My blood approves

“You know I really like him, but have you considered what this is doing to your school work?” Milo demanded. He was sitting at the kitchen table, working on some piece of homework, but I laid sprawled out on the couch half-asleep.

My lack of nightly sleep was starting to result in afternoon naps.

“Nope!” I retorted cheerily. Schoolwork didn’t really seem to matter anymore. It was starting to look like I’d probably marry into money, or maybe I’d just die. Either way, education didn’t seem that important.

Why is that good news? I messaged him back. Knowing that I wouldn’t see Peter hurt, but it was also a relief. There were only so many of his rebuffs that I could tolerate.

We can hang out and I can take the Lamborghini. Are you game?

Definitely! I’ll meet you outside! Hurry! I responded and jumped up from the couch.

Milo started in with a lecture about school and sleep, but I didn’t even pretend to listen. After the stress of the past weekend, I could really just go for a night of silly Jack fun. He always knew how to make me feel better.

I burst through the doors of the building just as the red car pulled up in front, and I had never timed it so perfectly before. We seemed to really be in sync, and I tried to ignore the fact that that thrilled me in some strange way.

Throwing open the car door, I leapt inside and smiled broadly at him. Jack laughed at my exuberance, and my heart swelled at the sound of it.

“You’re in a good mood today,” Jack grinned. We didn’t drive right away, and he just sat there for a minute looking at me. “What do you wanna do?”

“I don’t care! Just as long as we get there fast!” I declared, and his eyes glimmered.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” He threw the car into gear and we sped off so quickly, I was pressed back tightly against the seat. Even though we’d just been in a car wreck, I still felt safe with him. After all, he had saved me from the crash, even if he had also been the cause of it.

“This weekend felt so long,” I muttered drearily.

“Tell me about it.” Jack was just as tired and frustrated as I was, and that was easy to forget. Generally, I considered him to be a culprit in all of this, but he was just as much a pawn as I was. We were trapped in an unyielding battle with biology.

“I just want everything to go back to normal.” I had expected him to agree with me, but he just laughed.

“I’m assuming you mean normal in that you were running around with your new vampire best friend,” he smiled. “Yeah. Cause that’s the baseline for normal.”

“Well, it feels more normal than all this business about my blood being meant for Peter,” I grumbled. “How is any part of me meant for anything? Who decided that?”

“I wish I knew.” His expression slacked for a second, but then he shook his head. “Look, let’s just not think about any of that. You look exhausted. Why don’t we just do something nice and relaxing this evening?”

“Like what?” I was exhausted, and truthfully, anything I would be up for doing had to require very little movement. The thought of spending the evening just curled up somewhere with Jack sounded positively wonderful, and thankfully, he was on the same wave-length.

“How about we just go back to my house and watch a movie? I have like a million. I’m sure there’s a couple in there you’d be up to watching.”

“That sounds fantastic,” I admitted. I had turned to face him and leaned my head against the seat. “How long are Ezra and Peter gone for?”

“I don’t know,” Jack shrugged. “Probably a week, I guess. Why?”

“What do they do? For business, I mean. How did they make all your money?” I had spent so much time talking about the preternatural that I never really had a chance to ask about the very practical things, like how they supported themselves.

“Ezra’s been working for, you know, hundreds of years doing various things, so he managed to build up quite the nest egg before I was even born.

Right now, they’re doing a lot of stocks and trading and stuff I don’t understand.

They own a couple companies over seas. Everything they do gets shifted and moved around every couple years, though, and I just never bothered to follow it.

They can’t stay with the same people for too long, or people’ll catch on that they haven’t changed.” He didn’t know very much about what they did, but it sounded very deliberate. He didn’t care very much for business, and he was very lucky that he was in a family that allowed plenty of leisure of time.

“Why don’t you have a job?” I wondered.

“Cause I don’t really need to work. Whenever I find something that interests me, I do it, but in the end, we have plenty of money. Ezra and Peter don’t even have to work. We live well below our means, and you’ve seen how we live. But Ezra thinks that since we’re going to live forever, we might as well be prepared for it,” he shrugged, then looked over at me. “Why? Does it bother you that I don’t work?”