Velvet (16 page)

“Y’know, Caitlin,” she began cautiously, “you and Adrian seem pretty serious. Did you want to invite him over for Thanksgiving?”

I choked on a bit of French toast. “I’ll invite him,” I said, still clearing my throat, “but I think he might want to be with his family.”

“Okay,” Rachel said with her usual smile, “just let him know that he’s welcome here anytime. We’d like to get to know him.”

I nodded and munched my breakfast cautiously, wondering if she’d say more, but she simply slipped her glasses back on and returned to the paperwork. I finished breakfast without having to engage in further conversation and headed upstairs only to find that my phone was ringing, which was weird, because nobody ever called me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell where it was ringing
from
. I finally found it in the pocket of some jeans that were buried in my hamper.

“Hello?” I said, nearly dropping the phone.

“Cait?” It was Adrian.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Uh—” I looked around. “Standing in my room? In my pajamas?”

“Get dressed; I’ll be by your place in twenty minutes to pick you up.”

I immediately tensed. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “And dress warm.”

He hung up and I stared at my phone. He could really be arrogant sometimes. Didn’t even ask if I wanted to hang out. Just assumed I had nothing better to do. The fact that I did not, actually, have anything better to do, was completely irrelevant.

I ran into the bathroom for a quick shower and dressed in dark skinny jeans, an off-white sweater, my feather-print infinity scarf, brown leather gloves, gray knit hat, and birthday boots, which I was just lacing up when I heard Rachel call up that Adrian was here. I raced down the stairs.

“Adrian and I are going out for a while; we shouldn’t be gone too long.”

“Okay,” my aunt said with an amused smile that made me blush for some reason.

I opened the door and just about ran into Adrian.

“Hi.”

I was a little stunned by his physical presence and had to crane my neck to look up at him. “You usually wait in the truck.”

He smiled and closed the door behind me. “I wanted to surprise you. Actually,” he said, pulling a thin, black piece of fabric from his pocket, “the surprise hasn’t started yet.”

“What?” I began to ask, but then he was wrapping the cloth around my eyes and tying it so I couldn’t see. I frowned in his general direction. “Just for the record, saying ‘The surprise hasn’t started yet’ while pulling something out of your pants is super creepy.”

“Yeah—I regretted it immediately but it was too late to switch to something else.”

“As long as we’re on the same page.” I felt my face with my hands. “Is this a blindfold?”

“No,” he said dryly, “it’s a kitten. Of course it’s a blindfold.”

He prodded me forward, one hand on each of my arms. I walked like a zombie, hands out, legs stiff.

“This would be a lot easier if you just trusted me not to let you walk into the truck.”

I rolled my eyes underneath the blindfold. “How do I even know we’re going to the truck?”

“We are. Don’t make me use my Jedi mind tricks on you.”

“My eyes are closed, so you can’t.”

He let out a sigh. “Just let me walk you to the damn truck.”

I looked up at him—well, tilted my face in what I thought was the direction of his—and frowned. “Fine.” I forced my legs and arms to go limp. He pushed me forward gently and we reached the vehicle without incident.

“May I ask where we’re going?”

“That would defeat the purpose of the surprise,” he said, pulling down the snowy drive after we were settled.

“At least promise me this won’t be embarrassing. Or dangerous.”

“Would I do that to you?”

I, well, “looked” at him with a heck-yes-you-would expression. Or as much of one as I could muster with half my face covered.

“I only embarrass you when it’s necessary.”

I snorted. The truck bumped along the driveway to the main road.

“Adrian,” I said after a moment. “Now that I can’t awkwardly make eye contact with you, we should talk about our fake-relationship rules.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, “All right.”

“So, I guess Rule One would be that you’re not allowed to fall in love with me.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, sounding amused. “What about you falling in love with me?”

I scoffed. “Why would I fall in love with you? You’re just a hot, closet-nerd vampire with a bazillion dollars and a Harley. There’s absolutely nothing attractive about you.”

“I’m repulsive, I know.”

“Yep. Rule Two,” I continued, “is that if we’re gonna be smoochy or huggy or whatever, there should be a formula.”

