The Taste of You

Annie sees nothing horrific in ripping out veins in dance club bathrooms. She and her friend Will lack superhuman sexiness and don’t dress in black leather; they discuss the advantages of high SPF sunblock and debate the origins of vampire myths. Annie begins to accept the loss of her old lover with the help of a human psychologist who doesn’t believe in vampires, but when she finds an orphaned baby at another vampire’s house, Annie must set aside her grief. She rescues the baby on impulse and decides to care for him until the bites on his arms and legs have healed. But Annie is unprepared for the challenge of caring for someone, especially now that her best friend has set out in search of answers about vampires and hasn’t been seen for weeks. Annie struggles alone to save the baby while she is tortured with worry about her friend and with regret about the past. Her psychologist grows more convinced that Annie might actually be a vampire, and he helps her understand that she will never be the mother that her adopted son needs. When her best friend returns with more answers than he ever expected to find, Annie is almost ready to find a new home for the baby and to start something new with the friend who has loved her for years.

Margot_Winter · Fantasy

Not enough ratings

46 Chs

Forty-One

"I still expect Keats to call.

"It doesn't matter that five years, almost six years, have passed and that the logical part of my mind understands and accepts that he's gone; I still think sometimes that his voice will be on the line when I pick up the phone.

"I'm sure you've heard people say that a million times. And you've heard people say that they see him in other people's faces, sometimes people that look nothing like him on second glance, but at first, he's there, and in one second you're angry because he tricked you, but you're also overjoyed because he's alive. Even if it was all a ploy to get away from you, even if he faked his own death to dump you, you're thrilled because it means he's in the world. And because someone, somewhere, gets to hear the stories about your life together. Gets to hug him. Gets to hear him laugh.

"Because the burden of carrying all those things alone, of knowing you're the only one who remembers him, is too massive. You can't breathe under something that solid.

"And so you'd take the lie in an instant, if someone told you they'd seen him, talked to him. You'd lean into their words and try to memorize the fact that he has a wife in Seattle and that they just bought a widescreen TV and a Saturn that gets excellent gas mileage. It doesn't matter if he never mentions you, thinks of you, at all. It doesn't matter if he's forgotten your name, so long as he's there, out there, alive. And not just vapor, just bones, just sound and fury. Just ghosts."

I looked at Dr. Parrish, and he looked at me.

There was nothing else to say.

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