Beginnings (The Trifectus Series - Book One) (28 page)

I kissed my mother and father on the cheek and dragged myself upstairs.  I was exhausted, and needed to pass out on my bed before I did it on the floor. 

I yawned as I climbed into my bed.  It felt so great to be under my fluffy pink covers.  I pulled them up to my chin and slowly drifted to sleep. 

When I awoke the next morning, I was sore and exhausted.  I had never hosted a party before and it completely sucked the life right out of me.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it again if I would feel like this the next day.

I got online to check my mail before going downstairs.  As I logged on I saw that Marcus was on, but away.  I was intrigued, however, by his away message.  “Changing,” it said.  What did that even mean?  I was on for fifteen minutes and it never changed.  He never messaged me and he never came back from being away.  I was curious about it, but didn’t want to message him for fear he would get upset again.  I still cared deeply about him and his friendship, and wanted to give him some space to recover from being rejected.

I went downstairs to help my mother prepare breakfast.  I was starting to like helping her out with the housework.  It made me feel as if I was contributing in some way to our family and the household. 

“Hello, honey, how are you feeling?” my mother asked.

“A little tired,” I replied.

“So your party went good then?”

“Yeah, it went great.  Hopefully sometime I can do it again.”

“That would be great, honey,” my mother said while smiling.

“Your mother and I have been talking,” my father said as he sat down at the table with his newspaper and coffee.

“Talking about what?” I asked.

“We want you to have James over for dinner.  We think it could be a good thing for you two to date.  We really like him and want to meet him and get to know him a little more,” my father said.

“I can talk to him and see if he can come over sometime,” I hesitantly replied.

“We were hoping for this week, possibly Tuesday,” my father said.

Tuesday seemed so close.  That only gave me three days to try to prepare some kind of excuse or event to prevent him from coming.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want James to know my parents, because I did.  I just didn’t want them to catch on to anything.  I didn’t want to get him in trouble or risk him in any way.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him Monday at school and see if that’s okay.”

“Great,” my father said.

“Find out what he likes to eat so I can make something good for him,” my mother said enthusiastically.

I tried not to laugh as I held back the thoughts of my family sitting down and eating blood soup.  I was just hoping if he did come over that we could pull this off somehow.  I had never seen James eat any real food before, and I wasn’t sure he was even allowed to.

The rest of the weekend went on without any problems or occurrences.  I did some homework, got lectured by my parents on how teenage boys think, and hung around the house.  I was still trying to recover from Friday night, and I had to recover really fast. 

When Monday morning came around, I started getting butterflies in my stomach.  I was going to get to see the man I loved today.  I was going to get to kiss him and feel his strong arms around me once again.

I got to school and saw James leaning up against my locker.  He was wearing a plaid button-down shirt, his arms filling out the sleeves as if they were going to rip.  He casually looked up from the floor and looked me straight in the eye.  I felt a flurry of butterflies as I started making my way over to him.

“You get more beautiful with every passing day,” he said as he pulled me closer to him.

I started to blush and looked down so he couldn’t see my cheeks turn red.

“I love you,” he said while putting his index finger under my chin, raising it slightly.

“I love you too,” I said while my cheeks turned ever redder.

“Were your parents okay with the party?” he asked.

“Yeah, they didn’t know that many people showed up,” I replied.

“Good,” he said while gazing into my eyes.

“I actually wanted to ask you something.  You can say no because I know you will, but my parents want you to come over to dinner tomorrow night.  I know you don’t ea—.”

“I’ll come,” he said while interrupting me.

“You will?” I asked in confusion.

“Yeah.  I think I should meet them.  They are your parents and you are the love of my life.  I think it is almost fitting that I get to know them.”

“What about the dinner though?  You don’t eat,” I whispered.

“Vampires can eat normal food if they have to, we just don’t like to.  It upsets our stomachs and the wrong things can make us sick.  I’ll eat a little to make them think everything is fine.”

“I don’t want to make you sick,” I said cautiously.

“You’re worth it.”

I didn’t know how it happened, but I fell more in love with him.  He was willing to put his health on the line just to make me happy.  Nobody had ever done this for me before, and I couldn’t believe that it was happening now. 

“I love you,” I said as my finger ran down his chest.

“I love you more than life itself,” he said as he put his finger atop of mine.

He kissed me as the bell rang in the distance.  I was so infatuated with his lips that I couldn’t ever stop myself from kissing them.  They welcomed me every time and always were cool.

I stood there with my books pressed against my chest as I watched him walk away.  I felt as if the butterflies inside my body could lift me to the ceiling.  I felt as though my life was complete.

I went through the rest of the school day with an air of happiness.  I was able to clearly focus on my assignments and lectures.  I answered questions left and right, as my teachers were shocked at my attentiveness.  Now that James was going to meet my parents, I felt as if I didn’t have anything to hide anymore.  I felt like an entirely new person.

I got home after school to see my mother walking in with bags full of groceries.

“I talked to James,” I said.

“Oh yeah?  What did he say about tomorrow?”

“He said he will come,” I said with a smile.

“That’s great!  I knew he would.”

“Try to make sure dad is nice to him.  I don’t want to scare him off.”

“Don’t worry about your father.  I’ll talk to him and make sure he knows to be good.  He just wants to get to know him.  We both want to get to know him.”

