22. FAREWELL, REBECCA

FAREWELL, REBECCA

" Y ou don't think you could have made it, I don't know, just a little smaller, sis? It's like the size of a fucking movie screen." Jess said, standing in the shadow of Rebecca's portrait in my studio with her head tilted back to take it all in.

"I just did what I was told," I said, shrugging.

Jess shot me a sidelong glare.

It was pickup day, and the moving folks were coming to remove the massive canvas from my life. I had no idea where the owner of this portrait would hang it, but I imagined she lived in a castle–probably in the same area as my mother–and had wall room to spare. That, or she was building a mansion out of these portraits.

Jess and I had woken up before the girls, a rarity (and an indication that Jess had put them to bed way too late last while I was out with Andras), but it was nice to have a cup of coffee together in the living room, cozied up on the couch, both of us wrapped in my favorite green velvet blanket. It took most of my self-control not to tell her about last night, about Andras in the bar, in his mind, in his bed. Thankfully, Jess filled the silence by lamenting over her dissertation and sharing some details about some "super hot" woman she'd been on a few dates with recently, which was a lot for Jess. "And when do I get to meet this super special lady?" I teased. She gave a look like she'd just chugged sour milk and waved me off. Then I got the call that movers were on their way to fetch Rebecca, so I dragged Jess outside to help me cover the canvas in a protective fabric before they arrived.

"And why do you care so much about the size of this monstrosity? How exactly does it effect you?," I mumbled while trying to untangle some rope to secure the portrait, lest it arrive scratched or mangled.

"Because I'm out here, in the cold, way to early in the morning, helping you wrap this thing. If it were a normal size, we'd already be back inside on the couch, cozy." Jess lamented, still standing there, judging Rebecca the Shih Tzu's crooked face, clouded eyes, and tongue that flopped out of her mouth in the space where teeth should be, like a moist beef filet.

I scrunched my face.

"Thank you for waiting with me while they come to pick this up. Also, can you help?" I tapped my fingertips on the canvas, one finger at a time: One-two-three-four-five, five-four-three-two-one.

"I suppose," She said, faking a smile, "if you stop with the anxious tapping."

"Fine." I grunted out, yanking a sheet of fabric free from a shelf, "I have so much to tell you about last night."

"Yeah, I figured. You kept giving me longing looks this morning like you really needed to say something," she chuckled.

I glared, "Well, don't we know everything."

"When it comes to you? Pretty much."

"That's fair."

I moved around the canvas to close the gap between myself and Jess and lowered my voice; after all, Steven's apartment was above my studio, and even if he wasn't there, it felt…weird.

"So I kinda had sex. I mean, well, yeah. Listen, I—"

Jess went slackjawed. Her full red lips parted in a silent gasp. Conspiratorial delight twinkled in her eyes.

My phone rang before I could continue stammering on. Jess threw her hands up in the air and mouthed, now ?

"Okay, I'm opening the gate," I said into my phone and mouthed, I know, in return. I stalked to the iron fence of the driveway, unlocked it, and swung the massive gate open with a creak and thud.

Two men in gray coveralls waited for me. We exchanged pleasantries and they followed me to the portrait. One man had a mustache and a large blanket tucked under his left arm, and the other was bald with a crow tattooed on his neck and a spindle of twine in his hand. What a relief–I wouldn't have to bother wrapping the damn thing. The large bald man sent a feeling of unease prickling up my spine; even though he looked nothing like the man who'd attacked me in my home, there were enough similarities to trigger my nervous system, to wake my worry, to have it whisper concerns in the recesses of my mind. Be cautious, look out, watch him. As instructed by my therapist, I acknowledged the warnings, reminded myself that this was the voice of anxiety, and then focused on the pads of my feet while I walked.

"There she is!" I sang, pointing to Rebecca. The mustache guy raised his eyebrows at his partner as if to say, Jesus Christ, rich people, right? But the bald guy beamed and exclaimed, "A Shih Tzu! Awesome! Check this out!" He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a Shih Tzu with a giant pink bow on its head and the words "Violet Cake'' in cursive below it.

"My partner and I couldn't have children, so Violet is our little girl," he giggled.

The mustache guy inspected the tattoo and patted him on the back. "Cool ink, man."

Jess and I smiled at the man with the Violet Cake tattoo. "She's perfect," I beamed, gesturing to Violet. "Let me know if you ever want a painting of her the size of a school bus." He giggled again, then rolled his sleeve back down. The two men immediately started to wrap the painting and secure it with twine. Jess and I moved politely out of the way and out of earshot.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with me, she whispered, "Tell me everything."

