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Which, of course, was a completely and perfectly natural process, obviously. I mean, ‘course it is, right? You don’t know to wake up, you don’t tell yourself to, you just do. Period.

And that would all have been fine and dandy, if only I didn’t mean to actually go to sleep.

No, I blinked and I blinked, and I was expecting to just continue seeing the darkness of my room, the wrinkles of my bed, and the silky soft strands of Ash’s hair.

I didn’t expect to be waking up instead.

The chirp of winter birds singing bright and early rang in my ears. I felt my eyelids lift, the glaring light of winter morning nearly blinding, illuminating everything around me in an almost numbing white.

Everything was just as I left it in my last conscious blink. My door was wide open, my body sprawled atop my sheets instead of under, and Ash remained blissfully tucked within my embrace, her head pressed beneath my chin, an arm across my chest… the warm breath trickling against my bare skin.

A calming sight, a beautiful sight… sadly, obviously, offset by the sudden appearance of a vampire standing sullenly at the edge of the bed.

I could have fucking screamed.

.....

Actually, I did.

“Adalia!”

I shot upright, ruining the sight, desecrating the peacefulness, and Ash was snapping awake in alarm right alongside me.

“Master, what has happened?!” came Ash’s immediate reaction, whirling her head around for the danger imminent. “Are you hurt? Are you – ?”

And she found it. Her arms and legs spurring into action instantly freezing in place… quickly locking eyes with the same misty, vacant stare that had pierced through mine.

Ash’s ears twitched again for one final time before it seemed all life from them had been sapped, falling limp completely. Awkwardness, embarrassment, whatever it was, pick your poison, she was just one big surge away from outright dying from it.

She didn’t show it, of course… no, the poison’s invisible, insidious… and goddamn if she wasn’t radiating with it.

“Good… morning…” Adalia whispered, slowly turning to Ash in particular.

“G-Good morning, morning, of course,” Ash muttered back out of habit, her head sinking in the stiffest bow. “Um, welcome… welcome back home, Adalia.”

Adalia continued to stare. “Thank… you…”

Then, seemingly unable to withstand another second, Ash scurried out of bed, keeping her gaze low to the ground.

“I… I shall take my leave now… Master,” She declared hastily, bowing again toward me. “Breakfast awaits… cleaning to be done… a shower… yes, I must… I must go.”

After Ash finished picking out her best excuses, the slam of my bedroom door quickly followed, her tousled white hair whipping away out of sight, leaving me alone… but not really alone, if you catch my meaning.

That unchanging gaze, that looming presence. Somehow, Adalia felt ten times more terrifying doing absolutely nothing.

Fuck, is this what getting caught right in the middle of an affair feels like? This stiffness? This tension? Wrongness? But no, it’s not like I’m really having an affair here, right?

Right?

“Today… is Christmas…” Adalia began to drift herself around the corner, closer. “When does it… start…?”

“Start?” I said, finding my voice again buried under the rubble of shock and terror. “Oh, the date? You mean our date?”

She nodded.

“Um, after I go for a quick bath, I guess,” I answered, one eye on her, the other still unable to tear away from the edge of the bed. “So were you just… there? Standing there? Watching us… just sleep?”

“Yes…” Adalia answered, clarifying it as listlessly as she did everything else, oblivious to her own creepiness. “I did not… want to wake you… up…”

“No one would have minded,” I said, swinging my feet off the bed and landing toward her direction. “Besides, you haven’t eaten. You skipped a day.”

“You looked… happy… asleep…” She replied, drifting even closer, her pale lips in reach. “It is… fine…”

“Not everything is about my happiness, Adalia.”

“To me…” her breath cold on my neck, her fangs easily puncturing skin, she mumbled. “it is…”

I don’t think she had clung on for more than a couple of seconds before she was slinking away, her fangs retracting… leaving me rubbing against the tingling around my neck in question.

“That’s it?”

“I don’t want… to sleep…” She stated simply. “I will feed more… later…”

Ah, that’s right. Feasting makes her drowsy, very drowsy. No point building up to this point, if she were just to sleep it all away all day.

“Go…” She urged, lifting a sluggish finger toward the bathroom door. “Bath yourself…”

Adalia promptly skulked away, and I watched her round the bend of the bed, cross the room all the way to the exit, and I, still wriggling myself out of the awkwardness prior, spoke up.

“Not… not going to join me?” said I lightly, already grimacing at where my words were going. “Like, y’know, like before? You, me, uhh…”

Smooth, me. Very smooth.

“No…” another unfeeling statement. “Bathing makes me… sleepy…”

My god, I swear… this girl’s just a sloth vampirized.

Before long, I was finally wide awake, fighting valiantly against the blistering cold of the shower that never seemed to get hot enough no matter how far I inch the degrees higher and closer to the temperature of the sun.

When I stepped out, more ice cube than human, Adalia was nowhere to be seen, presumably out of sight getting ready for the big day… leaving me plenty of alone time to wallow in my thoughts as I rifled through the contents in my closet.

Christmas had barely just begun, and the first thing that happened was her catching me coddling blissfully in another woman’s arms. I’m aware it was probably nothing to her, knowing her, something like that won’t even faze her one bit.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t the precedent I’d had liked to set. Today was going to be all about her, only her, and this incident wasn’t exactly doing me any favors.

Meeting and talking with Amelia certainly ain’t helping matters either. I can still hear her words, the things she said… to accuse my feelings for Adalia to be nothing more than surface level.

I can only imagine what she’d say if she saw what happened just now, nothing but more ammunition, affirmations to her claims, and I’d be dead and rotting long before I ever hear the end of her speech about how she was right about me all along.

Needless to say, she wasn’t.

And I’ll prove it here, today. Here and now, my feelings were far from hollow and shallow.

But first…

Halfway dressed, I leaned over to the other end of the bed, and grabbed my phone hiding partly underneath a stray pillow.

Allow me to be shallow for just one moment longer…

My phone lit up, calendar, email, and other frivolous applications lining my notifications taking turns wishing me a Merry Christmas. Callously, I swiped away their best wishes. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one person left that needs to be wished.

The keyboard sprung open, and my thumbs began to move.

<<So, it’s Christmas today. Bright and early.>>

<<I’m not sure if you’re the type, but…>>

<<Merry Christmas, Irene.>>

In a blur of mixed emotions, spurred by urges of wanting to do more, be more, I kept on writing some more.

<<Wish I had the chance to spend it with you too.>>

And it’s like… was that good enough? Or did it come off as being frivolous? Flippant?

Shallow?

I meant what I said, I truly did wish that I could… but at the same time, not really.

Right now, at least, right at this moment, Adalia mattered more to me.

Was that bad? I don’t know. I honestly, genuinely, don’t know. I just know that I love them all.

I really do.

That’s all I want to affirm to them…

And that with every missed opportunity, every missed moment, when I’m not with them… that they know in their hearts that that still rings true.

My messages were ticked, one-by-one going read, seen…

Irene was typing.

<<Yeah, sure you do.>>

<<Merry Christmas to you too.>>

<<Now go enjoy it with whoever is lucky enough to you. And don’t you even dare feel guilty for being happy at my expense or anyone else’s. Don’t think about it.>>

<<I won’t forgive you if do.>>

Then just as I got down reading her stream of messages, another popped up at the bottom, the last one.

<<Love you.>>

I blinked, and I don’t even remember it happening, but all of a sudden I was staring up at the ceiling. The calm, white, empty ceiling.

Just like my thoughts.

Just like my worries.

.....

Ahh...

Relationships are so fucking complicated, man.