Beth leaned back against the taxi seat and closed her eyes. Hard as she tried not to think about him, flashes of previous conversations with Mick played in her mind.
"I want you to admit something happened between us!" … "You do realize that I'm a vampire?"
… "Now you know why it can never work."
"All I know is, ever since I met you, I stopped using the word never."
Never. Beth contemplated the word. It was a lot like forever—using either word imposed such a sense of finality; it was almost ominous. And both words described Mick so well—everything with him was never or forever; there was no middle ground. But tonight, something had shifted. He had stopped running, stopped pulling away.
I pulled away. She had told Mick she needed to patch things up with Josh but that was a lie. Josh had jumped to her mind but her pulling away had had nothing to do with him. Not really, anyway. It was just… she had never realized the hundred million little things that could go wrong in a vampire-human relationship. It had almost been like finding out that Mick was a vampire all over again. She needed time to process it, to really let it sink in, she reasoned. You're just as bad as Mick, Beth scolded herself. She was in New York, the city she had fantasized about as a little girl. Why shouldn't she have fun? It was just an innocent night out—she had nothing to prove to Josh.
Beth reached into her coat pocket and fumbled around until her fingers closed around her phone. She pulled it out slowly, grip tightening increasingly as she did. She scrolled through her contacts and hesitated momentarily, thumb hovering above the screen, before she hit dial.
"Hey… Josh?"