“Really? Wow. Not what I’d have expected.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Oh, and when the delivery guy gets here… you may not want to stick around for that.”
“I thought I was getting pizza out of this.”
“Well, yeah, if you want it, I just thought maybe—”
She patted my shoulder and finished picking duct tape off my shirt. “Don’t worry about me, Sam.”
Impossible. Just impossible.
Ginny did not move in. Not entirely. But she paid ten bucks a month and kept some of her stuff here, and came over for dinner sometimes after work and to help playtest games or to just blow off steam. It was… nice. She never said anything about the mess.
Sometimes, Ginny and I would go out to a movie or coffee shop or something—she’d get a drink, I’d watch her drink. I didn’t know where this was going between us, or what was going to happen. I assumed at some point she’d get tired of hanging out with someone who could never take her out for dinner—or rather, who’d be all too happy to take her out for dinner. At some point she’d want to get married and have kids. All the things I couldn’t do for her. She’d find someone, and I’d maybe see her once a month instead of a few times a week. Or maybe we’d carry on like this for decades. Rick said you had to be fatalistic about these things. You had to be okay with letting go, you had to enjoy what you had in the moment. She didn’t want to be a vampire, so she would get old and I wouldn’t, and we’d have to deal with that at some point. But whatever happened, I hoped we’d stay friends.
Because I could apparently still make friends. I could still have a life. That made me happy.
We managed to get the place cleaned up in a couple of weeks, with Rick and the Family’s help. Windows replaced—and new grates put over them. Door and locks replaced, carpets cleaned, furniture replaced. Aaron even managed to sell the dented lunch box. So that was where we stood, with the living room still impressively cluttered, cardboard boxes waiting to go out for morning pickup, a table full of action figures waiting to be packaged up. Jack was out at Psalm 23, Aaron was in his room at his computer, and I was sitting on the sofa, playing video games. Ginny was on the sofa with me. All completely normal.
An entire fantasy world bridge on the TV screen exploded, sending a swarm of orcs—and Ginny’s avatar, unfortunately—plunging to their doom in an electronic abyss.
“I think your vampire reflexes give you an unfair advantage,” she said, frowning.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The response time on this game is awful. You can’t tell because you move the controls so fast.”
“No I don’t—do I?”
“The other alternative is that I’m a shitty player. Are you calling me a shitty player?”
“I’d never do that.”
“Good.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Reset that bad boy, I’ll get you this time.”
“You say you will. Hey, aren’t we supposed to be working together on this one?”
“I thought so, until you blew me up.”
“That was an accident. Won’t happen again.”
She smirked.
Aaron came out of the room then. He didn’t even blink anymore at Ginny being here. “Hey, anyone want pizza?”
We did.