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“That must have been… confusin’?” he suggested, with a wary expression on his handsome face, as if he wasn’t sure if I was joking, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to laugh.
I shrugged. “They always said they were staying together for my sake. Because clearly, it would traumatize me if my parents got a divorce, but telling me every other month that ‘this time it’s over for good’ was OK. Frankly, I would have been relieved if they’d just made a clean break of it. Lived separate lives. Maybe they would have been happy apart. Maybe it was selfish of me to want to get away from that. And believe me, the fact that they died with so much between us unsettled—there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret that. But I had to have my own life. I just couldn’t spend another minute mixed up in their drama. Either you love somebody enough to spend the rest of your life with them, or you don’t. In my mind, there’s not much room in between.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, closing his hand around my shoulder and pulling me into a sort of side hug.
I nodded, once again marveling at the loose, relaxed feeling in my chest. “And now the only real family I have is a cranky old German professor and his life partner, both of them trying to fatten me up with dumplings and monkey bread.”
After a long, contemplative pause, he nodded and sagely observed, “I thought I noticed a little more junk in your trunk.”
I took a swat at his shoulder. “Jerk.”
“Ouch!” He dodged and cackled at me, drawing the eyes of several curious bystanders. “It’s not right that someone so small can hit so hard. I’m going to miss your gentle, delicate mannerisms after you move out.”
“Oh, come on.” I snickered. “You know you’ll miss me.”
His smile faltered. His lips parted as if to say something, but before he could, I heard Jolene cry, “Tess!” from across the square. I turned to see her dragging a bemused Zeb in her wake. Jolene threw her arms around me in an enthusiastic, if slightly painful, hug. “Are you excited about the contest?”
“Nearly wetting myself,” I assured her, patting her back. “Sam, I think you know Zeb and Jolene Lavelle. Zeb and Jolene, my, uh, roommate, Sam Clemson.”
“Nice to see you again, Sam,” Zeb said, holding out his hand.
Sam smiled, almost shyly, and shook it. “Good to see you two. How are the kids?”
As Zeb whipped out a cell phone full of photos, Jolene launched into a story about little Joe the pickle flinger and his attempts to chew his way out of his crib. Sam listened with interested amusement, oohing and aahing appropriately at the cuteness of my friends’ offspring. This kept us all sufficiently distracted until we heard, “Ladies and gents, if you’ll proceed to the center stage, we’ll announce the results for the Hollow’s First-Ever Bloody Bake-Off,” from a human man in his forties shouting into the microphone near the Faux Type O booth. A teenage girl dressed in a red gingham picnic dress—whom Jolene identified as the scary teen-vampire bureaucrat Ophelia—shrank away from him, as if his loud “yee-haw” was going to make her ears bleed.
As the crowd milled over to the main (and only) stage, Ophelia snatched the mic out of his hands and eyed the poor, unsuspecting man in a way I’d only seen diabetics case the dessert cart. She sighed and turned to the vampires wearing “official judge” sashes. All of them, including my hapless friend, Jane, had their arms crossed over their middles and looked slightly ill.
“We were very pleased to receive such a wide array of entries, everything from a Chum Cherry Slushie to a Bloody Pot Pie,” Ophelia said, smirking at Jane, who sent her a hard look in return.
Even in this crowd, I could hear Sherry Jameson saying, “Well, she used to love them when she was human!”
Poor Jane.
I found it a little disturbing that Ophelia hadn’t mentioned the barbecue sauce. Did that mean something? Did that mean that my entry hadn’t been memorable enough to mention? I’d felt pretty comfortable with my submission when I got here, but now, seeing those nauseated expressions on the judges’ faces—Oh, my God, what if I lost a cook-off in small-town Kentucky to a bunch of homemakers? What if I failed, leaving Sam without a house and myself without a construction budget? The sudden rush of cold, hard fear up my spine had me bending slightly, bracing my hands against my knees.
I felt cool, insistent pressure at the base of my neck. It rubbed in soft circles over my nape, and I realized it was Sam’s hand. I peered up at him through the haze of hair that hung over my face.
“It will be OK,” he promised. “Now, suck it up, people are starting to stare.”
“Got it,” I said, clearing my throat and straightening to my full (though not impressive) height. “Thanks.”
I rolled my shoulders and took a deep breath. I noticed that Sam’s hand remained on the back of my neck, his thumb occasionally sweeping over my vertebrae. I shivered a bit, but Sam kept his hand there.
“Now, before I announce the award winners, which will be included in the first-ever Faux Type O cookbook, Blue Ribbons with Bite, I’d like to announce the honorable mentions. First, we have Rita Scott with her Chum Cherry Slushie, a delightfully pulverized mix of blood blended with cherry syrup and ice.”
A plump, pretty blond woman in a bright pink church dress squealed joyfully and went to the stage to accept her yellow ribbon and certificate. Jane turned slightly green around the gills. I gave her a sympathetic look but then started to giggle. She made a very rude gesture behind the thin shield of her left hand. When Ophelia announced the second honorable mention as Ginger Lavelle with her Bloody Mary Margarita, the haggard chain-smoker I’d seen earlier launched herself at Ophelia and snatched her victory ribbon, waving it like a war banner. Ophelia stepped out of range, an unimpressed grimace twisting her young features.
“Lavelle?” I looked to Jolene. “Any relation?”
Jolene huffed out an irritated sigh. “That would be my mother-in-law.”
We watched as Ginger Lavelle did a victory shimmy that looked like something from a burlesque performance. “Wow,” I marveled.
“Well, she stuck with her area of expertise,” Jolene grumbled. “Booze.”
I expected Zeb to take offense at this, but he just nodded. “It’s possible she would have stumbled upon this recipe without the contest.”
Ophelia moved on to the prize winners. Third place and a thousand-dollar check went to a blood-and-beef-broth concoction created by Martha Hackett, a sweet-looking elderly lady I’d assumed was human until she grinned and flashed her fangs at the crowd. The fact that another name was called filled me with equal parts dread and hope. If I hadn’t placed third, it was likely that I’d placed second or first. Then again, I might not have placed at all. I imagined the humiliation of explaining to Chef Gamling that I hadn’t… and there I was, bent over hyperventilating again.
