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When Eros and his mother discussed how to get to the restaurant – Eros wanted to drive his own car while she wanted us to get into her husband’s car – I quickly texted Simon.
I’m not gonna make dinner. Something came up with Eros.
The response came immediately – he’d known something was off, of course. Everything okay?
I looked at Eros, who was looking paler than usual. He was fighting with his stepdad about the drive over, and I could see his mouth twitch nervously.
Not sure, I think I need to be here right now. I’ll come over as soon as we’re back.
I could feel Simon’s distress at that. You’re leaving with him?
Sorry – I promise to tell you everything tonight.
I could feel he was forcing himself to agree. It was amazing how hard he was trying to be the perfect boyfriend these days. No pressure on me, trusting me unconditionally, not making a problem out of the time I spent with Eros… It was almost concerning how okay he was with everything, or at least how okay he was trying to be.
I’ll stay tuned, he texted back. Come over after for Guitar Hero, okay?
I complied and sighed deeply while I put away my phone. Of course he just had to stay focused on our bond all the time. That meant I had to keep my feelings for Eros in check yet again. I really needed to block Simon for an hour or so, just so I could work through my issues without worrying about hurting him. I envied every girl that could just think ‘oh he’s so hot’ without her boyfriend immediately knowing about it.
Eros and his parents still hadn’t figured out how they wanted to go to the restaurant, but I wasn’t wasting my night on fights.
“Eros,” I cut in loudly. “You promised me I could see you car sometime, but we never came around to it. Maybe now’s a good time?” I turned to Mrs. Bullock and smiled kindly. “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you or your husband, m’am. This way, you can go home right after dinner, saving you both the trip back here.”
Mrs. Bullock started to protest, but her husband took her arm and pretty much dragger her away. “That a great idea, thank you, Deidra.”
“Deidra?” I asked Eros while we walked toward the underground parking lot. “I take it they didn’t know about you supposed girlfriend until now?”
He grunted. “I’m just happy Sheila didn’t say her name when she picked up my phone. I rescheduled four times with my mother, but this time she wouldn’t take no for an answer…”
“And instead of asking me, you just drag me out here and expect me to play along?” I sighed. “I thought we were past this kind of thing, Eros.”
“You’d have said no,” he explained, holding open a door for me, “to spare good old Simon. This way, he can’t be too mad, because you didn’t plan this ahead or anything. And you didn’t have enough time to process it and throw a scene.”
“So you were counting on my stupidity and slowness of thought?” I asked, smiling a little. “Great plan.”
He shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”
We were at his car now – a sleek black Volvo. He obviously expected me to compliment him on his taste or something, so of course I just walked over to the passenger side, yanked open the door and sat down with crossed arms. He quickly got in too, his feelings kept carefully in check.
“You’re not gonna run screaming?” he asked while he started the car.
“No,” I replied lightly. “But I get to ask any question I want today, okay? Anything I want to know, you have to tell me.” If I wanted to figure out how I felt about Eros, the only way to do so would be to ask him about the most horrible things he’d done, and see if the knowledge made me feel revulsion or just the same attraction I was currently experiencing. I wouldn’t be able to delve into it with Simon keeping a close watch, but at least I’d have something to think about for when I finally managed to shut Simon out.
“But it’s almost an hour both ways,” Eros argued. “You don’t have two hour’s worth of questions.”
“Oh, I sure do,” I disagreed. “Now, where to start… Oh, I know. What happened the night Sheila picked up your phone?”
“Nothing, she just picked it up,” Eros murmured, not looking at me. “And I got a little mad.”
“If you don’t want me to tell your mother that I’m just a pretend girlfriend, you have to do better than that,” I told him sternly. “What was she doing that she was in a position to answer your phone?” I was very much ready to hear about him having sex with her using mind control.
“We were on my bed,” he said, confirming my suspicions. “Talking.”
“Talking?” I repeated skeptically.
Eros looked in his rearview mirror while leaving the parking lot. “Yeah, and then my mother called, I got mad, smashed a lamp against the wall and told her to get the hell out.”
