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“He is decidedly not nice,” I said, smiling. “We’re getting to the point where we can tolerate each other without death glares. That’s about all I can say.”
“Well, if I need to fly up there and set him straight, you let me know.”
“As much as I appreciate it, I don’t think sending my ex in to beat him up makes me look very professional,” I said. “Also, he’s got all that vampire strength, so it probably wouldn’t end well for you.”
“I’m still your ex?” he asked, a note of hurt in his voice.
“At this point, yes. I haven’t made up my mind one way or the other, I’m sorry,” I said. “I need more time. And for the record, I also don’t think you could beat up a vampire.”
I admit, I was just trying to distract him with that little challenge to his manliness.
“Well, how much do you think you’re going to need?” he asked, his tone growing testy.
Apparently, the attempted distraction was a failure.
“However long it takes,” I said. “I hope to have an answer for you by the time I come back, but I’m not making any promises.”
“You’re just going leave me hanging until you decide whether you still want to be with me or not? That doesn’t seem fair, Miranda.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think the person who sent ‘I heart you, PoohBear’ texts to my maid of honor gets to make too many demands on me right now,” I retorted.
“Oh, Miranda.” He sighed and used that tone of voice that he only used when I was being stubborn or silly or both. “Don’t be that way.”
“What have you been doing while I’ve been away?” I asked, struggling to keep the petulant tone out of my voice.
“Oh, you know, staying busy with work,” he said dismissively. “Eating dinner at my mom’s, hanging out with Jake, that sort of thing.”
The unspoken question hung between us over the phone line. Had he seen Lisa? Had he kept his promise to put a halt to their relationship while we were still trying to work out whatever it was that we had? I didn’t know if I had the right to ask, given my circumstances, but he didn’t know that.
He really didn’t need to know that.
My inability and his unwillingness to discuss it irritated me for some reason, and I just wanted to get off the stupid phone and back to driving. “I need to go. I’m not supposed to take personal calls while driving.”
“Oh, all right, then. I just haven’t been able to catch you over the last few days. I thought you’d want to talk to me.”
“I’ll talk to you soon, Jason.”
“All right,” he said, sounding slightly wounded. “I love you.”
I clicked the “end” button before I could respond.
It wasn’t normal, I told myself. A simple conversation with a man I was supposed to love shouldn’t make me that uncomfortable. I hadn’t talked to Jason in days. I was supposed to be missing him, thinking about him. And talking to him had brought up all of these feelings of anger and disappointment. Was it the distance? Was his absence allowing me to feel the things I’d suppressed because I didn’t want to upset Jason, my mother, all of the people involved in the wedding?
The Miranda who had worked at Puckett and Puckett, putting up with her brother giving her noogies in the break room and her father checking her work for typos with a magnifying glass, never would have spoken to Jason in that flat, uninterested tone. She would have bubbled and placated until Jason got off the phone, assured him of her love. The girl who’d hung up without saying “I love you”? That girl had run away to work on a yacht because college bored her to death. That girl had set a stage magician on fire. She’d groped a vampire on a filthy motel floor.
Was I finding my way back to the girl I was? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Sure, I’d had more fun before I settled down with Jason, but was I a good person? I had way too much time on my hands to be asking myself these sorts of questions. This mental pathway promised madness.
I turned on the “Jason Called” playlist, which included a crapload of Pink and Joan Jett. I hoped that Collin couldn’t be roused out of his daytime sleep by aggressive femmes, because it was about to get loud.
I drove a little faster, skipping my lunch break. I drank too much cheap coffee. I got a lot of attention from truckers, thanks to my hood decorations. And I was very glad that the windows were so heavily tinted.
By the time the sun set, I’d been driving for twelve hours straight, and I was exhausted. I’d gone through the “Mom Called” playlist, the “I Haven’t Seen a Starbucks in Three Hours” playlist, and the “My Ass Is Numb” playlist. I was planning to pull the car over at 6:04 as scheduled, but I heard the cubby door open with a squeak worthy of any Dracula movie.
“What are you doing?” I yelped, pulling to the side of the road quickly. “I thought you didn’t want the door open unless the car was stopped!”
He climbed out of the cubby and into the passenger seat while I popped a packet of donor blood into the warmer. And somehow, despite recently sleeping and the fact that he’d just done seat gymnastics, his clothes were less wrinkled than mine.
“Hello, Miranda,” he purred, and the rumbling, rolling timber of his accent had me shivering. “Did you sleep well last night?”
