Chapter 23 Virgin
POV: Carly
He asked her the wildest place she had ever had sex.
As an opener.
She nearly choked on her taco.
"How is that starting off easy." She said when she had recovered enough to speak.
"It's always easy to talk about sex." He said it like it was obvious.
"Not for everyone." She snapped.
"Fair." He said. "I'll go first then."
She opened her mouth to tell him that wasn't necessary.
"Tea cup ride." He said. "Town fair. Two summers ago."
She stared at him. "You're joking."
"Not even slightly." He said with a completely straight face that had a smirk living just underneath it.
"How is that even possible."
"You can do a lot in five minutes." He said. "If you know what you're doing."
The way he said it landed somewhere she was not going to acknowledge. She pushed her hair back and focused very hard on her rice.
"Sounds unsanitary." She said.
"She enjoyed herself." He said pleasantly.
She made a face at her plate.
"Was it Aurora." She said before she could stop herself.
He looked at her. That specific look that meant he had clocked something and was deciding whether to say it out loud.
"No." He said simply.
She nodded and took a sip of her Coke and told herself she was not relieved by that answer.
"Your turn." He said.
She set her cup down.
She looked at the table. Then at the wall. Then at her hands.
"I can't answer that question." She said.
He waited.
She pressed her lips together.
"Because there's nothing to answer." She said. "I'm a virgin."
Silence.
She looked up at him bracing for it. For the smirk to widen into something cruel. For the joke to come fast and sharp the way his jokes usually did. For the information to become ammunition the way information always became ammunition eventually.
His face was neutral.
Actually neutral. Not performing neutrality. Just sitting with what she had said like it was a reasonable thing to have said and not a grenade she had just pulled the pin on.
"Okay." He said.
She blinked. "That's it."
"What else would there be." He said.
"You're not going to say anything."
"I just said okay." He said. "What do you want me to say."
She shook her head. "I don't know. Something horrible probably. That's kind of your thing."
He looked at her for a moment. Something shifted in his face. Not hurt exactly but adjacent to it.
"Of all the things I could give you a hard time about." He said quietly. "That wouldn't be one of them. There's nothing wrong with waiting."
"You reacted." She said. "When I said it. Your face did something."
"I was surprised." He said. "I assumed you and Lancaster were." He stopped. Ran a hand along the back of his neck. "More serious than that."
"We are serious." She said. "Just not that yet."
He nodded slowly and looked at his drink.
"May I ask why." He said.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Nobody had ever asked her that before. Not Whitney who knew and didn't ask questions. Not her mother who would have had opinions rather than questions. Not Tommy who accepted it without discussion the way he accepted most things about her that didn't directly affect him.
Just asked. Simply. Like the answer actually mattered to him.
"It's completely cliche." She said. "But I always thought it should be with someone you love. Someone you actually trust."
He looked at her steadily. "There's nothing cliche about that." He said.
"You don't have to be nice about it."
"I'm not being nice." He said. "I'm being honest. There's a difference."
She looked at him.
He looked back.
"Does that mean you don't love Lancaster." He said. "Or don't trust him."
The question landed quietly and sat there between them taking up more space than it should have.
"He's my boyfriend." She said.
"That's not an answer." He said.
"Of course I trust him." She said. "Love is just. More complicated than people make it sound."
"Not that I'd understand." He said. Not mockingly. Just repeating her logic back to her so she could hear it.
She felt her face warm slightly. "I didn't mean it like that."
"You always assume the worst about me." He said. "It's faster for you. If I stay the villain you don't have to figure out what I actually am."
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
He was right and she was not going to say that out loud.
"Next subject." She said.
He conceded with a nod. "Tell me about you then. Not your resume. Not what you've rehearsed. The actual you." He leaned forward slightly. "Hobbies. Things you want. Things you've never told anyone."
She fidgeted with the hem of her sleeve.
"You're anxious." He said.
She frowned. "How do you know that."
"You're doing the finger thing." He said. "And you're biting your lip. You do both when you're nervous. Usually around me."
She put her hands flat on the table.
"Maybe you just make people nervous." She said.
"Maybe." He said. "Or maybe you're not used to someone actually asking."
She stared at him.
He waited.
She exhaled. "I like to read. As you already know."
"Brontë." He said.
She felt the corner of her mouth pull up before she could stop it. "And Dickens. And Fitzgerald. I know, very predictable."
"You like what you like." He said. "Nothing wrong with that."
She twisted her mouth. "I want to travel. I've never actually been anywhere outside of Black River Falls."
Something moved across his face. "That's a shame." He said it genuinely. "This world is massive. You'd love it."
"Probably." She said. "Not exactly in the cards right now."
"Paris." He said.
She looked at him. "What."
"You seem like a Paris person." He said.
She laughed despite herself. "It's in my top three actually."