I had to admit: that was a surprise to me. “Why did you smash a lamp? Is it really that bad that she answered your phone?”
“No,” he replied through gritted teeth. He was contemplating whether or not to tell me something and decided to just go ahead. “You had your first kiss with Simon and that just made me snap.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “I see. Another question then… tell me about the time you broke your stepdad’s car.”
He inhaled sharply. “How do you know about that?”
“You told me when you explained about your episodes, remember?”
“Right,” he realized. “Well… I took a baseball bat, went outside in the dead of night in nothing but my boxer shorts and just went at it until all the windows were broken and my hands were bleeding.”
“Why did you do it?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know… He’d told me during dinner that he’d like me to call him dad and I just flipped.” Eros’ feelings were getting darker, his sinister aura filling up the entire car – at least, it felt like it was suffocating me. “First he married my mom, made me move out of my old home, got rid of my dad’s old stuff and then… then he just tried to take his place… I snapped.”
I actually understood that. If anyone ever felt like smashing things, it was me. Other girls might be turned off by someone admitting to trashing a car, but I sympathized with him. I’d had a hard time being nice to my mom’s boyfriends when she’d just started dating, and my situation hadn’t been half as bad as Eros’ predicament. I’d once stolen a guy’s wallet and put it in the silver wear drawer just to mess with him. Not the same as wielding a baseball bat, but I understood the urge.
“And the time you went at your teddy bear with a steak knife?” I pressed on.
“Bread knife,” he corrected. “I don’t remember that, to tell you the truth. I was twelve and I woke up covered in stuffing, a knife in my hands and my mother sobbing on the floor.”
I gasped. “You didn’t stab her, did you?”
“No,” Eros said with a small smile. “She was just having a nervous breakdown.”
“Just a nervous breakdown huh?” I shook my head. “How did she react when you had sex with a neighbor girl in the middle of the street?”
“I still can’t believe I told you that,” he mused. He pretended to take this all very lightly, like it was normal to discuss his mental issues while driving around, but the bond was giving him away. I felt grateful that he wasn’t me shutting me out, even though he could. “My mother doesn’t know about that. The stepmonster took care of it. I don’t know what he did, but I’m pretty sure he bought off her parents or something.”
“Was she a human?” I asked quietly.
“Wo knows?” He shrugged. “Maybe she was a supernatural that hadn’t started the Trans yet, or a fairy or something. I don’t see auras so I have no way to tell.”
“Did you use mind control on her?”
Eros turned even paler when I asked that. “I don’t know, Dem. I must’ve, but I don’t remember. Why are you asking all of this?”
“I’m the one asking the questions!” I looked away from him, afraid that he might realize that I needed to figure out my feelings for him. “When did you first have sex?”
“Is that really important?” he asked, almost shyly. “I’m not asking you when you lost your virginity, now am I?”
“I’m still a virgin,” I told him without having decided to speak up. “Now you.”
“You’re-” He shook his head. “Really?”
“What, I’m that much of a slut you find it hard to believe?” I spat.
“No, you’re so beautiful and sweet that I can’t believe no guy has tried hard enough to get you to… well, have sex with him.” He was looking at me with a strange look in his eyes. “Do you think you and Simon…?”
“I didn’t say you could start asking me stuff,” I said without looking at him. He didn’t need to know how uncomfortable this topic was for me. “I believe you were gonna tell me about your first time.”
“I’d just turned fourteen, she was sixteen,” he informed me. “Met her at a party and we just went for it somewhere behind a bush. No idea if I controlled her mind or not.”
“When did you start the change?”
“I was…” He paused and thought about it for a moment. “I think I was fifteen when my mother send me here… yeah, fifteen.”
“There’s no way you could compel someone before you started the Trans, right?” I asked hopeful. “That girl must’ve just thought you were hot.”
“That and she was drunk as a skunk and pied herself an hour later,” he commented dryly. “The girl in the street? I was sixteen then and home for the holidays, so no excuses there.”
“How horrible,” I contemplated with a sad sigh.
“Yeah sh-” He stopped dead when he realized I was actually concerned about how this must all be for him, not for the girl.
