“No, why would I? And I’m thinking, of course I’m unhappy, but I’m not going to admit it to her.” He got this distant look in his eyes. Probably thinking of everything he’d lost, which was more than any of us had. I asked him once why he didn’t just end it. It would be easy—walk outside at dawn, and poof. He said that would be too easy. That it would be letting entropy win, and he didn’t want entropy to win. Then he laughed and went back to this guy, the Kiefer Sutherland wannabe.
I said, “Jack, are you okay? Clearly you’re not, but—can I help?”
He patted my shoulder. “Just keep on keeping on, man. I’ll be okay.” He looked tired. Not just hungry, pallid from lack of blood. Actually tired. I wondered if I ought to lock him in his room to keep him from doing something foolish come dawn.
“So, Ginny. You talk to her tonight?” Jack asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah, some.”
“I didn’t mean that. About just killing time.”
I snorted. A waste of breath, really. “No, you’re right. I mean, how serious can it possibly ever get? But I think Aaron may be afraid that I’m going to run off with her and leave him alone with you.”
Aaron, who must have been listening, stormed out of his room. “No, that isn’t it at all, if both of you ran off I would finally have some peace and quiet around here.” He crossed his arms, and he really did look serious. “I’m just worried about you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can’t get hurt, Aaron,” I said wryly. “I’m a vampire.”
“You know what I mean.”
Jack got this very serious look on his face, so serious it swung around into goofy.
“What?” I shot back.
“I hate to say it, but I think Aaron’s right. You can still get your heart broken.”
“Guys, my heart is not going to get broken.”
Aaron just couldn’t stop. “Not to mention you’re almost old enough to be her father!”
“I am no
t!” But only by a couple of years… “We’re not supposed to be talking about me, we were talking about you and what you found out about Carter.”
“Nothing, I didn’t find anything.” He marched off to his room.
“Jack?” I called after him. “Do I need to worry about you?”
“I’m fine! Everything’s fine!” he called back.
Aaron just stood there, staring at me. “Do I need to worry about you?”
I almost spouted off an “I’m fine,” just like Jack, but the words stuck.
Ginny and I didn’t have to get serious. We could just have fun. Used to be, having fun meant going out. Movies, dinner, amusement parks. Hell, back in college I’d taken girls to the zoo for dates. Then we’d go to my place or her place, have sex, go on like that for awhile until something came up, like the end of the semester or her moving to Wichita for a job or…
I was still thinking like a twenty-five year old. I was forty. I had to keep reminding myself I was forty. I should be married with kids by now. I should have a mortgage and a 401k. Except I was a vampire now, and everything had changed. An eternity of sitting on my sofa playing video games and calling out for pizza under false pretenses stretched before me. And to think there were people who actually wanted to be vampires?
“I think I need a hobby,” I said, and Aaron went away with a huff.
The following night, a Friday, I logged on and didn’t hear from Ginny. Which meant that something terrible had happened to her. Probably not. I realized I didn’t have her phone number—just her online handle. She wasn’t online. I had another game to demo, but my brain kept skipping off it.
I knocked on Jack’s bedroom door to make sure he was okay. There was no answer. I knocked on Aaron’s door. “Aaron? You seen Jack tonight?”
“I think he went out right at sunset.”
“You think?”
The door opened. “Is something wrong?”