Movement pulls me from my reverie, and I glance up.
“It’s lunch. A few of us are heading over to Diamond’s Diner. Want to join us?”
The girls from my office stand over me, but their swaying body language reveals their growing impatience with me. I grab my lunch, holding up my bag that reads: Live Your Truth.
The signs I’m failing myself are everywhere. I’m pushing away opportunities in exchange for holding onto my misery. I’m cheating myself, but I’m ignorant of the facts and what I can do about it. I press a weak smile onto my face. “Thank you. Maybe next week?”
“Sure, next week…”
It’s the same every day. I’m thankful they continue to include me in their group, having been privy to the news of the existence of vampires, including my husband, just as much as everyone else. I haven’t told anyone I saw Ben, talked to him, held him, loved him, but, somehow, I think they suspect.
Lunch bag in hand, I hope today is the day I can eat an entire apple without throwing up. I tell myself I’m okay, or I’m going to be okay, buy my mental insistence hasn’t tricked my feeble appetite as much as I wish it had.
Outside, sunrays shoot warmth right through my sweater. I welcome the seventy-degree day in the middle of fall. Autumn leaves crush underfoot as I stroll to the large beech tree on the far side of the town park where Ben and I picnicked the day he asked me to marry him.
As I approach, even from forty feet away, the tree’s silvery cambium layer has grown, so it borders the heart-shaped groove Ben and I cut into the tree. Ben heart Camille. But as I draw closer, I spot a fresh mark, which I read out loud. “And then after…”
My throat twists, and hot tears spring as I visually search the park. He can’t come out during the day, which means he’d been here sometime last night. I palm my heart with one hand, hoping he can see me as he certainly saw me the morning I’d said those words, deep in the caverns under the PDU. I lean in and press my lips to the carved letters, leaving a peachy lipstick kiss for Ben to see, either tonight or when he returns. “Oh, Ben. There must be another way…”
I dig my apple out of my favorite cushioned bag, taking a crunchy bite, allowing sweet juices to slide down my aching throat, nourishing my spirit and body. I brace myself against the sturdy, smooth trunk and glance across the park where I spot a turquoise Ford Thunderbird. It’s a 1966. I know because I rode in that very car as Homecoming Queen when I’d switched schools late in my junior year. The vehicle no longer belongs to the sheriff. It’s his daughter’s. The Sparkles salon owner, Stacey Miller, has emblazoned the side with her sassy motto: My hair is comin’ down!
The slogan could have said anything. Live your life. Make today memorable. Go for it. Ben’s still taking chances on me. He’s always risking his life by chancing being seen. He still loves me. Maybe even waiting for me to make a move, one I’ve been so desperately rejecting.
Our house won’t be tolerable knowing Ben is alive, out here, alone.
...cells are temporary housing…
I recall Corporal Anderson mentioning housing. Is Ben at the PDU? On-site, somewhere in the direction of where the construction trucks headed? Is he still taking sustenance from a stranger when I should be the one feeding my husband? For better or worse and in sickness and health, we both pledged ourselves to each other.
I’ve been selfish, allowing myself to remain trapped inside my foggy machinations, thankful for the dark clouds while he’s still suffering. If given the opportunity, I’m sure I’ll learn to work through the sight of my blood, the prick of pain as I’m a strong and capable woman. I will not faint, or I will, but Ben will be there to catch me every time. We’ll support each other.
I gather my lunch bag, knowing what I need to do. It’s out of my character, but that’s the lesson, I believe. Sometimes you have to bust out all the stops and fly off into the unknown to have a forever worth remembering. Sometimes you have to put your fears behind you or face them head-on. As I hurriedly traipse across the park and slide into my SUV, I realize I have one stop to make before I welcome my forever, whatever that will be. The PDU isn’t home. It’s still a cell, even a prison. I’m breaking out my husband. One way or another.
Chapter Four
Ben
Horn blaring in the distance, I’m thrust awake, although, as a vampire, my dream state is more of a hazy suspension. I check out my surroundings, expecting to be wrapped by vertical steel bars. Still, even though I have no problem seeing in the darkness, a full minute ticks by until I make sense of my homey surroundings, and the honking morphs into an annoying trill before it fades.
Legs and arms held out, I sprawl atop a queen-sized bed. The new cushion absorbs my weight as if I’m
