Page 83 of Fangs with Benefits

It sounds like a dream, like something I haven’t let myself hope for since starting work at Drummond. It also sounds impossible. My apartment is tiny, but adjunct professor salary without supplemental income would not cover it. I would love to be back on campus, back talking about books and writing with my old professors, reading student writing. Trading corporate bureaucracy with departmental drama sounds like a delight, but this reality doesn’t feel reachable, even with this invitation outstretched in front of me.

‘Thank you, James. That means a lot.’

‘Any time,’ he says with an easy smile. Then, he leans forward on the table and lowers his voice conspiratorially. ‘Now tell me what I can say to get you to apply.’

When I get back to my apartment, with a cold bagel and no cup of coffee, Elijah is holding Gemma like a baby in one arm, my Kindle in his other as he paces slowly back and forth in the tiny space that is my living room. He’s often moving, I’ve noticed, not one to sit still unless I’m there to sit with him.

The cat jumps from his arms as soon as I’ve closed the door and runs to circle my feet. Elijah got a carrier for her and has brought little Gemma back and forth with him on the nights he stays at mine. She travels well, probably from living on the streets for the last months, and we set up a litter box in the corner next to the famous credenza.

‘Welcome home,’ Elijah calls, closing my bright pink Kindle case and tossing it onto my bed before meeting me at the door. He unwraps my scarf–his scarf–from around my neck while I hang my jacket next to his on the rack.

I feel unsteady, my heart still thudding too loud since seeing James again, an unsettled feeling crawling over my skin, under my clothes, across my scalp. Elijah’s hand falls to my forearm then slides to my wrist, squeezing it until I look at him.

‘What happened?’ he asks. I look to the ceiling, then back to him.

‘Remember what you told me before my birthday? About starting to live my life like I want to?’

I’d written it down in my notebook and run my fingers over the words every day for a week.

If you aren’t chasing what your heart desires most, you ought to get started.

‘What’s this about?’ Elijah asks.

‘I’ve been doing the safe thing for years–working at Drummond, only going back home for Christmas because I can’t stand facing my parents’ disappointment that I stopped chasing the thing I’ve loved most since I was a kid. I don’t date because I don’t trust that I’ll know if someone’s being dishonest and I keep applying for promotions I don’t really give a shit about and then I’m somewhere between devastated and relieved when they get given to someone else.’

I kick off my boots and walk further into the apartment, wishing it was bigger so I could pace better. Elijah watches, the deep crease between his brows visible. I can’t help but think he’s been making that same face since he was still human, the wrinkles and lines he’d earned forever frozen on his skin.

Gemma runs beneath the bed, her favourite hiding place.

‘I have friends here, but I’ve been so fucking lonely, like weeks will go by where my days look exactly the same and I’m too scared to change it. You’re the first fun, spontaneous thing I’ve done in months and you’re not even human!’

For his part, Elijah doesn’t interrupt my crash out of the year, just watches and listens, maybe formulating a response, maybe thinking I’m an idiot. How many humans has he met just like me? Wasting their lives not really living.

‘When I broke up with Matt, I was so sure that I was standing up for myself, securing the future I wanted. And now we’re on year three of me pretending I know what I’m doing while spinning my wheels, and I’m just…’

Pressing my lips together into a line, I stare at the funky pink rug I bought after breaking up with Matt. It was the kind of thing Matt would have said is tacky, too young, too bright, and I revelled in buying it for my apartment.

‘I’m so far from where I wanted to be,’ I conclude with a shrug. To my mortification, my chin wobbles and eyes burn with tears.

Elijah frowns and meets me across the apartment, hesitating for a moment before pulling me into his chest, wrapping me up in his arms, my head against him. He has no heartbeat. The comfort I feel is instant, and I wonder if maybe this is how he could compel me into doing anything he says.

‘What happened?’ he asks.

‘I saw one of my old professors,’ I whisper, but I know he heard me. He always hears me. ‘I was so ashamed of the things I haven’t been doing. All the goals I’ve left unaccomplished.’

‘Moll,’ Elijah mutters, holding me closer and swaying our bodies slightly. My arms are wrapped around his back as tightly as he holds me. ‘You’re not out of time. You can always start again.’

‘But I’ve been sitting in place,’ I admit. ‘It’s like you in that mansion for a century, but worse because I only have this one life to live. It scares me to think that another three years could go by, and I’ll be right where you found me.’

Elijah presses more kisses to my hair, his palm gliding up and down my back as I cry into the front of his sweatshirt.

‘Dear Molly.’ He squeezes me tighter then pulls back to look at me. He looks heartbroken at the sight of me and wipes his thumbs over my cheeks. The tenderness of the action starts a new torrent of tears. ‘You’re capable of anything in this world that you can imagine. In a way that is so singularly human, in a way that an immortal being can never achieve.’

‘Why not?’

One of his dimples appears while he thinks about it.

‘Mortality, maybe. A beating heart. I don’t know, but you have it, this uncapturable thing in your beautiful brain. It’s evident in everything you write, the way you think. You are so alive.’ Elijah tucks my hair behind my ears, holding my head between his hands lifting my jaw to look at me better. My lip wobbles still, and I sniffle in a way that is grossly unbecoming, but his eyes are full of tenderness and care. If I didn’t know what we are and what we aren’t, I might mistake it for something like love.