We were both silent for a while. So far, my tactic wasn’t working. I didn’t hate him or thought he was awful. I just felt bad for what he’d had to go through…
“Tell me something else,” I said after we’d been silent for so long it was starting to creep me out. “Tell me about… everything.”
“I can’t tell you everything I’ve ever said and done, Demona. Not just because that’d take years, but also because… well, I like to have you around, even if it’s just as a friend, and I’d like to keep you around for a little while longer.”
I was taken aback by that. “I won’t leave you, you idiot.”
“You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know what I’ve done. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night and there was blood all over my sheets. Turned out I’d killed my rabbit while sleepwalking.”
“How old were you?”
“Seriously – I tell you something truly disturbing and you ask me how old I was?”
“Like ten, or older?”
“I was eleven.”
“A year after your dad died.”
“First Christmas after his death…” He paused. “So, why aren’t you asking me to let you out of the car right now?”
“Eros, you tried to rape me once. A story about how you killed your pet doesn’t really do much for me.”
“Aren’t vegetarians supposed to be concerned about these things?”
“Sure, but right now I’m more worried about you.”
“Why are you still talking to me? Why do you feel obliged to be my friend?”
“There’s no obligation, Eros. I just like you.”
“Just like that? You just like me?”
And maybe more than that. I sighed. “Look, you moron, you know what the word unconditional means, right?”
He scoffed. “I’m not as insanely smart as Simon, but yes, I know my words.”
“You really think that our friendship is anything but unconditional?”
“So the only reason you stick with me is because you have no standards?”
“If you’re gonna keep this up all night, I might just jump out of the car after all. Really, Eros, I’m only gonna say this once so listen closely. You’re a good guy and you’re my friend. With or without a bond, with or without a whole lot of confusion about our feelings for each other, with or without Simon, with or without your troubled past. You get me and I get you and I don’t think the bond’s the reason we always stick together.” I had to stop for a moment to get the raging feelings back to normal, before Simon would start freaking out and call me to find out what was bothering me so much. “I think that we don’t really have a say in this…” I continued, “we’re just like that. Maybe the bond’s here to make sure we won’t forget how important we are to each other or something sappy like that. And nothing you tell me, nothing you do is ever gonna change that. Sure, I might want to strangle you sometimes and if you’re mean to me I might ignore you for a few days. But that doesn’t change the fact that when push comes to shove, I’ll always be there for you.”
“Always being there not matter what, that’s pretty much what unconditional means, Dem.” His light words contradicted with his heavy feelings. “Learn your words.”
“You’re impossible, you know that?” I shot at him. “I know that got to you, I know you care. But okay, never mind then.”
“Dem-”
“No, Eros, just DRIVE.”
“Your speeches are adorable, you know that. Real tear-drawers.”
“I think I need to take every nice thing I said about you back.”
“Dem…”
“What now?”
“Thanks.”
“It’s okay.”
“No It’s not. Really… thank you.”
“Don’t get all teary-eyed on me now, Slayer. DRIVE!”
“So, Demona, you go to the same school as my son?” Mrs. Bullock was looking at me with intent eyes, like an eagle watching its prey.
We were sitting in a very exclusive restaurant, with so many forks, knives and spoons around my plate that I had no idea which one to use for the salad in front of me. Eros very subtly took up his own silver wear and did it slow enough for me to see.
Relieved, I started working on my food. “Yes, m’am.”
“And do you like it there?” It sounded like a trick question, the way she asked it, but I couldn’t see what she wanted to hear.
“Yes, I do,” I replied honestly. “The classes are very interesting and I have made some very nice friends.”
“One of them being my son.”
Jeez – did this woman always ask things she already knew? Of course I went to Eros’ school, and of course I’d befriended him, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this strange situation, now would I? I didn’t answer her.
“How is Eric in school?” She didn’t dare to call him Eros anymore, I noticed.
I looked sideways at Eros, wondering what he wanted me to tell her. His face was completely empty of any kind of emotions, but I could feel he trusted that I would know what to say. Great; no help from him. “I believe his grades are all right, if that’s what you mean…” I said hesitantly. “He’s in another year than I am, so I never get to see him in class. But he is very popular and the entire school seems to like him.”
