[kiasusam]

She told me all about the fancy restaurant they were going to, and the club she wanted him to take her to afterwards. When her story dwindled down, I told her my plans for the weekend. “Teren is taking me up to his parents’ place for the weekend.”

“Already? That’s fast, he must really like you.” Her blue eyes sparkled at me with genuine happiness for my relationship that was going quite smoothly, and as she had correctly pointed out, was starting to definitely pick up speed.

"Yeah, I think he’s been bitten by something.” My lips curled a little at the corners over my dumb vampire reference that Tracey didn’t get at all.

"And you? What do you think of him?” She walked over to my flowers and smelled one, her blonde hair leaning forward with her and brushing against the lengthy stems.

My smile widened. “He’s like no one else I’ve ever met.” Quite literally.

She straightened and pulled her hair back behind her shoulders. “Are you heading to the gym tonight?”

“No, I’m having dinner with Mom and Ash.”

She nodded. “Oh that’s right…Tuesday.” She put a slim hand over her heart. “Give Ash a great big hug and a kiss for me. I miss that girl.”

“I will.”

I smiled as I continued on with my tedious task, and Tracey disappeared behind her adjoining wall. My smile faded after an hour, and by lunchtime, I was craving a pick-me-up. I skipped out and rushed to get my coffee treat (making sure I didn’t dump it on any more potential bloodsuckers), then settled back into my monotonous work in the records room - finding files, copying them and then replacing them - all with my caffeinated secret weapon tight in hand. Even though by five o’clock, the very backs of my eyes ached, I still managed to get every single piece of paper sent out that was requested of me from my urgent email list by quitting time. I was quite pleased with my productivity as I walked out the front doors.

I smiled as I walked into the cozy café that was Ashley’s favourite place to eat. She always ordered the butternut squash ravioli, no matter what time of year it was, and the staff always added extra gorgonzola crumbles on the top, just for her. They sort of loved her here, which is really the reason why we came here so often. My sister tended to attract attention…and not the good kind.

The hostess greeted me and motioned to a table in the back, where we preferred to sit. I nodded thanks to her and started walking back in that direction. The café was quiet tonight and soothing contemporary jazz played over the sound system. The tables were all set up with a small vase of wild flowers and the hand painted lamps, lightly swinging above each table, lit the area with a soft glow. It was a cozy, comforting place.

I approached a table where a woman with chin length, graying brown hair, was sitting with her back to me. She was plump in the ‘I don’t care – I’m going to fully enjoy this life I was given’ sort of way, and she had a deep, earthy laugh that echoed down the aisle to me. She was laughing with a woman who was facing me. A woman who had the most horrific face you could image. A woman I loved deeply.

The woman stood as I came up to the table. Half of her head and half of her face were covered in a thick patchwork of scars. The side of her head that could still grow hair was a deep brown that bounced in the exact same way that mine did.

“Hey, sis,” she said, as she hugged me warmly.

“Hey, Ash.” I hugged her right back, ignoring the atrociousness of her face. It was irrelevant anyway – her beauty was her heart. It always had been, it always would be.

She sat back down stiffly, some of the scarring over her joints made some movements a little difficult for her, and scooted over, so I could sit beside her. I giggled and snuggled into her side. My sister had been horribly burned when she was nine years old, in a house fire that had claimed the life of our father. My mother had gotten out of the house safely, and Dad had rushed back in to save Ashley; it was the last thing he ever did. I was at a friend’s house that night and had missed the whole disaster. I was equally regretful and grateful for that. But that was 10 years, and for Ashley, several surgeries ago.

Her body was a variegated mix of layer-upon-layer of horrid scarring. It covered over two thirds of her, but that didn’t dampen her spirit. She took the teasing and ridicule she received from the uneducated idiots we often encountered, with grace and aplomb. She was my best friend. She was my hero.

Her light brown eyes sparkled at me playfully as she grabbed my arm. “So, how’s the boy.”

I playfully nudged her back. “The man is wonderful.”

My mother across from the table from us laughed. “When do we get to meet this mystery man?”