"Uhm, right now?" I whispered back.

I listened for the girls to make sure they were still asleep. What had happened between Andras and I was really hard to explain. I hadn't had sex with Andras…but I had. We did. It had felt real–so real I'd even forgotten we weren't actually in his bed at one point. So yes, I guess we did have sex in whatever manner it happened.

"Uhm, so, I had sex with Andras," I said so quietly it took a moment for her to register the information. For a second, I considered telling her that he was an old as-dust vampire, too, but thought better of it.

Her mouth dropped open. Then she threw back her head and cackled, her brown wavy bob quavering around her face.

"What is so funny!" I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest.

"What's so funny? You were so anxious about everyone thinking you had an affair with him, and then you bang him five minutes after ending your marriage? Really subtle, sis, not at all suspect."

"We didn't have an affair; we've been officially divorced for months now," I countered. Steven and I were done, the papers were signed, and he technically lived in the guest apartment now, even though he could more often be found in the main house with the girls. Which I didn't mind. He'd become a much more pleasant person since we separated.

"I know, I'm just giving you shit."

"I know," I said, unsmiling, "and I don't know if I have it in me to care what any of those gossiping wanks thinks anymore," I admitted.

"Good," Jess said, with a curt dip of her chin. "So, give me the details. How was it? Tell me everything."

I brought my hands to my mouth to hide my giant smile, feeling a rush of giddiness swell in my chest. "Amazing. Incredible. It's hard to put it into words." My lower stomach tingled and flipped just thinking about it. "He's gorgeous. His body was…" I trailed off. Perfect? Hard? Flawless? Vampiric? "Uhm, and he was so good at everything . Extremely skilled."

Jess's eyes widened,

"Ha! The look on your face. Your cheeks are flushing. That good, huh?"

"Yeah," I said, my hands roaming from my mouth down to my chest, where they paused to feel my heart drum for a moment. The beat brought me back to my body and the cold reality that I was a human woman with a thrumming heart that could stop beating at any moment, and Andras was a vampire who would outlive me tenfold. That was only one of the many reasons we couldn't actually date. Plus, my girls didn't need the additional stress of me being with a new guy after splitting from their father. We were still adjusting to our new life, it was hard enough without anyone else thrown in.

"Sis?" Jess whispered, placing a hand on my shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"It's just," I paused. What could I say? Well, you see, he's immortal, and I'll likely die on a random Tuesday from PTA-induced stress. I blew out a breath, "I like him. The sex was amazing, and we shouldn't do it again. Andras has a complicated past. And present? And honestly, I haven't known him for that long. But maybe there's something between us to explore…one day. Down the road. Just not now."

"What? Does he cook meth?"

I glowered at her.

Jess threw up her hands in defeat.

The moving men grunted loudly as they hoisted up the wrapped painting (which looked more like an old mattress than a work of art) and hobbled towards the moving truck, the cold wind pushing and pulling the canvas like a ship's sail. "Thank you," I called out to them, waving goodbye with one hand while I closed the iron gate with the other. After securing the lock, I turned and nearly slammed into my sister, who'd been right behind me, arms crossed, looking bored.

"What the hell?" I exclaimed, surprised.

"I can tell you're hiding something, you crafty bitch," she said, one eyebrow raised.

There was no point in lying. She knew me well enough.

"I am hiding things." I admitted, walking around her, "A lot of things. I mean, he's not married or anything. He's just, well…complicated, I guess? I'm not ready to talk about it."

Jess followed me. I loved my sister in part because she would call me out when I was doing something stupid, but also because I could tell her anything . And I wanted to tell her. I was bursting at the seams to spill the tea about Andras–THE thing–because it was every romantic scenario we'd ever dreamed of since high school. Thank you very much, Vampire Diaries. Plus, we were, for all intents and purposes, witches (if you had to use a name for what we were), and what goes better with vampires than witches?

Jess and I had grown up utterly obsessed with all things magical, elemental, symbolic, and otherworldly, and what was an immortal if not all of that? But we weren't witches in the, I don't know, typical sense. Unlike the goth kids in our private Catholic school who practiced to rebel against their family religion, who were always angry and constantly hexing everyone (good for them, honestly), we were witches in our blood, from birth, in the things we believed, and how we existed in the world.