Eros’ eye twitched a little when I said that. Oops – that evidently wasn’t what Eros had wanted me to say; let’s try again then. “I met Eros on my first day here,” I told Mrs. Slayer. “He welcomed me into the school and carried my bags for me. He’s been making me feel welcome even since.” That was stretching things a bit, but it wasn’t an outright lie either. “I’ve come to know him quite well during my time here and I think that he’s a very good guy. He is always trying to help me whenever there is anything I need.” Also not a lie, but not the truth either.
I could just see his mother swell with pride when she heard my praises, and I didn’t think she deserved the credit for Eros being a good guy. The angry feelings I got from Eros strengthened that believe. So I decided to add some fuel to the fire. “I think Eros is quite an extraordinary person,” I praised with a sly smile on my face. “Especially considering how well he turned out despite his troubled upbringing.”
I could see I had struck a nerve when Mrs. Bullock’s mouth twitched ever so slightly. Eros put his hand on my leg and squeezed gently, his feelings more at peace now. I was glad I had managed to say the right things, although I didn’t like the way Mr. Bullock was eying me right now. Obviously he didn’t think what I’d said was very appropriate.
“His father’s death was indeed very hard on Eric,” he agreed grimly, although we all knew I hadn’t meant that.
“Not having a male figure to look up to is hard on a kid,” I offered, narrowing my eyes at this man. He grunted slightly at my offensive statement, but Eros laughed out loud.
“You have no idea what you are talking about,” Mrs. Bullock objected angrily. “Eric never even tried to get to know Todd!”
“And why would he?” I replied, venom in my voice. “He already has a father – his death doesn’t change that. It’s the two of you who should have made an effort to reunite your family. Not Eros.”
“How dare you!” she screeched, her voice getting all red. “You have no idea what you are talking about!”
“I do,” I said, irritated. “I have some experience with difficult family situations myself. My own mother had a very troublesome relationship with my father, but she never just sprung a new guy on me.” I took a deep breath, deliberating how much I was willing to expose for Eros’ sake. After a second of thought, I decided to just lay it all out on the table. “I was rebellious at first, every time she brought a new man into the house I would freak. But she was patient and she figured things out with me. She would never remarry without discussing things with me first. She broke up with my father; she wanted me to get along with the guys she brought into our home.” I put extra emphasis on the word she so it would be perfectly clear that it should always be the parent who had to go the extra mile. “I always try to be nice, and her past boyfriends were all great guys and I was sad when their relationships ended. But I don’t think it is fair to blame the kid when you don’t get a happy family at an instant. It takes work. Having an affair and remarrying isn’t hard work.” I watched everyone at the table flinch when I said the word affair; good. “It is easy and convenient. Did you ever think about how Eros must have felt? How do you think a young kid can deal with his father’s death, his mother’s untruthfulness, his new stepfather and as if that’s not enough, his transformation into a vampire?” I had raised my voice so much that people were staring at us. I really didn’t care; I wasn’t finished yet. I took a deep breath and spat: “boohoo, poor you for having such an awful son.”
Everyone was quite after my speech, and I was quite surprised myself. Eros was most surprised of all – I guess he just hadn’t thought I cared so much. But I did; I’d felt sorry for Eros ever since I’d known about his troubled past. But now that I’d met his parents and experienced firsthand how awful they were, I didn’t just feel sorry for him. I understood him better and I was outraged that these two people had messed up such a good guy. If his parents hadn’t been so selfish and self-absorbed, Eros wouldn’t have had to deal with so much difficult situations in his life. He wouldn’t be such a jerk at times, wouldn’t need the approval of other people, wouldn’t be who he was now. It had taken me so much time to see who Eros really was, to look through the popularity, the obnoxiousness, the seduction, the walls he’d built around himself. And now I knew why he never let people in – he’d never been anything but let down. If his mother had raised him right, not just me but everyone would know the Eros underneath all the bullshit. She had bereft him of a different, better life. And I truly, deeply hated her for that.
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