“A kissing formula?”

“No—well, yes. More like an algorithm or something. X number of displays of public affection per week, multiplied by holidays and special occasions, divided by well-timed lovers spats and whatnot. We could make a chore chart.”

“What is a chore chart?”

I laughed politely, and then realized he was serious. “You don’t know what a
chore chart
is?”

I think he may have nodded, then realized I couldn’t see him, and finally said, “No.”

I leaned back, flabbergasted, then tried to figure out how to explain what I thought every American kid already knew.

“It’s a piece of paper you stick to your fridge with magnets. It has chores, on a chart, for different days of the week. So ours can be that, except for PDA Mondays and Wednesdays you give me a peck on the cheek, Tuesdays are extended hugs, Thursdays are real smooches, and Fridays we have off—or something. We can give ourselves stickers.”

I was blabbing on about the stupid chore chart, but I was blabbing because it was finally dawning on me that I’d be hand in hand, lip on lip with this guy for who knows how long, and I barely knew him, and the thing was, he
was
attractive. He’d be so easy to like. Even without the money and the Harley and the expensive sweaters, he was just a cool dude. And he was a nerd. He was a
huge
nerd. And socially awkward. I loved it. I didn’t love
him
—but I could. I could see myself maybe falling in love with him, one day, and since that seemed to be strictly forbidden, and just a bad idea anyway, I needed rules. I needed a buffer between this act we were putting on, and what I was really feeling. I needed a frickin’ chore chart.

“All right,” Adrian said finally, “you draw it up and I’ll bring the stickers.” There was a pause, and then he asked, quite seriously—“Is there a certain kind of sticker I should acquire?”

I pretended to think about it. “Gold stars are always a good choice—very classic. Or you could buy Valentine’s Day stickers. That would be appropriate.”

“Got it.”

I knew with absolute certainty that he would show up to school Monday morning with a full assortment for me to choose from. He was very literal and endearing like that.

“Any other rules?”

I was about to say no, but then thought of something else. “Just one,” I replied. “Don’t lie to me. This is my life, and it’s very weird right now, and I need you to promise that you won’t lie to me.”

There was a moment of silence. Then—“I promise.”

I stuck my hand out blindly in his direction, and felt him grab it. We shook on it awkwardly and I settled back in my seat, feeling as though I’d taken a step in the right direction of gaining control of my life.

We’d listened through two full playlists on his phone by the time Adrian pulled the truck to a stop. He unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me across the bench seat and out his door.

“I am capable of independent movement,” I explained, in case he had any doubts.

“True, but it’s more fun this way.”

I tried to glower through my blindfold. “Can I open my eyes yet?”

“No.”

I heard him crunch through the snow to the back of the truck. I turned in a small circle to follow the noise of his movements.

“You’re cute when you do that,” he called to me.

“When I do what?”

“Turn in a circle like that. It’s kind of penguin-y.”

“Great,” I called back. “Just what every girl dreams of being told by their inhumanly attractive, immortal vampire protector: they look kind of ‘penguin-y.’”

“You think I’m attractive?”

I heard something land at my feet and I flinched, lost my balance with one leg, slipped on a patch of ice with the other, and was halfway falling when I suddenly found myself suspended in midair. I had no idea how Adrian had gotten to me so quickly or so quietly but, well, it was Adrian.

I pointed at my face. “Now can I take the blindfold off?”

Adrian propped me up again. “Yes, you may.”

I dragged the cloth off my eyes and blinked into the bright white snow. I didn’t recognize where we were. Definitely not in town anymore. If anything, we were higher in the mountains. I couldn’t even pick out a road, just the tracks of Adrian’s truck through the snow.

And that’s when I spotted it.

“Oh,
hell
no.”

He grinned at me, looking very pleased with himself. “I figured that since so much has happened in the past week or so, you deserved a little fun.”

“Adrian,” I said desperately, “the last time I tried this I was five and I ran into a brick wall.”

He patted my shoulder. “That’s why you’re not steering.”

I found myself being dragged to the edge of a very long, very steep hill.