Like many Persian families, our family had Zoroastrian roots from long ago, before the Arab tribes conquered the Persian empire and made Islam mandatory. The Zoroastrian religion is an eco-religion of sorts, rooted in respecting the earth and its elements. Everything started from there and, over time, became something else for our family. We didn't consider ourselves Zorasts, but parts of the religion were woven into our culture, so as little girls, we celebrated the change in seasons. We jumped over the fire for the Spring Equinox with our parents and their friends to ask for good health–a terrifying sight for our conservative Christian neighbors who believed that every spring, we were attempting to summon demons to burn down their mansions. Bethany's family delighted in calling the fire department every year. The twats.

Jess and I were the kids who wandered around thanking the trees for oxygen. And because of our mom's love of gardening—the only thing that woman did other than ride horses that involved even a speck of dirt—we knew every property of every herb, flower, and weed under the sun and how to use them to heal or harm. Even our dad, who traveled most of the time (and was a cold, critical ass when he was around), fostered the ideals that the earth should be respected and treated as a living entity and life force. He didn't teach us about death in terms of heaven or hell, but from the first law of thermodynamics–energy cannot be made or unmade. So when our goldfish, Goldie, died, we were told that the energy that made Goldie, Goldie, left her body and went back into the world to give life to other things. This made perfect sense to us as kids, and we accepted it easily and without question. Witchy-woo shit (whether we called it that or not) was just part of our life, part of our family culture, woven into our genetics. And Andras was crafted of magic straight out of a paranormal romance novel, and I couldn't tell my sister . At least, not yet. And it was killing me .

"I'll fill you in. Eventually. I promise," I said over my shoulder as I walked towards the studio door to lock up.

"Uh-huh," Jess mumbled.

"Anyway," I said, turning the lock. "A lot is going on," I continued, stuffing my hands into my jogger pockets. "My head hurts, and I'm confused. I mean, I'm finally divorced like I should have been five years ago. But some part of me will always love Steven in a very platonic way. It's just," I sighed, "this is not the life I'd planned, and I'm still mourning that. And now I have a crush on someone?"

I groaned, folding myself into a patio chair.

"I understand," Jess said. "It's a lot."

She plopped down across from me and melted into the chair until her and the cushions were one mass. Her tongue poked around the inside of her cheek while she stared at me, unblinking.

Finally, I got tired of waiting for her to say whatever it was she was clearly thinking. "What?" I asked, more bite in my tone than I intended.

Her lips pursed. "I was just thinking…you're allowed to be happy, you know that, right?" Jess stated, matter of factly. "Ever since we lost dad it's like you just kinda shut down. And once you became a mom it got even worse. You don't have to weather the storm, Danny, if you're a part of it."

We regarded each other for a long while, saying nothing. She wasn't wrong, and the implication of that hit me, hard. When was the last time I felt pure, unbridled joy? When was the last time I just, I don't know, wanted something for myself?

"Fuck, that's cold," Jess hissed, pulling her knees into her chest and crossing her legs at the ankle. "We don't live long enough to be unhappy." She wiped at the knee of her trousers, brushing off a piece of lint.

"I know." I agreed. Although, what if we did? "But what if…what if you could live forever? What would you do differently?"

"Well, I wouldn't want to spend forever miserable," she said, leveling her gaze at me to emphasize that it was obvious. "But, live forever how ? Are we talking about cool powers? Or exactly like we are?" she pondered.

Jess tracked a bird overhead, her small hand hovering just above her eyebrows to block the sun from her large, round eyes. The corner of her lip kicked up. She whispered, "Robin," to herself. My sister, the twenty-nine-year-old birder.

"For debate's sake, let's say like a vampire or something."

Jess grinned.

"Hmm. Twilight vampire or Fright Night vampire?"

I huffed a laugh because I'd asked Andras something similar. I loved how much my sister and I, though so incredibly different, were alike.

" Vampire Diaries vampire? I guess?" I shrugged.

Her lips twisted to the side, and she hummed some tune, then said, "well, I'd do everything differently and everything the same. I'd do it all. And have a lot of dirty vampire sex."

She smiled and waggled her eyebrows while hip-thrusting out of the chair.

"You're going to fall over," I said, chuckling.

"And you?" Jess asked, arching a brow.

My mind drifted to Andras and his body pressing into mine, those full soft lips parted, breathing against my lips and between my legs. I anchored myself to the freezing chair.

"I'd let myself want. I think."