“Look at that.”

  “Must be nice being a teenager these days.”

  “For sure. I read somewhere that blowjobs are standard now.”

  “I don’t see why it’s off limits. Jail bait my ass. You know they’re fucking their boyfriends. If they’re already fucking, what’s the difference? Romeo and Juliet bullshit.”

  “Yeah, but these girls? If we were in our twenties maybe. But we got thirty plus years on them.”

  “You’re telling me your dick don’t still twitch when it sees it?”

  “I’m not saying I disagree with you. It’s just wishful thinking. Never gonna happen. Not in our lifetime.”

  I had to jot that down. That’s an eavesdropped conversation at another table in this Starbucks I’m sitting in. Two old dudes watching some high school girls at another table. One of them is wearing a cheerleader uniform. It makes me think back to the beginning, when Yelena and I first met and we’d sit in public, me scribbling those around us looking for guys like these for her to feed on. I feel like I should kill these two in her memory. They haven’t looked at me. I don’t know if that’s because I’m not as pretty or because I’m not as developed. But I still haven’t fed since I killed Mirela and stole her blood. Stole? Is that accurate? Is it fair? Yeah…probably it is. What am I waiting for? I’m so powerful now that I won’t need blood for years. Decades supposedly. But it’s not like blood wouldn’t be pleasurable. I’d still get the rush. I’d still feel the ecstasy. But after all this time, and the last time being Mirela, my lover, I feel like my first feeding should be more meaningful than this trash. They still haven’t looked at me once.

  There. I got them to notice me. LOL. I put my feet up on my chair, with my knees pulled to my chest and my shins pressed against the table. One signaled to the other with his eyes. They know it’s wrong, that I’m too young even for them, but still they keep glancing, straining to look up the dress of a little girl writing in a book unaware that her panties are on full display. I should totally kill them, but am I gonna waste my first drink as empress on dirty old men? Okay, let’s make a deal: If they follow me out, even if they don’t do anything but take a longer look at me with their perverse curiosity, I’ll kill them both. If they don’t, I’ll just go home and they’ll hang back with their high school fantasies. I’m gonna finish my coffee first though. They’re still stealing glances.

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  I still haven’t left the cafe. And I put my legs back down. I started thinking how hypocritical I am. I’m playing games to decide whether or not to kill those two creeps, but their lusting over underage girls is something I want Vance to feel toward me. Why is it abhorrent for them to look at me when it’s not if Vance does? He is younger than they are, but he’s still an adult. Am I just giving him a pass because he’s just so damn gorgeous? Or because I know him? (Well, kinda know him?) Or isn’t the real answer that it is just as abhorrent if Vance ever felt attraction to me? How hopeless it all is. Someone who would desire me isn’t the kind of person I should want to be desired by. So why was it okay for Mirela to take me as her lover? Because she was a vampire? Because she was immortal? Because she was so old she had lived through ages where it was normal to wed at the age I appear to be? Maybe with Mirela it was never okay, but nobody said anything because I was enraptured and everyone else was afraid.

  Vance still hasn’t texted. I considered posting something that would indicate my whereabouts, but I so much want him to initiate our next meeting.

  Mirela loved me, not my body. No, that’s not accurate. She loved my body because it was mine and she loved me. But she didn’t love me for my body. Isn’t that the difference? Isn’t that the pass I’m looking for so someone can love all of me? If I can’t have that, I’ll never have anything. No, that’s not true. I have a lot already. I have other meaningful relationships, just not amorous ones. So is that it? I have to find a way in my immortality to be happy with only platonic relationships? Ugh. I feel like I’ve had this conversation in my head a million times.

  Wait a minute. Why do I so often forget this? The key number one foremost difference is that I’m an adult and Mirela knew this, just as Vance knows it. That’s what matters. Right? His knowledge of my true age is how he’ll be able to blind himself to the rest. At least that’s how I hope it’ll work for him. I repeatedly slip up and forget this most important factor regarding the awareness of my true age because no matter how old I am I still see myself in the mirror and there looking back at me is a child. When reconciling the mismatch, it’s oftentimes the visual that holds more tightly. If only the legends were true, that we vampires have no reflections. Then I would at least always remember me as I am and not be able to see anything contradictory.

  They’re getting up to leave. Bye creeps. If you see Vance tell him to text me.

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