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” I told him as he set the sled down and then made me sit. He settled himself snugly behind me and reached around my waist for the rope. “I mean, you’re immortal and that’s fine and all, but I’m a sad, pathetic normal person. I break.”

“Y’know what I think? I think you have major trust issues. And I think that since I’m both your fake boyfriend and your real bodyguard, it’s time we tried out some trust exercises.”

“I don’t think—” but I cut myself off with a high-pitched scream as Adrian kicked us off down the hill. I wanted to close my eyes, but not watching the trees whiz by was more terrifying than blindly hoping we didn’t crash into one.

“Isn’t this fun?” Adrian yelled in my ear.

“No!” I yelled back, grabbing his legs so I wouldn’t fly off. He laughed loudly.

“Just relax!”

“If I relax, I
die
!”

The thing is, I’m not easily scared. I went on the stomach-dropping rides at Disney World. I kissed a frog once, when I was a kid, because it seemed like a good idea. I only had a few nightmares after watching
The Sixth Sense
. But Adrian was steering like it was the bobsledding Olympics and he was trying to break a speed record.

Finally,
finally,
the hill evened out and we slowed, trailing to a stop at the edge of a small frozen pond in the middle of the woods. I leaned back against Adrian and closed my eyes, trying to get my racing heart to calm the crap down. He put his arms around my waist happily.

“That was fun.”

“If you weren’t my fake boyfriend, I’d beat you with a stick.”

“You mean, if I weren’t a vampire, you’d beat me with a stick.”

“Yeah. That.”

“You had fun. Admit it.”

I opened my eyes and stared up at him. “You have no real concept of ‘death,’ do you?”

He shrugged. “We were never in any danger.”

I muttered about showing
him
some danger as he slid off a backpack I hadn’t noticed him wearing and pulled out two pairs of ice-skates. Well, the small, white pair were skates—the large black ones looked like meat cleavers.

“Lace up, Ms. Holte,” he said, tossing the smaller pair at my feet. As opposed to when his aunt—sister—sister-aunt?—had called me that, coming from him, it almost sounded like a term of endearment. ‘Ms. Holte’—I kind of liked it.

I laced the skates on unhappily, knowing I was about to make a giant ass of myself out on the ice. It was hard to be average around someone like Adrian. I mean, I could kick his ass if we were competing on
Project Runway
, but the odds of that happening were slim to none.

“You ever done this before?” he asked, helping me take the blade protectors off.

I stared at the pond. “I’ve been to a rink two or three times. Nothing like this, though.”

He grinned. “Perfect. Come on.” He led me to the edge of the pond, holding on to my arms.

“I don’t suppose I should even bother asking if the ice will hold us?”

He put his arms around my waist. I held on tightly as he pushed us out onto the lake.

“It’s been below freezing for almost a month. Plus, it’s only five feet deep—I’ve tested it out in summer.”

All of a sudden he let go, and I clutched his jacket desperately. “What are you doing?”

“Just trust me.”

He peeled my fingers off his coat and held me at arm’s length so that only our fingertips touched, then skated backward expertly, forcing me to actually pick up my feet and skate with him. I concentrated on his skates, waiting for him to suddenly let go and sprint away from me. He didn’t.

“You’re smiling.”

I looked up at him quickly. “No, I’m not.”

“Oh. My bad. I thought you were having a good time.”

“Nope. This is one hundred percent awful.”

He nodded and slowed, holding my hand over my head, skating around me in a slow, graceful circle. Then he stopped and raised his hand, forcing me to spin in a slow, clumsy circle.

I grimaced. “I told you I wasn’t good at this.”

“You’re doing great,” he said with what sounded like sincerity. I looked up to check and then stared, puzzled.

“Why are your eyes glowing?”

His mouth drew up at the corner slightly. “I don’t know.”

I looked down, suddenly embarrassed, and not sure why. He put his right arm around my waist and held my hand, pushing me backward. We gathered speed and I had no idea how he didn’t trip over my fumbling skates, but somehow he managed not to, and soon we were gliding gracefully, arching around the pond, spinning together from one end to the other. Eventually we glided to a stop near the edge, his arms still secured around my waist.