“And here I thought you cared.”
Shane laughed, a little, and kept on thinking. “What about tats? Do they stay on a vampire?”
“I doubt it. We’d probably heal. Doesn’t sound like something I want to try if it isn’t going to stay on.”
“Sucks to be you, don’t it? No pun intended.”
Michael looked up and grinned, and all the bullshit faded away. All the bitter anger (it always tasted like blood and tinfoil), all the weird complication of his best friend drinking blood for God’s sake, all that just up and left, and it could have been two years ago, or three, or more. They could have been twelve years old again, thinking of ways to stick frogs in Alyssa’s shoes, worms in her underwear drawer, whatever.
Shane felt the hot sting of tears in his eyes, and looked away. “I missed you,” Shane blurted. It felt right to say it, and then it felt stupid because Michael was right there at the other end of the couch, and besides, guys didn’t say that crap to other guys. “Whatever.”
Michael got real interested in his guitar, all of a sudden. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I missed you, too. How’d we get like this?”
“Well, you vamped out, my dad made me promise to kill you—”
“Seriously.”
“That wasn’t serious?”
“We used to hang. I miss you having my back.”
“I still have your back.”
“Do you?”
Shane looked at him in silence for a long few seconds without blinking, and said, “If you don’t know that, you don’t know shit about me, bro. Do I like it that you’re sucking down O neg like it’s SlimFast? Hell, no. Creeps me the hell out and it always will. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll always have your back.”
“Then let me have yours once in a while,” Michael said, and held out his fist. Shane bumped it, or tried; his coordination was way off. “Next time, don’t go wandering around out in the dark, bleeding and wearing a Bite Me sign.”
“Oh, blow me,” Shane groaned. “I’m fine.”
“Please. You’re so fine you’re about thirty seconds from telling me all your deep, dark secrets and crying, or else puking your guts out.”
“Yeah, screw you, too, buddy.” Shane closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the sofa. The room was doing loop-de-loops, and it was kind of fun at first, and then not so much.
“I worry about you,” he heard Michael say very quietly. “I wasn’t kidding about the death wish. Jesus, Shane, you keep doing this kind of thing, you’ll end up dead in a ditch. Or worse.”
“Maybe it’s what I deserve.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that out loud, but it was true. Maybe it was what he deserved. He hadn’t been able to protect Alyssa. He hadn’t been able to save his mother. The pain—the pain helped, because it was like paying back a debt. Nobody understood that, though. They just thought he was nuts.
He felt a cold hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Michael standing there, staring at him with so much—everything—in his eyes that it made him feel scared. Nobody should know him that well. Nobody.
But at least Michael didn’t say it. He just said, “Come on, man. Let’s get you upstairs before you puke all over my guitar.”
“Don’t tell Claire I came home drunk,” Shane said.
“Hell no.”
“Because I will end you.”
“If you survive the hangover,” Michael said, “we’ll see who wins that throw-down.”
? ? ?
Michael was right about the hangover. Shane woke up with his guts heaving and his mouth tasting like he’d sucked on old sweat socks, and he rolled over in bed and moaned. He hadn’t ralphed, but it had been close. He figured he still might. His head was pounding like Metallica’s drummer, and he wanted to just make it all go away.
Not an option, though. He got up, slipped on a pair of cheap sunglasses and a ratty T-shirt and jeans that had seen better days, and shuffled downstairs to grab a tall glass of water. There was a pot of coffee on the burner, so he poured a cup of that, too, and took both to the kitchen table. He’d downed the water and was about to start on the coffee when the knocking came at the back door.
Well, not so much knocking as pounding. Which was really not good with his head already keeping the beat to a different, sadistic drummer.
Shane groaned, got up, and opened the door without checking to see who it was, mainly because death was preferable to the pain his head was giving him as long as that pounding was going on.