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I get up from in between Gabriel and Atlas and meet her halfway across the room, hugging her tightly. “How was your flight?” I ask after we break apart. She isn’t wearing any makeup, though she’s the type of person who naturally looks good without it.
“Good! It's great to see you in person again,” she says as we return to the table.
Gabriel offers her a warm smile, while the others watch her with mild interest.
Kade stands and offers her his spot across from me, and she sets her bag under the table, thanking him and sitting down. I return to my spot, while Kade grabs a chair from the table next to us and flips it around, straddling it before diving into the bowl of chips in the middle of the table.
“What brings you to Chicago?” Tessa asks as I reach for the pitcher of margaritas and pour her one.
I steal a glance at Gabriel before returning my gaze to her and say, “Selene is here.”
She nods, recognition in her emerald gaze. “I see. And what about your trip to New York?” Her eyes are focused on my face, her head tilted to the side slightly as she waits for me to respond.
I press my lips together, trying to think of a concise and accurate way to describe the shit show that went down at Atlas’s parents. “Well,” I say, “you got the CliffsNotes version.”
She offers a short chuckle. “Yeah, but something tells me it's slightly more complicated than that.”
I finish pouring her drink and set the pitcher back on the table. “It always is.”
“Do you know what you're going to do?” she asks.
“Nope,” I answer a little too loudly, popping the ‘p’. Maybe I'm drinking this margarita a little too fast. The warmth in my cheeks and stomach can attest to that, along with the haze of pleasantness starting to settle over me.
Tessa nods, seemingly in understanding, and glances around the room. “Do you know where the restroom is in this place? I could use a second to freshen up after my flight.”
“Sure,” I say, standing. “Follow me.”
We walk to a hallway near the back of the restaurant and find the line for the restrooms. “This place has been packed since we got here,” I tell her, cringing at the size of the line.
She smiles. “No worries. I'm not in any rush, I just wanted to talk to you without your fang club.”
“Right.” I drag out the word as the line moves a little. “I honestly have no clue what I'm doing. I try to think about my life one way, and it sucks. I try to think about it the other way, and it hurts so bad I can't even imagine agreeing to it. I know this whole thing started so messed up and it's been messed up for weeks… I just don't know anymore.” I sigh, leaning against the wall. The guy ahead of us slips out of the line and walks the other direction, putting us closer to the front.
“Are you leaning one way or another?” she asks as the bathroom door opens and a couple practically fall out of the doorway, clutching onto each other and laughing as if they’d just heard the funniest thing in the world.
Tessa and I exchange a slightly amused glance, and I shrug in response to her question. “I keep going back and forth.”
The single bathroom across the hall opens up, and Tessa grabs my wrist, pulling me inside and closing the door. She turns on the sink and starts washing her hands. “Have you talked to them about it?”
I lean against the wall beside the door, surprised to find the washroom clean and pleasant-smelling, like citrus. “I mean, sort of? They gave me a pros and cons list of becoming a vampire. And I don't know if it's just the blood thing that bothers me or the fact that I would have to be taking from someone or something else just to survive. I'm not a vegetarian or anything, but this just feels different. And don't even get me started on the thought of living forever, because that is just too much for my brain to wrap around. I can't even think about the next five years, let alone the next five hundred without spinning into a complete panic.”
“I get that,” she says sincerely, grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser and drying her hands, tossing the crumpled bit into the trash next to the sink. She leaves the water running, and her eyes meet mine in the mirror over the sink. “I have the ability to slow my own aging and to essentially prolong my life, but I'm still mortal if I don't actively do those things. I'll grow old and die like everyone else.”
“Right,” I say, “and I don't even know how it works. Atlas’s parents appear older than him. Obviously they are, but he's significantly older than he looks. They all are. Will I look like this forever? Will I look a little bit older but stop aging at some point? I don’t…”
She turns to face me and puts her hand on my shoulder in an attempt, I think, to calm my rambling. “A lot of vampires use magic to alter their appearance. That's probably what Atlas’s parents have done. They don't want to appear so young their people don't think they can look to them for leadership or guidance. But they don't want to look their age either.”
“So you're telling me the guys have chosen to look as they do? Like they could look different?”
She grins softly. “As far as I can tell, they have not altered their appearances in any way. They look as they did when they were turned. Atlas on the other hand, as a born vampire, stopped aging when he reached maturity.”
“Really? He looks older than, you know, mid-twenties.”
“Yeah, well, guys mature slower than we do, sooooo,” she jokes. “But in all seriousness, as a born vampire, he was able to decide when he would stop aging and there would have been a spell cast. But it's not something that he has to continuously keep up. It's a one-and-done sort of deal and then if he were to decide that he wanted to appear differently, that would be a different story. He would need to go to another witch and have them perform magic on him. Likely more than once to keep it up.”
I rake my fingers through my hair. “This is all so complicated, and I don't know why I haven’t thought about it before. Maybe it's because I'm thinking about it for myself. But either way, I feel like my head is going to explode.”
A small smile plays on her lips. “And the margaritas help with that?”
