Song for the Dead (Ada Palomino 2)

“I mean, do you like me. Like, as a person?”

He frowns, licking his lips, which are dangerously close to mine. A thread of tension between us seems to twist and tighten, his breathing becoming sharper.

“Of course I do. Why would you even ask that?”

I swallow and shrug, rolling back over. His arms are holding me tighter now. “Because…” I say, trying to calm my trembling nerves, “everyone always leaves me. Jay, Jacob, Perry, my mother. I’m always left behind.”

He exhales hard, his breath moving my hair.

“I have to admit, you’re breaking my heart here, Ada,” he says after a moment. “I’m not going to leave you.”

“Because you can’t.”

“I wouldn’t even if I could.”

I sigh, wanting to believe him of all people. I grab hold of his forearms, holding tight, as if he can save me from all the ugly things I fear. I have so much shit rolling around in my head that I’m afraid to admit the truth, afraid to let it out. But maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe I need to let it out more.

And so I take a deep breath and open myself to the man who needs me more than anyone else ever will.

“I’m worried…that there’s something fundamentally wrong with me that makes people leave, or die, or forget me. Maybe I’m not meant to have people in my life. I seem to screw up my relationship with Perry and my dad. I can’t keep any friendships because I’m so fucking weird, so different that no one understands me. And I can’t keep love…I had someone that I thought understood me, understood what I have to live with, this affliction, and they didn’t love me enough to stick around.”

“Ada,” he says softly, pressing his lips to the back of my head, a gesture that pulls a string somewhere inside me, cracking something that was once hard. “There is nothing wrong with you. This life isn’t easy, but you’re handling it better than most would. One day all of this will make sense.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know a lot of things,” he says, his voice low, tickling something inside me. “And I have faith in a lot of things too. Get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning. They always do.”

“Unless you’re a vampire.”

He laughs faintly. It’s enough to make me smile.

“Max?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Are vampires real?”

He sighs heavily. A moment of silence falls after.

“Yes.”

Great.

Eleven

“I believe I know you, yet I don’t truly know myself. I pray you won’t feel as alone as I have felt.”

– Fortress

The next morning we wake up early, knowing the drive down highway 1 takes way longer than you’d think, and there’s a lot of stuff I want to see and do in San Francisco.

Surprisingly, I slept well for the rest of the night. So well, that when I woke up and rolled over to find myself face to face with Maximus, I had a bit of a shock. He didn’t seem all that surprised though, just gave me a lazy smile and wished me good morning before he got out of bed and made us coffee.

So there was that.

And then the rest of the memories came flooding through. The ash on the bedspread, my ruined pajamas, the sword, my close brush with death. Part of me felt a little silly too, wanting to have Max fucking spoon me all night long. I mean, that was something I’ve never asked for, never wanted to ask for. And yet I did, putting all pride and feelings foolishness aside.

But if Max thought any of it was lame or weird, he didn’t show it. Things felt normal between us, even though I felt closer to him than I had before, and we were on our way in the Super B heading south.

“Hey, so I was wondering,” I say, after I just made him pull over on the side of the road for the hundredth time so I could take a picture of the cliffs and the ocean. “Could you teach me to wield the sword?”

Max glances at me, bringing his eyes back to the road just in time to take a tight curve, the waves crashing hundreds of meters below. “Do you know how heavy that thing is?”

“No. I haven’t tried to hold it. You make it look easy.”

“I have experience, darlin’.”

“Well, okay, but how about passing some of that experience my way? You’re my teacher after all. Shouldn’t be you be teaching me to slice the heads off people?”

“Demons. We slice the heads off of demons.”

“Whatever,” I tell him, putting my feet up on the dash because I know it pisses him off. “I should still know.”

“Feet off the dash.”

I roll my eyes and put them back down.

“I just think I should be prepared.”

“You’ll be prepared. The sword is just for me.”