a card table set up out back with enough beer and poker chips to keep them entertained for hours. He’s actually pretty excited about spending some time with Dick and Gabriel. He has this list with all kinds of questions about the Civil War. And I’m so glad you and Gabriel have come to your senses, honey. You’re perfect for each other. All you have to do now is get him to put that ring on your finger …”

“Mama, I’m not legally allowed to get married,” I told her. “There wouldn’t be much point in our getting engaged.”

“Honey, I know this is a sore subject. I would just feel better if I knew you were settled.”

“Mama, I’m going to live forever, and so is my boyfriend. I think that’s about as settled as you could expect, considering the circumstances.”

Mama considered that for a moment and seemed satisfied.

“Besides, I think we have a more immediate problem. As much as I appreciate you planning this expanded shindig for Jolene, what are we going to do about the extra guests? What if people don’t want me around because of the undead issue? This would be the first time I’ve seen a lot of the aunts and cousins since … Oh, wait, is Grandma Ruthie coming?”

“I decided it was best not to invite your grandma,” Mama said, carefully adjusting the folds of a chair cover. “And honey, if anybody has a problem with you being here, they can get the hell out of my house.”

I blinked back the mysterious moisture gathering at the corners of my eyes. “Thanks, Mama.”

“Who’s ready for some Texas Hold ’Em?” Daddy boomed as he came downstairs in his silly translucent green dealer’s visor. It went well with his lucky rainbow suspenders.

Dick was going to eat my father alive.

“You guys aren’t playing for money, right?” I asked.

I will admit to sweating a little when the doorbell rang.

The first guest to arrive was Iris Bodeen, a distant relative of one of my step-grandpas and an avid “band mom” when Zeb and I were in the Marching Howler Band. She handed Jolene a case of diapers and told her what a catch she’d snagged.

“Zeb was always good to my Jessica, even when she was going through her awkward phase,” Mrs. Bodeen said of her daughter, who had developed debilitating acne our sophomore year. “He was kind, even when it would have been easier not to be. He’s going to be a wonderful father.”

Jolene beamed at her.

Nina Tipton, whose rambunctious twins had made Zeb’s life hell his first year of teaching, almost cried when she talked about Zeb’s patience with them. “A lot of teachers would have just washed their hands of my boys … especially after the clown incident. But your husband worked and worked until they were able to sit still for a whole day without punching or kicking or trying out new wrestling moves. They would have been expelled from elementary school if it wasn’t for Zeb Lavelle.”

And on and on it went. It was a shame that Zeb couldn’t hear these testimonials, as he was sequestered on the back porch. An avid fan of the
Gambler
movies, Daddy was doing his best riverboat-dealer shtick for Dick, Gabriel, Zeb, and Mr. Wainwright. I frequently snuck to the back window to check on the “menfolk.” Mr. Wainwright seemed to be floating silently behind Gabriel giving Dick clues about Gabriel’s hand. I sent Aunt Jettie outside to even the playing field.

So far, I’d managed to stay under the radar, helping Andrea keep the plates filled while Mama handled hosting duties. The guests I did come across didn’t seem surprised or alarmed to see me. Well, my cousin Junie was making it a point not to speak to me. But that had far more to do with my discussing her stripping career near a microphone at a family funeral the year before than any vampire issues.

“Janie, honey, how have you been?” asked Loralee Warner, who worked with Mama at A Stitch in Time. Loralee’s usual mode at any party was to camp next to the buffet and watch the proceedings from there. She was a fan of tiny food she didn’t have to cook herself.

I lifted an eyebrow and searched for potential double meanings in Loralee’s words. I couldn’t find any.

“I’m fine, Miss Loralee. How are you?”

“Oh, my hair’s grayer, and my butt’s bigger, but what else is new?” She snorted. “You know, your mama told me about your, um, big changes that you’ve been going through.”

I could only imagine what Mama and Loralee talked about while trapped in the quilt shop for hours. On Mama’s frustrated days, I doubted I came across in a flattering light. “I’m sure she did.”

“You know, my sister’s boy, Jason, he was turned last year.” She sighed. “But it turned out to be the best thing for him. He actually had to think about what he did before he did it. Was it safe for him to leave the house? Did he have enough blood to get him through the week? Was he talking smart to a vampire who was older and stronger than he was? He had to do a lot of growing up. He’s almost tolerable to be around now.”

“Well, there’s something to strive for,” I muttered.

“Your friend Jolene,” Loralee said quietly. “She’s not quite human, either, is she?”

“Please don’t tell anybody,” I whispered, looking to see if the other guests overhead her. They were far too engrossed in Jolene’s opening what appeared to be a vibrating musical baby swing with five speeds.

“Oh, honey, I don’t care,” Loralee said. “The way I see it, you vampires and whatever Jolene is, you’re just making things more interesting for the rest of us. Are there any more sausage balls?”

And with that dizzying change of subject, the conversation was over. No one in this crowd, it seemed, cared that I was a vampire. These were people who had known me since the day I was born. Their children had attended my birthday parties. They’d attended all of my step-grandpas’ funerals. Being with them now was no different from when I was a human. As long as I kept the frothy punch flowing, I was welcome. Now, that wasn’t to say that I would be welcome in any crowd. There was a good chance that for the next fifty years, I would walk into any conversation with a human who knew me before I was turned expecting some sort of insult or rejection—which was a result of my own neurotic nature, really. Humans were neither all good nor all bad. And just as in my interactions with vampires, I would have to approach each of them on a case-by-case basis.

The fact that it had taken me this long to come to this “stunning” conclusion made me a little sad.

I wiped my hands on a tea towel and made my way over to Jolene, who was cooing over the double bassinet Andrea and Dick had given her.

“Dick wanted to buy you a breast pump.” Andrea snorted. “I learned never to take him into a baby store. Ever. He snickered every time he heard the word ‘nipple.’”

“Well, that’s what you get for dating a giant twelve-year-old,” I told her, sitting on Jolene’s left.

“Oh, honey, they’re all that way,” my mother’s best friend, Carol Ann Reilly, told me in a world-weary tone.

“Look who’s all smug and secure now that she’s made up with her boyfriend,” Jolene said.

“My boyfriend is more of a giant fourteen-year-old,” I muttered. “Just as emotionally immature but somehow more dangerous.”

“Oh, honey, they’re all that way, too,” Carol Ann assured me again.

It was far from the small family shower I had planned, but Jolene was positively glowing with every exchange. We cooed and awed appropriately over every little outfit, crib sheet, and stuffed animal. Hell, I got a little emotional over Jolene’s shiny new wipes warmer.

By the end of the evening, my relatives were convinced that they remembered Jolene from family reunions when she a little girl. She was invited to join several Mommy and Me groups and a sewing circle. Mama considered her baby-shower-related social debts settled.

The boys were allowed back into the house after the ladies left, trailing cigar smoke and chip crumbs in their wake. Considering what Gabriel and I had been up to, I fully expected to burst into embarrassed flames at being in the same room with both him and my father. Let’s just say that we’d spent several evenings experimenting, and we’d figured out that I could read Gabriel’s mind if I was drinking his blood during exactly the “right moment” during sex. Unfortunately, his thoughts tended toward the possessive grunty male part of his personality. We were still working on deeper, more meaningful communication, hence the spontaneous combustion of parental shame.