1Chapter Five

If I had thought life would be as normal for me as it was before "me and Alice", I was mistaken. Strange thing number one being the phone call to my father in South Carolina, two weeks after that first night with her.

"Hey, Daddy!" I said brightly when he picked up the phone at our house in Charleston.

"Hey there Butterbean!" he replied jovially, using the same nickname he had always called me. I could just imagine him pushing his glasses up his nose. "Are you staying warm up there in the city? I heard it was going to be a white Christmas for y'all up there."

"Yes, sir. I was calling about Christmas, actually, to let you know I'll be bringing home a friend." Alice had agreed to the visit only after making sure the weather would be right, and as it would be a freezing rain that entire week, she saw no problems.

"Oh, yeah? A friend, or a girlfriend?" My father knew everything about me, he was all I had growing up; my mother and baby sister had died when I was six, due to complications during childbirth.

I smiled softly, kicking myself into a spin in my computer chair. "Well," I said slowly, the excitement building in my chest. "A girlfriend. Do you remember the friend that came home with me my first summer home from school?"

"The really small one?"

I grinned, picturing his face screwed up in thought, scratching his salt and pepper beard. "Yes, sir, that's Alice. She'll be with me when I drive down on the twentieth. Is that okay?"

He didn't answer at first, and that made me nervous because my daddy was never one to hesitate. "I reckon," he finally said, and I exhaled in relief. "But wasn't she the one that made the horses go funny?"

Oh, shit, he remembered! Unbeknownst to me, the horses had picked up Alice's scent in the pasture, and recognized her for the vampire she was. In result, Daddy had to replace a section of fence they destroyed, running away from her. "I mean, yeah, she was in the pasture with me when it happened, but I don't think she made them go crazy," I lied, hating every letter of it, a bad taste in my mouth. "I'm pretty sure it was the motor of the ATV. Or maybe a snake. I don't know."

"Hmm," he grunted, unconvinced, and I winced, hoping he would drop the subject. "She was real pretty," he went on, and I relaxed again. "Happy to see you've done yourself well. What's she majoring in?"

Safe subject. "Cultural Arts, but she took Behavioral Science for kicks, and that's where we met in freshman year." All true, only I left out that the professor was an old classmate of Alice's, and she had taken the class to see how well he taught, as he'd been as dense as a brick as a student there.

"Cultural Arts," he murmured reflectively. "Is she from a rich family? Blowing her college education like that?"

My mouth fell open. I'd never heard my father belittle anyone for their choices in life, and it offended me greatly that it was Alice he was judging. It really pissed me off. "Daddy!" I scolded him, scandalized. "I don't think that's any of your business, really, and I'll have you know she's brilliant! Blowing her– Daddy, I have to go. That was uncalled for! I'll call you soon. I love you." I hung up my cell phone and slung it across my living room, where I heard it hit the opposite wall and clatter to the wooden boards below. Blowing her college education, indeed! It's not like I could tell him she was an art major in every area, and that she had been studying music and the arts for nearly a century. It hurt my feelings that he judged her so harshly when he didn't even know her. His opinion meant so much to me, and he'd let me down for the first time in twenty years. I found myself crying, shaking in my overly large sweat shirt, and I wished really hard that Alice were there with me.

Tonight was the first night in two weeks that I had been awake and alone, with Alice off hunting with the affable Jasper (who was over the moon about me and his sister), and would not be back until right at daybreak. I missed my mate–gah, that word again!– something fierce, almost enough to make her take me with them, though I knew that would not be wise: I'd recently found out that Jasper still has a hard time abstaining from human blood. I did not feel threatened by him, quite the contrary, as Jazz and I hit it off playing an Xbox game we were mutually infatuated with, running around for hours shooting at each other. I'd offered to wait up for her as it was a Saturday, and I had nothing planned for Sunday other than homework and perhaps a run. She had politely demurred, promising that she would be next to me when I awoke.

The conversation with my father disturbed me deeply, though why I could not understand; and even when I tried to zone out on my homework, I gave it twenty minutes and then closed my math book and took off my glasses to rub my eyes when the numbers began to bleed together on the page. Numbers had never been my best friend, anyway. I opted instead for the game Jasper and I loved to play so much, but after even ten minutes of it I was bored and tossing the controller away. Screw it, I thought to myself as I stood up and wandered over to my bookcase, scanning the much loved and abused spines of some of my favorite novels, smiling when I chose my childhood favorite, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

I made a cup of chai tea, and changed into a long t-shirt and some boxers to settle down beneath the blankets of my perfectly made full sized bed. I slid my glasses up before they fell off, and the action reminded me of my father, as it always had, as my bad eyesight stems from him. Why would he be so tough on Alice when he barely knew her? It didn't add up, he'd never judged my friends before... but then, I'd only had a handful in my life, and none as important as Alice. Perhaps his attitude was protective, he knew how Daphne leaving had affected me. Yeah, that has to be it, I thought to myself as I cracked my book open to the first chapter, settling in to read a book I could already quote.

I woke up with a sharp gasp some hours later, something silky and ice cold sliding across my belly, shocking me awake. I heard a familiar giggle before I felt an unmistakable brush of cool lips on my warm cheek. "Morning," Alice chuckled, kissing my face again.

"Is it?" I asked sleepily, stretching hard and opening my eyes to look at her, and with great difficulty tearing my eyes away from hers, to look at my bedroom window, seeing the panes still black with night.

"It's nearly five," Alice answered as I rolled over and buried my face in her chest, breathing deeply, then nearly gagging with the stench hanging on her clothes, making her laugh.

"You didn't change, did you?" I grumbled, scooting away from her to the edge of the bed.

"May I borrow–?"

"Please do," I broke in shortly, stabbing a finger in the direction of my dresser.

"I love how you just boss me around, pointing and grunting," Alice complained sarcastically, throwing the blankets to the foot of the bed as she got up with an aggravated human pace; and I groaned as cold air blew across my exposed legs.

"Jesus, Alice!" I hissed, reaching down and snatching them back up, taking off my glasses and setting them on my night stand. I'd fallen asleep in them earlier. "Don't come in reeking like a wild animal and I wouldn't have to." I felt like I was scolding her for smelling like booze after she'd been at a bar all night with her brother.

Alice gave me a smirk and flipped her middle finger to me as she entered my bathroom, slamming the door behind her. We were shameless in the ways we flirted, I thought to myself with a yawn, and I heard the shower turn on behind the closed door. I fought with myself about getting up and following her in, but I wanted to sleep. At least I knew that if she were showering, she planned to get close to me, and she couldn't be too pissy with me. I smiled at the thought as I settled back down, warm again, yawning contentedly about getting to fall asleep again, only this time properly, as Alice had come home to me.