I smiled at my Mom as I held Ashley’s hand. My mother had never remarried, in fact she still wore her wedding ring – to chase away the would-be suitors, she says. Whenever I hinted about her dating again (she was only 52 after all), she would sniff and say that she had a husband and he was waiting for her in Heaven. I would always sigh at that and let it go. You can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do. But she was a vibrant, happy woman. Her face had deep laugh lines around her eyes and the corners of her lips, and she was quick to smile and even quicker to laugh.

I laughed at my mother’s question. “That’s kind of funny. Just yesterday, he asked when he’d get to meet you.”

She laughed again. “And you said…?”

“All in due time.”

We ordered our “usual” from the waitress, Debby, who lounged at our table for a few moments, chatting away with us, catching us up on her life - funny stories about her kids, a fight she’d had with her husband, a horrid weekend at the in-laws (which was the precursor to the aforementioned fight). We came to this café weekly. It was our way to stay together as a family and fill each other in on the aspects of our busy, daily lives. We’d been coming here for over five years now, and most of the staff was the same as our first night here. It sort of became a way for us to be filled in on their lives too.

After a few moments of friendly chit-chat, she left to get our drinks and place our orders. Our food arrived only moments later, the cook well aware that we were here, and what we were going to order. Debby chatted with us a few minutes longer while she set down Ashley’s ravioli, my smoked ham Panini and Mom’s Denver omelet. Then she moseyed on to other customers and we ate our meal and talked about what had happened during our week.

Mom and Ashley laughed as they discussed Mom’s ongoing battle with her neighbor’s yappy dogs that kept her up at night. Mom was considering secreting them away to the vet to get debarked. I told her to go for it, but Ashley stuck up for the dogs and convinced Mom to try earplugs first. I smiled inwardly that I could always have Teren stop by for a little midnight snack…but then I remembered his aversion to the very idea of eating dog. Honestly, who’d imagine a vampire being squeamish?

Ashley caught us up on school. She would only say it was going well. I took that to mean that her classes were going well, but as per usual, the relentless staring and whispering wasn’t stopping. She was in the last semester of her first year at the University of California, San Francisco or UCSF. She was taking the nursing course, and had noble dreams of working in the burn unit ICU at San Francisco General Hospital. The students weren’t used to her yet, and she was a constant source of wonderment for them. I was grateful that college students were slightly more mature than high school students, and at least the horrific teasing that used to bring her home in tears had stopped. Well, mostly stopped. She had run into a group of frat boys once that had acted like they ran the school…and were still thirteen. I’d received a tearful phone call after the encounter, and spent the night comforting her with a quart of Haagen-Dazs. Maybe I’d sic my vamp on the frats? Surely he had no compunction about assholes.

I briefly considered telling my family about Teren, about what he really was. Ash would think it was cool…she wasn’t one to chide anyone on being different. Mom…would act like a Mom though, and panic about me dating a man who, like some rabid dog, could turn on me at any moment and drain me dry. I was pretty sure Teren would never do that. But I’d never be able to convince Mom, and she’d only see his vampirism after that, not the amazing, smart, funny, brilliant man that he also was. I decided that maybe at another time I’d tell Ashley, but we’d have to keep it a secret from Mom. Much like the time I’d dated a member of Hell’s Angels. At the time, he’d been 35, covered head to toe in tattoos, and had some questionable extracurricular activities. Like I said, I had made some poor choices in college.

At the end of the evening, I gave my mom a big hug, and she rubbed my back and told me to be safe in the generic way that I knew meant, ‘I love you too much to handle anything happening to you, so lock every door, never go outside after dark, and don’t eat the unlabeled tin can in the very back of your pantry’. I hugged her back and wished her well, then turned to Ashley and gave her an even bigger hug, and a big wet kiss on her bare scalp.

“Oops, I almost forgot.” I gave her one more hug and a kiss. “That’s from Trace, she misses you.”

“Oh, she’s so nice. Tell her we’ll get together soon, maybe next week.” She kissed my cheek and then grabbed Mom’s hand and walked stiffly from the café.