Nightwolf

I know that she takes quick showers, except on Sundays, where she’s in the bathroom for at least an hour, and when she comes out she’s all pink and wrinkled like a prune, but she looks so relaxed that I never call her out on it.

I know that when she eats, she has to get a bit of everything onto her fork, which means cutting her food up in many pieces. She does not eat blindly, she puts a lot of thought into every mouthful, even though she’s a hell of a messy eater.

I know that despite her fascination with the dark—be that the occult, witches, ghosts, vampires—she can’t handle scary movies and she’ll leave the room, or the theater, after the first jump scare.

I know that she puts on ‘90s R&B when she gets dressed in the morning, even though she’ll lie if you call her on it and say it’s Mastodon or something.

I know that beneath her ballsy, strong exterior, there’s a little girl inside that’s still mourning for the dad that left her, and that her loss has come to define the way she sees love and relationships, and that has more to do with her always being single than anything to do with me.

At least, I think I know that last part.

For as much as I know about her, there’s still a lot that I don’t.

“Want to go for a walk?” I ask.

Amethyst looks at me over her drink, a Coors Light mixed with a tomato juice. After I made her a big breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns (my stomach could only handle the bacon), we pulled the Adirondack chairs out of storage and hauled them to the edge of the deck overlooking the cliff. We’ve been sitting here, her with a hangover drink, me with a black coffee, listening to the waves crash, watching the morning light behind the marine layer that sits above the ocean. I like the way it dulls the light here, tones it down to my mood.

“A walk?” she repeats dryly.

“Might be good to move,” I tell her.

“You bored?” she asks.

“I don’t get bored.”

“Oh, of course,” she says with a roll of her eyes, shoving her black hair behind her ear, her row of skull earrings sparkling in the dull light. “Because vampires never get bored.”

I can’t help the smile on my face. “No. Vampires definitely get bored. I’m just saying, I don’t get bored.”

“Oh yeah? Why is that?”

I shrug and look down at the grass wavering in the wind, breathing in the smell of not only the ocean and the vegetation, but the life that lives within it. “How can you get bored when there’s so much to take in? When your senses are in overdrive, you pick up on everything. There’s a whole hidden world to pay attention to.”

“So why would other vampires get bored?”

“Because it’s a lot to take, I guess. After a while they learn to ignore all the…” I wave my hand in the air, “other things. It’s a lot. But for me, I spent so long in the Black Sunshine, a place devoid of smell and color and any richness of sound, that I guess…”

“Like the person clipping coupons,” she says, bringing up her analogy from yesterday.

“Yeah, like that. I don’t take it for granted, no matter how many years have passed.”

“So, what are you seeing or hearing right now that I can’t?” she asks, twisting her body to face me, her eyes looking impossibly bright. I love that look on her, when I’ve piqued her curiosity, when she hangs on my every word. I feel like a god.

“It’s hard to say,” I begin. “I’ve never really talked with a human and done a comparison.”

“Well, try,” she says, tapping her fingers excitedly along the edge of the chair. “Tell me what you smell right now. I notice your nose is working overtime.”

I self-consciously touch the side of my nostrils. “Okay. Well, I smell the salt of the ocean. The grass. The wood of the chair, the deck. Your drink, my coffee.”

“Uh huh, yup, me too,” she says.

“In your drink I can smell the hops that were used for the beer. The main variety was grown in New Zealand, maybe the Nelson region of the North Island. Around there anyway. I also smell the type of tomato in the juice, something grown in a hot house. California, inland empire. Cheap variety.”

“Uhhh,” she says, peering down at her drink inquisitively.

“I smell the melting ice in your drink, filtered water from the fridge.” I close my eyes. “I also smell the beach down below, the sand, the dried kelp at the water’s edge. I smell the bird shit on the cliffs, the warmth of the sun on the old feathers stuck to nests. There’s always the smell of death and decay, so many things dying around us that we can’t even see. But there’s life too. Things being born, living. An endless cycle.”