“But maybe you will when you’re a vampire? You will want me to live there?”
He blinked. “When I’m a vampire, I’ll probably just want to kill you and drink your blood. I probably won’t care where you live, so let’s go with I care now.”
I laughed, despite the fact that none of this was at all funny. But darker was suddenly becoming ridiculously amusing. “All right, we’ll go with that.”
“When I look at you, you are the prettiest person I’ve ever seen. Like, the most beautiful ever. And I want to take care of you. Hold you. Make you laugh.” He visibly swallowed. “But when I look at you, it’s like I’ve already hurt you. I’ve already let you down. I feel that way every time I look at you. Why is that?”
I didn’t have an answer. “No clue. I think that is more about you than it is about me.”
He smirked at me. “Fair enough.”
“Why did you bother with all the things you’ve done? The valedictorian? The captain of the track team? Why did you do all of that if you knew there would be no future? Seems like a ton of effort.”
He took my hand in his and drew me to him. “We all want our life to count for something, right? We all want that. We want to know that what we did here mattered. For most people, they know they have time for that. They get to be grownups, at least. I mean, no one is guaranteed any particular amount of time, but people have an expectation of a certain bit of it. Mine ends next week. I knew that it would go fast. I wanted what I did here to matter during that time. Like all those trophies, they have my name on them. I’ll give a speech someone will remember.” He sighed. “That’s why I did it. That’s why I worked so hard at it.”
I touched his hand. “I think that’s beautiful.”
“Stupid and beautiful? Or dumb and…?”
I shook my head. “Just beautiful.”
“Well…I feel like playing basketball. You want to?”
That was one of the most abrupt jumps I’d ever heard in my life. “Really?”
He took my hand, pulling me with him. “Yes. There’s a ball in Rowan’s garage and a net on the other side of the house that they put up to distract us when we were young. Do you want to play?”
“I’ve never played. I mean…ever.” That wasn’t one of the things we did in gym. Mostly, we spent all our time on football and baseball. “So I don’t think I can play. I mean, I’ve seen it. I know how it’s done. But I’ve never, what’s it called? Dribbled or anything.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Then it is beyond time that we do something about that. Let’s end the day better than it has gone so far. You can at least say that you played basketball once. Maybe, when I’m gone—and you are an expert at it—you’ll remember me.”
“Griffin.” My voice was low because I could hardly speak. “I’m never going to forget you. I can promise you that.”
He winked at me. “Good.”
I followed him to the garage, which Griffin knew the code to get into, even though it was Rowan’s house, and grabbed a basketball out of a bin in the corner. I caught my breath. There were ten cars in the garage. I hadn’t even realized that was what it was from the outside, since the doors had been made to blend in. It just looked like part of the house. When we’d come earlier, he’d parked in the driveway.
Maybe, when you got to live as long as these guys did, you just acquired wealth? Well, some did. There were probably ancient vampires living in abject poverty for eternity too.
Griffin grabbed the ball. “Come on.”
I followed him back out, and he locked up behind us. With a shrug, he reentered the code. “It would be a stupid person to rob a vampire, but there are dumbasses everywhere. They’re big on locking up.”
“Maybe it’s a vampire thing. Like, a natural thing.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
I followed after him, and he turned around to walk backward while he talked to me. “You look really pretty in the setting sun.”
Griffin made me blush. I shook my head. “You’re very flattering and handsome in the almost darkness yourself.”
“I wish you had spoken to me years ago. Even asked me for help with math.”
I winked at him. “That would assume I needed your help in math. I’m the one way ahead, right? I think maybe you should have askedmefor help in math. Surely, needing a tutor might have allowed you to break the no talking rule, right?”
Griffin laughed. “Who knows? Probably not. And that’s right. You’d never need my help in math. So I guess we’re stuck with just these few weeks. Hey, when is your birthday?”
I stopped moving. That was too on-point to be random. “When did you know?”