An Acquired Taste (The Valentine Society)

Chapter One

I have been alive for two hundred years, and I have never met anyone like you.

I sigh as I flip through the glossy pages of Fangs magazine, looking at images of vampire celebrities and their chosen valentines. Pampered and gorgeous, the human companions are almost as glamorous as the undead aristocrats.

I pause on the “Bite of the Week” photograph and pull it so close to my face that my nose brushes the page. The vampire and valentine couple is entwined on a couch at one of the many glitzy vampire balls. Her legs are on his lap, his mouth on her neck. A glimpse of his fangs sends a shiver down my spine. The blissful look on her face makes me clench my thighs.

…And the smell of smoke reminds me that I’m cooking dinner.

“Oh, shoot. Shoot, shoot, shoot.” I toss the magazine on the counter, turn off the stove, and grab the handle of the pan, only to burn myself on the scalding metal. I wince as I set it aside.

Still… I may have burned my thumb and set off the smoke alarm, but dinner is done. And not just any dinner, but our celebration dinner for Declan finally accepting a job offer. I can’t wait to surprise him.

I know he isn’t the biggest fan of my cooking. Let’s be real, I’m not crazy about it myself. But we can’t afford a big night out. I make enough at the diner to cover rent and essentials, but only barely.

Now, though, Dec has finally made it to the finish line: a nice job that pays more than twice what I’m making. It took some time. He graduated last summer, and I was starting to panic after months of him declining job offers that “weren’t a good fit” and spending all of his time “networking” to no avail. But the waiting paid off. Now we’ll find a nice house, and my sister Maisy will move into our spare room while she starts at USC. She’ll never have to struggle and delay her dreams like I did… and I’ll finally have a chance to focus on my writing. Just like Declan and I planned four years ago, when we fled our small town in Nebraska to come to LA together.

My life has felt like a constant uphill battle for as long as I can remember. But now the hard part is over.

Smiling at the thought, I serve up two plates of spaghetti, set them on our tiny IKEA dining table—which has a piece of cardboard stuck under one leg to balance it—and grab my magazine again as I wait. I skim through articles about “Most Eligible Bachelors at the Valentine’s Day Ball” and “LA’s Most Exclusive Vampire Nightclubs.”

God, I hope Dec will be in the mood tonight, because this stuff really gets me going, and we’ve been stuck in a dry spell for a while. I know it’s just because he’s been stressed, but my vibrator can only keep me sated for so long.

I pour another glass of wine and debate about changing into lingerie. Then I remember Declan saying it makes him feel pressured , so I sigh and flip to another article. I’m halfway through it by the time I realize that the food has gotten cold.

I frown, checking my phone. Declan said he’d be home by six, and it’s nearly seven—even adjusting for the fact that I always set my phone clock ten minutes fast. With my chronic time-management issues, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish dinner on time, but now I’m more worried about him . He said he was just going to grab a drink or two with his classmates, but I know how things can get with those insufferable business bros.

Just when I’m about to call him, I hear the telltale click of the front door unlocking. I hide my magazine under a stack of unpaid bills and whirl to face the door with a wide smile.

“Welcome home!” I call as he steps inside, splaying my fingers in a spur-of-the-moment jazz hands sort of thing. I immediately regret my decision, but oh well, it’s already happening.

Declan shoots me a weary smile. He looks tired and rumpled in his oversized blazer and lopsided tie, but still handsome. I fell in love with his floppy hair and big brown eyes the first time I saw him in high school, and I’ve adored him ever since. “Hey, Amelia. Thanks.” He shuts the door behind him and then pauses, sniffing. “Is something burning?”

“Oh, uh—” I glance at the kitchen just to make sure. “No? I made dinner, though.”

“Really? I was thinking we could order…” He pauses, catching the look on my face, and changes course. “I mean, I’m sure whatever you made will be great. That’s really, uh, thoughtful. Thanks.”

He follows me over to the table, sits down, and digs into his spaghetti. It’s cold at this point and was never a five-star meal to begin with, but honestly? I think I did pretty good. “Maybe we could watch a movie or something tonight,” I suggest between bites. “Have some… private time? You know?” I waggle my eyebrows but stop as I catch his expression. “I mean, no pressure, I know you’ve been tired lately, but…”

I trail off and shove spaghetti in my mouth. Declan sets his fork down. He clears his throat, looks at me across the table, and says, “Amelia, I think we should talk.”

I choke, cough into a napkin, and set my utensils aside. My heart is pounding as I look at him, my eyes darting to a red splotch of what must be spaghetti sauce on his collar. I feel a hint of anxiety, but mostly the rising giddiness of expectation. This must be it. The big heartfelt speech I’ve been waiting for ever since I started supporting him. The moment he finally tells me how much he appreciates everything I’ve been doing for him over the years, and apologizes for all of the ways he’s let me fade into the background while he focused on his education and career. He’ll tell me he did it all for me, and now me and my sister will both get to live easy for a while. I’ll forgive him, we’ll kiss, have some passionate and long-needed sex. Maybe we’ll even talk about marriage again. I didn’t exactly anticipate this conversation happening over cold plates of spaghetti, but I’ll take it!

“What is it?” I ask, trying to keep down a smile.

His expression goes unreadable, and a sick, panicky feeling lurches in my chest a moment before he says, “I think we should break up.”

