“You want the chocolate milk and one of our sandwiches. That’ll keep you going better than some caffeine hit.”
“Yeah?” She put one thumb through a belt loop in her faded jeans, her mouth quirking in a way he’d never seen. He liked the way one eye crinkled up a little, the way her hips tilted nine degrees in one direction when she leaned back against the glass door of the cold case.
He nodded. “Trust me. This is what I do professionally.”
She did. She touched his hand longer than she needed to when she took the change back. A look of confusion wrinkled her brow as she felt it, the slight unreality of it. She smiled at him, walking backward out the door, though. As close to a victory as one gets, once they’re strange.
The sun pain escalated as the long evening hour lingered. Dusk couldn’t come too soon now, the energy in his limbs fading, his ability to ignore the pain at its limits. Sam made a fist and held it by his side, out of sight. He didn’t let the sun rule him. He could grasp this one thing. Just a normal moment, however fleeting. Just unremarkable life, the one grand wish of a dead kid.
* * *
—
“I’m alive,” Delia said, holding her hand to her neck. The bite marks formed two livid welts on her skin.
Sam stood at the counter with a cleaning cloth in hand, as if nothing unusual had happened. The Heineken clock on the wall read eight thirty. Well after dark. He looked absolutely drained, his eyes like those of someone who had survived a torture session. Even now, Delia wanted to go to him. Even bitten. She cursed herself for a fool. She’d always had a weakness for strays, for the injured ones who needed her. Perhaps no one had ever needed her quite like Sam did.
“The first bite won’t kill you. It takes three, even five bites to cause the change.”
“But . . .” She didn’t know what she wanted to ask.
“How do you feel?” Sam put his hands against the counter, leaning on it, hollow cheeked. He looked so exhausted. Why did she ache for him like that? After what he’d done, why?
“Were you out here, in the daytime?”
He indicated that he had been with some vague movement of his chin. “I was minding the store. I mopped and stocked the ice cream chest, too.”
“In the daylight, you did this? Didn’t it hurt?”
He shrugged. “I asked how you felt.”
Delia had to take a moment to think about it. Truth be told, she felt better than she had in a long time. That old pain high in her abdomen had gone away for a little while. It always came back, of course. It always would, until it killed her.
“You didn’t ever say you were sick,” Sam said.
“Sick?”
“You know what I’m saying. You can’t hide things from the dead kid.”
She looked down at her feet. “Sam, what could I say?”
“‘I’ve got terminal cancer.’ You could have said that. More than anyone, I’d have understood.”
“That’s nothing I wanted to put on your shoulders. You’ve got enough trouble without carrying mine.”
“See, that’s stupid, and you still didn’t say how you felt.”
Delia’s anger flashed up in her cheeks. “What the hell does that matter now? You bit me! You can’t just do that, and then ask about me being sick, like you’re still the puppy . . .”
“The puppy, huh?”
Delia’s legs didn’t want to work. She slid down next to the milk in the cold case, putting her head in her hands. “I just thought of you that way, Sam. I never meant to say it aloud.”
“You did. It’s okay. Guess the puppy bites, huh?” He sat down on his haunches near her.
“Did you bite me because I was sick?” she asked. Tides of emotions clashed inside her chest.
Sam’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yeah. You’re about three percent vampire now. Not enough to kill you, but plenty