The Taste of You

When I got home after my hour of counseling and my man-snack, I stared around at the white walls, at the ugly brown plaid couch that Will had bought and had delivered to my place when he saw my apartment was still empty six months after I'd moved in, but that had been years ago, now.

Three years, I realized, three years with that ugly couch that couldn't be hidden in the closet with the paintings and rotting potted plants that Will had brought over one at a time, saying they would make my cave a little more livable. Plain white walls, pale tan carpet, and the world's most hideous, least-often used couch.

I sighed and went to draw a bath.

"Annie, you have a disproportionate concern with hygiene for a semi-immortal creature," Will had said once.

I decided on a raspberry-vanilla combo and ran the water super hot. I threw a towel down in front of the closed door to hold in the steam and the scent.

I looked into the mirror for a minute before the steam clouded it. I had a drip of dried blood on my chin. I laughed at myself a little and scratched it away.

I took my dark brown hair out of its pigtails and combed it with my fingers. It was shiny, almost pretty now. I bought really nice shampoo and conditioner and this smoothing cream. I hadn't been able to afford them in my pre-vampire days, not smoothing cream or any of the bubble bath and salts and milks that lined the bathtub now.

I don't know why I bought it all. I think maybe it was the last remnant of my girlishness holding on with claws. Somewhere along the way, I'd stopped buying makeup and dressing up, even flirting. My girliness had run out on me, leaving me with a steaming raspberry-vanilla bath and a fluffy pink bath mat.

I'd mentioned it to Will once, obliquely, wondering if it was a vampire thing—losing our human selves as time passed.

He didn't think so. He was more of the opinion that we change as we grow older—whether we're vampires or humans or viral infections. Just because our bodies aren't aging, that doesn't mean that we stop aging, maturing.

I swiped the steam from the mirror for one more look at my plain eighteen-year-old's face, made a kissing expression, winked one brown eye, and went to my bath, sinking into the hot water with a moan.

I hoped Will was right. I hoped I was still maturing. If I was, there was hope that I could move on, too, that grief was temporary and that as time passed I would forget it or move on from it or accept it or whatever it was that happened when the feeling didn't overwhelm you every time you stopped moving.

I ducked underwater, believing that the hot water was washing out every pore, cleaning every bit of grime and destroying every bacterium that I'd met that day. I stayed under until the water was tepid, and later, that's the reason I would give Will when he asked why I didn't pick up the phone.