A.SPECKHART | Book One

REINTRODUCTION 10.1

The grey ceramic mug in my hands was warmed by the streaming black tea within it; its bitter vapours wafted past my nose as I took a sip, looking at Cole expectantly over the rim. His hazel eyes bore into mine, equally unwavering, as he sipped his drink before setting his mug down on the coffee table between us. He set it right beside the blood canister, which he hadn't tidied away or taken into the kitchen earlier. I wondered if perhaps he'd left it there as a reminder so I didn't forget for a second what he was and what kind of Mythical I was spending my morning with. A morning that was passing us by without a word spoken. 

A bird or two had landed, lingered and flown away from the window. Dreary grey clouds drifted like smoke over the cityscape beyond. Inside, the apartment's peace was disturbed only by the metronomic ticking of the clock on the bookcases that framed the wall-mounted telly. The silence loitered, but we settled into it, allowing the time to help us adjust ourselves to each other. Two people who'd shared one passionate night could be something more or less than that, given enough time. A Vampire and an Elf could exist in the same space without one harming the other. Cole and I were waiting to see what we'd become. Though I didn't doubt that some conversation would speed up that process, there was just one problem. "I don't know what to say." My admission came out as a sigh and broke the silence. 

Cole nodded in agreement and asked, "When you came back with me last night, what did you want to talk about?" 

"Well, without wanting to sound corny... You." I grinned bashfully. "I'm pretty boring, but I'll tell you all about me if you tell me about you. You still want to be friends, don't you?" 

"If you'll have me." He smiled weakly, glancing down into his lap—it wasn't hard to tell he'd fibbed—that wasn't what he'd wanted at all. He was just willing to settle for that if he couldn't have what he wanted. I didn't know at the time but Cole had rarely gotten what he wanted throughout his life. The effect it had had on him, made him appear easy going, when in fact, it was just because he had grown so used to just going along with circumstances put upon him. He rarely strived for any of his long term desires, settling for the fleeting moments of happiness he could have in the here and now.

Scratching his fingers through his white-blond hair, Cole prefaced with, "I'm not very good at talking about myself." before he began telling me an abridged version of his life story. While the early chapters seemed rather ordinary, he was still an interesting person. He'd grown up exclusively in the northeastern village his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were from. He'd taken all of his schooling there before being the first in his family to attend university.

We discovered we had quite a lot in common regardless of the generational age gap. It turned out he wasn't born a Vampire, and in his life, as a Mortal, he had been an English teacher and amateur writer with a hobby for cross-country running and attending live music concerts. He had published a few of his works and let me flick through one. I admired his book collection and spotted that he owned one of my favourite poetry anthologies, an edition with a poem for every day of the year. I opened it to find that a message was left on the first page inside. 'Congratulations on passing the exam, my darling. All my love Victoria.' I looked behind me to find Cole standing close and reading the handwritten note from over my shoulder. We shared a smile before he continued his story and revealed that he had met Victoria when he was fourteen, and they'd married when he was only nineteen. Their love story was incredibly sweet, but even before Cole had told me how it ended, I had a feeling that it was the saddest chapter of his life from the look in his eyes. 

At thirty-four years of age, Cole had gotten up one morning and gone out for his run and noticed that he was more out of breath than usual. It had been getting progressively worse, so Victoria convinced him to give up smoking. Another four weeks later, he was coughing up blood and had a diagnosis from the doctors that he had stage four lung cancer; it was too late to do anything. Sent home to die, Cole was devastated. As a last resort, he signed up for experimental therapy. It turned out to be a ploy. Cured of his ailment, he might've been, but at an equally life-destroying cost. The treatment he had undergone had Sired him into a Sanguine Vampire.

Their world turned upside down, and Cole's new state begged belief, but Victoria had tried to accept the change for the sake of their four-month-old son Michael. Due to his Siring, Cole was left unable to have any more children, which put a massive strain on their relationship. When he turned forty and had not aged a day, Victoria realised their life together could never be 'normal'. They would never grow old together, and Michael would eventually have to deny that Cole was his father for the sake of living a normal life. They separated. 

Victoria tracked him down two years later, living on the south coast. She asked for a divorce; she wanted to remarry. Cole explained that her finding someone else was heartbreaking enough, but when he found out that it was his best friend from university: Brian Culvershore, Cole attempted to take his own life. Unsuccessful five times in a row, Cole eventually gave up and decided to forget that Nicolas Edward Taylor existed and start a new life. He had reinvented himself several times over the last twenty years but kept in touch with his estranged family.

"I see Mike from time to time. Actually, on the day of your parent's funeral, I had been to see him, his wife and the kids. They don't know I'm their granddad, but seeing them growing up is nice. I don't think I'll ever get used to the fact that I look the same age as my son or that one day he'll be an old man while I'm still like this, but I'm grateful to be part of their lives, even if it is only peripheral."

We'd talked for so long that the sun had started to fall toward the horizon. Seeing that I had nowhere else to be, I was happy to stay and continue our conversation. He was lounged down on one side of the sofa, and I was on the other. I laid on my stomach, my chin propped on my palms and my ankles crossed. 

"How come you never got remarried? I mean someone Mythical, of course. Wouldn't that have made you happy? You don't sound as though you enjoy the bachelor lifestyle."

"There are a lot of reasons why, but I'm not sure I want to talk about it," Cole explained, and I surmised that the main reason was that he still loved Victoria. After all, he had planned to spend the rest of his life with her; he seemed like a faithful person and a man who would have been a good husband.

"You must've had girlfriends, though?"

"What makes you say that?" He smirked, seemingly intrigued.

"You said you don't habitually hook up with people, so you must've had girlfriends to have had any kind of... sex life..." Before I could reign myself in, and from mentioning sex, it was too late. I bit my lip and looked away for a long moment. I had promised myself that I wouldn't sleep with him again because there was nothing to gain from getting entangled with him and hooked on how he made me feel...but maybe I already was. We had spent one night together, and since then, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Some nights before I went to sleep, I would slip my hands beneath the sheets, indulge myself, and reminisce about that night of passion. 

"Why don't you act like someone who's sixty-six? How come it doesn't feel like I'm talking to someone who is old enough to be my dad?" I had so many questions. Like, how could I find him remotely attractive now that I knew he was an older man at heart?

"You don't age inside your head. I still feel twenty-odd. I think people age, socially speaking, because we're conditioned by society. Some things are considered 'inappropriate' for sixty-year-olds to do. A lot of the time, they're only limited to what they can still do because of how mortal bodies deteriorate. I look like I do and have the body I do, so I've been able to remain around younger people and continue living a life full of youthful experiences. Except I have the advantage of going into things with more accumulated wisdom." 

"That makes sense." I raised my brows curiously but couldn't disagree with his philosophy. "You're just a thirty-four-year-old who is wise beyond his years."

"Yet you still won't touch me now that you know how old I am..." Cole stared me down and made his statement with a deadpan expression that made my skin feel hot. Could he tell that for a while, I had been struggling to convince myself that it mattered that he was both forty-five years my senior and Vampire?