“He is a really special guy.”

“I bet he is.  We just want to make sure in case he isn’t.”

“I understand.”

My father walked inside wearing his uniform.  It was olive green with insignia showing he was of a higher rank.  He hugged me and gave me a kiss on my forehead as he proceeded to kiss my mother.

“James is coming tomorrow night for dinner,” my mother said to him.

“Well, that’s great.  What are we going to have?” he asked.

“Do you know what he likes, dear?” my mother asked.

I started to panic.  I had to think of something fast as their eyes focused on me waiting for an answer.

“Well, nothing too big.  He is on the wrestling team and trying to make weight so he is on a diet,” I said, running out of breath.

I couldn’t believe I just said that to them.  It was almost as if some emergency system came on in my brain and blurted out this random excuse.  I was still trying to backtrack after I said it to make sure I even remembered it.

“He is on the wrestling team?” my father asked.

“Oh, yeah, he is pretty good too.  Didn’t I tell you two before?” I asked, trying to confuse them.

“No, I don’t believe so,” my father said with a confused look on his face.

“Oh, well he is.  He needs to make weight this weekend so he has been trying to drop a few pounds.  So we should probably make it a lighter dinner.  I don’t want to make him jealous with us eating a bunch of food.”

“We can do that,” my father said.  “I love a sports man.  I’ll have to ask him about his season when he comes over.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure he will love that,” I said half sarcastically and half nervously.

I noticed that my lies often times got me further into trouble.  I just hoped James wouldn’t hate me for telling my father that he was some great wrestler.  I was just hoping he would be able to play along and answer my father’s questions.

I went upstairs to finish off my homework.  I had this strong urge to do it all.  I guess it had something to do with the fact I did so well in school earlier.  I wanted to do well, and this was the first step.

I logged onto my computer to find some homework helping sites, and saw that Marcus was online again.  His status was still away with the same message.  He was never away, especially for this long.  Was something wrong with him?  Why would it still say this message after this long?

“Hello?” I typed to him hoping for a reply.

I waited for five minutes with no reply.  His away message just popped up immediately after I sent my message, letting me know that he would see my message when he returned from being away.  I started to get worried about him.  I still wanted to keep my friendship with him and didn’t want him to change.  He was great the way he was.

I moved forward with my homework help waiting for a reply.  I kept the screen open in hopes of him messaging me back that everything was fine.  I just wanted to hear it from him.  I wanted to see that he was fine and that it was just some stupid away message.

I finished my homework an hour later with no reply still from Marcus.  His away message sat there untouched.  Not even so much as a single character was typed from his computer.  I sighed and shut my computer.  I guess I wasn’t going to be able to talk to him tonight.

I went downstairs to get a snack.  I decided to skip dinner and just graze a little.  Dinner didn’t sound too appetizing, and I didn’t want to talk to my parents and tell them some other farfetched story about James that wasn’t true in the slightest.

While I ate my crackers, I started thinking about my life with James.  Maybe I wouldn’t have to run off anymore.  Maybe my parents would like him and we could eventually get married and be okay.  We could move away and not feel like we were running from our problems.

My father could walk me down the aisle and give me away to James.  Doing this would symbolize my leaving the nest and starting a family of my own.  I could kiss my parents goodbye and leave them on a good note.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to see them again, though.  I knew that I would have to look them in the eyes and say goodbye even though I was terrified deep down of losing them.

We had gotten close over the past week or two and I had dreamt of that my entire life.  To leave right when we were getting close seemed like a knife to the back.  I almost felt in a way that I was betraying them and their love for me.

I had to get over those thoughts, though, because I couldn’t hold back from James.  I couldn’t be without him, and he couldn’t be without me.  We were meant to be together and both of us knew it.  Our souls were connected together and there was nothing that could break that bond.

I had to talk to James tomorrow about making the best impression he could.  I had to have their blessing and leave them on good terms.  I couldn’t hurt them.

I was more nervous when I woke up the next morning than I had been in a long time.  Today could make or break the rest of my life.  If my parents love James, then I will be okay when I leave them.  If they can’t stand him or are suspicious of him, I would have to leave them on bad terms, which would destroy not only me but them also.  That wasn’t something I was prepared to do.

I went to school with my palms sweating thinking of talking to James.  We were going to have a very important conversation, and I was hoping that he could take it well.

I got to school and found him as usual by my locker.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.  I just need to talk to you about tonight.”

“Oh.  I thought you were going to break up with me or something.”

“No!  Never!  I just accidentally told my parents you were on the wrestling team.”

“The wrestling team?” James asked, laughing.

“Yeah, I know it’s crazy.  I panicked though when they asked why you couldn’t eat a lot and I told them you were on the team and were trying to lose weight for an upcoming match.”

“Well, I guess I will have to brush up on my wrestling terms then before tonight,” he said, laughing.

“I really want tonight to go well.  It has to so I can feel okay when I leave them.”

“Leave them?  What are you talking about?”

“Well, you said when you turn into a vampire you have to leave your family and friends.  I want to change someday to be with you forever.  When I leave them I want to make sure everything is on good terms,” I whispered to him.

“I’ll try to be the best I can,” he said while grabbing my hands.

“Why are you so amazing?” I asked him.