I plaster on an awkward sort of half-smile, and squeak, “What?”

Declan looks at me with those big brown puppy-dog eyes I fell in love with five years ago. “This is really hard for me.”

“What?” I ask again, dumbly. My head feels like it’s full of static.

He sighs. “I know you’ve been feeling the same way that I have. We’ve practically become roommates over the last couple of years.”

I shake my head. It hurts to look at him. I look down at my own hands in my lap instead, rubbing one finger over the throbbing burn mark on my thumb. There’s some truth to what he’s saying, but it’s only because I’ve been so busy single-handedly supporting us. I work long, weird hours as a waitress in a twenty-four-seven diner and handle most of the cleaning in the apartment, too. I haven’t had the free time to write a word in years.

And I’m not the one who stopped trying. Dec always brushed me off, saying he was too tired or stressed. First he used school as an excuse, and then it was his job search.

So why is he the one breaking up with me ?

“It seems like you have no time for me anymore,” he says, and I look up. “For us, I mean,” he corrects himself, as if that makes it better.

“Dec, all of my time is spent on us,” I say, still too confused to be angry yet. “I work for us. I clean for us. I cook for us.”

He grimaces at his plate of soggy spaghetti, and it finally sparks some anger through the haze of my shock.

“Because that was our deal,” I say, my voice rising. “That I would take care of everything until you were finished with school, and then…” And then he was supposed to take care of me . I was supposed to have time to actually write, instead of scribbling ideas on napkins between pours of coffee.

And more importantly, he was supposed to help my sister. I paid our rent, did all the chores. I wrote his goddamn résumé. All for… this?

“I know we made a lot of plans,” he says. He’s still using that mild, oh-so-reasonable tone that makes me want to fling my plate of terrible spaghetti at him. “But things change, you know? Feelings change. We’ve changed. We’re not the same people that we were when we first got together five years ago. At least, I know I’m not.”

I flinch because it’s true: I’m still stuck in the same dead-end waitressing job, still wearing the same thrifted clothes. He’s the one that’s going to come out of this with a degree and a future. The future that was supposed to be ours .

If it were just me he was screwing over, then… fine. I’d deal with it. But it’s not just me. I think of my sister, who already accepted her offer at USC and hasn’t been able to stop talking about how excited she is to get out of our parents’ stiflingly religious house and come live with me. How am I supposed to tell her that it’s not happening anymore? How am I supposed to watch her struggle the same way that I have, all because I couldn’t keep my promise to support her?

“Right,” I say. My anger is still growing, sharpening, and I’m thankful for it. On the verge of drowning in despair, I cling to the lifeboat of rage. “Because when we met you were living on Mommy and Daddy’s dime, and now you’re living on mine. Such progress . Such maturity. ”

The look he gives me is so full of condescending pity that it makes me feel sick to my stomach. “Jealousy isn’t a good look, Amelia.”

“Jealous—” I bite off the word, grimace down at my plate of food, and then raise my eyes to glare at him again. I’m done trying to make myself small and push away my anger. I deserve to be angry.

I focus on that splotch of red on his collar, trying to feel some petty glee at his expense. But upon a closer look, I realize it isn’t spaghetti sauce at all.

“Is that lipstick on your shirt?” I ask.

Declan flushes as he follows my eyes to the damning red against his white collar. “No, it’s—” He pauses, fumbles, seems to think better of the lie. “Listen, Amelia. We haven’t slept together in weeks .”

“Three months and six days,” I say. There’s a faint but growing buzzing in my ears, and I feel like I’m watching this scene play out on a television screen rather than living it. It’s just so… so cliché . Like something that would happen on one of those shows he makes fun of me for watching. “Because you reject me. Constantly.”

He winces. “I was going to tell you, I swear…”

The rest is lost in the buzzing. My mind is somewhere far away, wondering how the hell I got here. The past is easier to think about than the vast, dark expanse of my unknown future alone. A future where I’m stuck in dead-end jobs and never have time to write again. A future in which my sister has to suffer and struggle the same way I have. Declan goes on, talking about some woman he met in his program, and how he cares about me but isn’t in love with me anymore, and blah, blah, blah.

“I’ve wasted my life on you,” I blurt, cutting him off halfway through a thought. He stops with his mouth open, blinking at me, and I slowly raise my eyes to meet his. “I… I can’t believe I was so stupid.” I know I’m not a perfect person. I can be messy and forgetful and easily distracted. I’m a god-awful cook. But I know that I deserve better than this. “Get out,” I say. The words come quietly, but they’re enough to earn a startled look from Declan.

“Huh?”

“Get out,” I say again, louder. “Get out of my apartment.” I’m the one who’s been paying the rent all year, after all.

The look he shoots me is wounded, but there’s something else underneath. Something smug. “Actually… I’m sorry, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but… The apartment is in my name. Remember?”

I blink at him, ready to argue. I’m the one who pays all the bills and deals with the landlord, but… oh Jesus. This is student housing. We had to put it under his name because he was the only one enrolled at the university, and this was the only place we could afford that was close to campus.

“Oh, God,” I say. I sink down in my chair and put my head in my hands.

“I’m happy to let you sleep on the couch for a couple weeks,” he says. “But…”

I let out a small, helpless, defeated laugh.

I am well and truly fucked.