Why the Hell does it have to be this way? So difficult, so painful?

I watch her standing there, talking to my father with a glass of red wine in her hand. She laughs, throws her head back in one of those brilliant, perfect laughs of hers. The gown she wears is as red as the wine, as red as her blood. A gorgeous, Victorian antique, bought especially for this ball celebrating another of my grandfather’s long-lived years. My father, with a passing glance and smirk in my direction, takes her wine from her, and placing it on the end table, takes her out to dance. Even from here, on the couch several feet away, I can here her objections. The same things she told me.

“Dammit, Auron, you know I can’t dance!”
“I know you won’t try.”
“No! I told you I can’t, and I can’t! Hasn’t anyone ever told you that no means no?”
“Then why did you come?”
Pause
“Well? Tell me, Maggie, why did you come?”
“You invited me, and you’re my best friend. Besides, I like spending time with you.”

I watch as he jerks her unwilling body around on the dance floor. I can tell the subject of their conversation just by the way his eyes flick towards me. I pretend not to notice, but it’s tough. Perhaps not as tough as stopping my mother’s friend’s daughter from noticing the subject of my interest, but tough enough. After all, I am supposed to have a least a passing fancy for this… woman.

She drolls on and on. I nod. I pretend to smile, pretend to care, all the while thinking, “Why can’t you be her?” Meanwhile, I watch the light of my life leave my father’s grasp to go pick up her wine. Really, Maggie, you’re not even drinking age. What do you think you’re doing with that?

Oh yes, that’s right.

I look down to my own glass, filled with another kind of red liquid, this one thicker. I bring it to my lips and down a sip, tasting the copper. That ugly taste, the taste that I cannot live without.

I notice her as she chats with my judgmental sister; I see all of the eyes that lay upon her, her dress, her neck… being the only human in a ball room full of vampires must be a good way to make friends.

Finally I am forced to pay attention to Victoria, the one I’m having a very one-sided conversation with. She wants me to dance. I pretend to be interested, taking her hand and leading her onto the floor.

She sees.
She doesn’t just see, really. She seethes.
Maybe I’m just imagining things.
”You’re my best friend.” Nothing more. Damn me for thinking such foolish thoughts.

I pull Victoria around the floor, through the other couples, trying to stay within sight of the girl I love; the girl I wish was in my arms right now. I see her, sitting on the couch, pretending to be interested in the wine in her hand. Every now and again she peers up at me. I make a face over Victoria’s shoulder- she already knows that I don’t like the girl.

She giggles. I smile. I become aware of the ivory fangs protruding from my smile, and it drops. Victoria, in turn, smiles up at me through scads of curly black hair. Her fangs are long, thin, much like her body type. I compare her mentally to my beloved. She has short hair. Very short. Boy short, almost, but still with enough length to style and look lovely. It’s red- not blood red, exactly, but almost. More like… dried blood, I’d say. She dies it- she’s really blonde, and she hates the color. Says it makes her look stupid. Which, may I say, she is far from. I should know: I live with her- just as roommates, though, best friends. That’s all.

She’s going to Culinary School- she wants to be a chef, maybe open a restaurant. She’s got the thick-headed drive for it, certainly. I attend a night college for vampires, one of the many best-kept secrets in America. And, of course, the school is in Pennsylvania. Charming.

We used to live in Ohio, one state west. We went to the same high school- I part of the night class, she the day- and became friends after a chance encounter. Clumsy thing- she’d dropped all her books in the midst of class changes, and I helped her. I ran into her again later that night as she’d been sneaking back to her dorm after shopping for ingredients to some new recipe. She was breaking so many rules- leaving campus, leaving her dorm after dark. I helped her back, tempted the whole way by that delicious smell drifting off her skin and clothes. We exchanged phone numbers- I snuck out of class to meet her on the roof of a school or in a tree of the courtyard. We were fast friends.

Eventually, I told her the secret. My secret, the secret of the night class, the secret of everyone in the ball room right now. She didn’t believe me, but I made her believe. I didn’t hurt, her, of course, but I showed her my fangs, and I showed her how I heal. I expected her to hate me, to run away screaming.

She didn’t. She was intrigued. From then on, we were inseparable.

That was Junior year.