“But that’s stupid!” I protested. “Just because Milo’s a vampire, he gets shotgun? That’s not fair. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“Just get in the back!” Milo snapped. I looked at him, and violence brewed in his eyes.
“This is bogus,” I grumbled but got in the backseat.
“This would be so much easier if you didn’t fight everything,” Jack said as he started the car.
“You really didn’t realize what you were getting into with her, did you?” Milo said.
I bit my tongue, but it wasn’t an easy feat. Who the hell did Milo think he was? I wanted to shout at him, but I couldn’t, because he would literally bite my head off if I did.
That was so unfair, too. He got away with being a random dick because he could kill me. Milo never would’ve talked to me like that before.
On the positive side, I didn’t feel so bad that I wouldn’t get to be around them as much anymore. In fact, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t even miss Milo at all. He’d probably growl at me if I touched the television remote or something.
I sulked through the car ride home. Jack had Dinosaur Jr. in the CD player, and that filled up the silence. Milo said a couple things that I couldn’t hear from the backseat, making me hate them all the more.
When we pulled up in front of the apartment building, I leapt out of the car. Jack grabbed my bags from the trunk, and he and Milo followed me inside.
We rode up the elevator in silence, and Milo tensed up. His jaw set, and he kept clenching and unclenching his fists. I looked over at Jack to see if he noticed, but he kept his expression blank.
“Are you okay?” I asked Milo quietly outside our apartment door.
“Yeah,” he nodded, but he definitely looked pale.
“Maybe we should do this another time,” I suggested. I really wanted to get this over with, but not that the expense of my mother or my brother, even if he really pissed me off.
“No. Let’s do this.” Milo pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door.
A light was on over the kitchen sink, but the rest of the apartment was dark. Milo still looked like Milo, but his drastic changes would be less noticeable in dim lighting.
A scratched Led Zeppelin record played softly in the living room, with Robert Plant crooning about when the levees break.
“Mom?” I said cautiously, following Milo inside.
“Oh, good, you’re finally here.” Mom burst out from her bedroom, a cigarette glowing in her hand, and her hair looked less frizzy than it usually did. Too-red lipstick stained her lips. “I don’t have much longer to wait.”
“You’re going somewhere?” I asked.
Milo deliberately moved into the shadows of the apartment, but I lingered in the light of the kitchen. Jack set my bag on the floor and hovered next to me, hoping to catch my mother’s attention.
She flitted about the living room, searching for something, so she hadn’t noticed him. The last time they met, Mom had swooned over him.
“Yes, yes, in a bit,” Mom waved me away and found what she’d been looking for – a tumbler of brandy. Taking a long drink, she turned back to look at us. She finally saw Jack and inhaled deeply. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had guests.”
“It’s good to see you, Miss Bonham,” Jack gave her a little half wave, and she placed her hand over her chest.
“You were at a vacation house, weren’t you?” Mom asked and sat down in a chair in the living room. Apparently, he made her too weak in the knees to stand anymore.
“Um, yeah,” Jack nodded, going along with the lie I had told her earlier.
“Did you do a lot of swimming?” Mom was undoubtedly picturing him in swim trunks, and I wanted to gag.
Milo made a strange sound, and Jack suddenly stepped forward, closer to him.
“We did tons of swimming. It was fantastic,” I blurted out. “But Mom, Milo really needs to talk to you. He, uh, has something major to tell you.”
“Oh?” Mom struggled to pull her gaze from Jack to Milo, but her eyes didn’t have to travel far. Jack moved even closer to Milo, and things were not going as well as everyone had promised they would.