"It should be your number one." He said. "There's nowhere like it. You'd lose your mind."
"You've been." She said.
"More times than I can count." He said simply.
She turned that over. The weight of how long he had actually been alive pressing quietly against the edges of the conversation.
"What's it like." She said. "Being as old as you are but looking like this."
He tilted his head. "Like what."
She gestured vaguely at him.
He almost smiled. "You're going to have to be more specific."
"You know what I mean." She said. "Seventeen. Forever."
He was quiet for a moment. "Some days it's nothing." He said. "Other days it's the strangest thing in the world." He looked at his hands. "You stop expecting things to stay the same after a while. People change. Places change. You just." He paused. "You stay."
She sat with that.
"What about your family." She said carefully. "I know you have a lot of siblings and your family basically built half this town and nobody's ever been inside your house."
"No one's been invited." He said. The temperature in his voice dropped two degrees.
She noticed. "You don't have to."
"I know." He said.
She watched the vein in his neck appear faintly. The one that showed up when he was stressed. She had learned that recently and wasn't sure when she had started learning things like that.
"Victor is a businessman." He said finally. Careful and clipped. "Isabel does community work." He turned the fork over on the table. "That's the version they give people."
"And the other version." She said quietly.
He looked up at her.
She held his gaze and said nothing and waited the way he had waited for her earlier.
He looked back down at the fork.
"Not tonight." He said.
She nodded. "Okay."
He glanced up like he had expected more resistance.
She shrugged slightly. "Everyone has things they're not ready to say out loud yet." She said. "I'm not going to push you."
He looked at her for a moment longer than necessary.
"How do you walk in the sun." She said, changing direction. "I always assumed vampires couldn't."
Something shifted in his expression. A decision being made.
"Human blood." He said. "As long as we've fed recently enough, we can tolerate daylight. The more time passes between feeds the less we can." He paused. "It's why feeding regularly isn't optional for us. It's not just hunger. It's function."
She turned that over slowly. Thought about the girl in the library. The way he had looked after. The way he had said it's not many places I can feed freely.
"So last night in the library." She said.
"Partly." He said.
She nodded slowly. Not with judgment. Just processing.
"That's actually a more interesting mechanic than I expected." She said.
He looked at her. "Were you expecting something else."
"Honestly." She said. "A ring or something."
He laughed.
A real one. Short and genuine and she felt it in her chest and was furious about it.
"No ring." He said. "Just biology."
"Vampire biology." She said.
"Vampire biology." He confirmed.
She smiled at her Coke.
He watched her do it.
"I think I expected everything about you to be more sinister." She said. "No offense."
"Some taken." He said pleasantly.
"You know what I mean." She said. "You're not what I thought you were going to be."
He looked at her steadily. "Is that a good thing."
She considered it honestly.
"I don't know yet." She said.
He nodded slowly like that was a perfectly reasonable answer.
"Look at us." He said after a moment. "Witch and vampire. Getting along for over an hour. Who would have thought."
"Certainly not me." She said.
"Come on." He said. "Admit it. We're not as terrible as your lot thinks we are. You have to give us at least some credit." He leaned forward. "We're the reason the school uniform requirement got banned. We never received a thank you for that by the way."
She laughed. "Fine. That was a genuine service to the student body. Thank you. Or whatever."
He folded his hands on the table. "So what kind of trouble are we getting into after this."
She raised her eyebrows. "After?"
"The night is still young." He said. "And I'm not exactly in a rush to go back."
Her phone buzzed on the table.
She turned it over.
Three missed calls from Tommy. Three texts from Whitney. The most recent one from Whitney sent seven minutes ago with a question mark at the end of it.
She looked up at Niko.
His expression had already shifted. He had seen her face change and read it correctly.
"You have to go." He said.
"I lost track of time." She said. "I'm supposed to." She stopped. "I just need to get back."
"She doesn't know you're here." He said.
She rubbed her lips together. "Something like that."
He nodded and reached into his pocket and set a twenty under the tray before she could say anything.
"Niko." She said.
"It's fine." He said.
"I'm not letting you pay for me."
He sighed. "Do you want to debate this or do you want to get back before someone notices you're gone."
She opened her mouth.
"I thought so." He said and slid out of the booth.
She followed him out and they walked back toward campus in the dark and she kept looking at the missed calls on her screen and feeling the guilt of them settle in her stomach and she said nothing and he said nothing and it was a different kind of quiet than the walk there had been.
Author's Note:
He asked about her dreams and she told him. She asked about his family and he almost told her. And the sunlight thing just rewrote everything she thought she knew about what he was. Drop a like and tell me in the comments what moment hit you hardest in this chapter because I have a top three and I cannot pick one. Add us to your library because Chapter 22 is coming and we need to talk about Sinners and Saints and a certain goodnight that is going to live in your head rent free!