#TeaserTuesday: Rising Sun

 

“Have you ever been to New Orleans?” she asked, surprised by the inquiring, soft and engaged sound of her own voice.

Reese didn’t seem surprised, though. He watched the road, one hand dangling over the top of the wheel, and hummed an affirmative noise. “Once. A long time ago. I was…eighteen, maybe. Yeah. I don’t remember much about it, except it was crowded. It was nighttime, and there were all these people. Walking. Drinking.”

It was the longest sentence he’d ever spoken to her, and she found herself surprised all over again, this time by the staggering progress Reese had made. She still thought of him as the silent murder duckling trailing along in Mercy’s shadow, but he wasn’t that anymore. Far from it. And hadn’t been for a while, she guessed.

When he reached to scratch absently at the near side of his jaw with his left hand, his wedding ring winked in the dash lights. He was married, now. Was someone’s other half – was soft inside, in that way, loved and was loved in return. He knew, at least a little, of what it meant to lose someone, even if temporarily. Even if he’d been the one to be lost. A circumstance that had doubtless contributed to his decision to go rogue and call Mercy.

Ava wanted to hug him.

Instead, she said, “Ah. Bourbon Street.”

“It…smelled.”

“Yeah. It does. Mercy aways says that street’s a tourist trap. I liked the Garden District best.”

“With the big houses?”

“Yeah. Nowhere in Tennessee looks quite like that. Plus, I love Anne Rice, so…” When she glanced over, she found him nodding. “Have you read her?”

“Mercy loaned me a copy of Interview With the Vampire. I’ve read half of it.”

“Are you enjoying it?”

“Yes,” he said, right away. “I like the way she writes. The way she explains things.”

Ava nodded, because Anne Rice’s prose was some of her absolute favorite.

Reese frowned, only a little, but noticeable in the dash lights.

“What?” she prompted.

He scratched at his jaw again, with another blue-white wink of metal on his finger. “It’s…Louis. He left.” Reese’s emotions were subtle things, outwardly, the faintest press of inflection on certain words. Left was damning in his quiet voice. “He hurt Lestat and then he just…left.”

Clearly, he didn’t like or agree with that, but Ava didn’t want to offer an opinion of her own yet. “He did.”

“But…” Even in profile, she could tell his brows were drawn together. “They’re the same,” he said, with feeling, as though it mattered whether two fictional vampires stayed together. “They’re supposed to be together. They’re the only ones who understand each other, and…” He trailed off, and Ava got it, then.

As subtly as she could, she glanced back over her shoulder into the backseat, and in the orange flare of the next streetlight, she saw that Tenny’s eyes were still closed, but that the corners of his mouth had flicked upward in a satisfied smile.

She turned back to Reese. “I think Louis’s conflict is that he’s in very deep denial about who he really is, and, therefore, who he fits best with. He sees himself as Lestat’s plaything and victim, and so he devises a need, and then a means of escape.” It had been years and years since she engaged a literary discussion beyond the ones she and Mercy sometimes had in bed, in the dark of night when neither of them could sleep, or after sex but weren’t sleepy. When they read the same book, and talked it over, layering opinions like a lasagna of ideas, rather than arguing. They always seemed to have the same take on literature. Because their brains worked in a similar fashion; because, as Reese had said with such audible emotion, they were the same.

The idea, always a comfort, a talisman she rubbed in her mind, filled her now with a sudden melancholy, because Mercy wasn’t here at her side, and the reason he’d left was so much more terrifying than some sort of lover’s misunderstanding.

Nothing she could think of, or say, could provide a comfort for her. But she found she wanted to comfort Reese, even if he didn’t need it, even if it was only about a book.

“I think,” she said, slowly, selecting each word, because Reese wasn’t the sort of person who filled silences with useless chatter. Words were sparse, and so they held great meaning for him. Mercy had told her that once, early on, and she’d taken it to heart. She thought Remy was the same way, a little. “That most people lie to themselves about who they really are. And I think most of them don’t even realize they’re doing it. They don’t recognize that they have a kinship – a real, true, deep understanding – with someone else until it’s too late. If they ever recognize it at all. We animals aren’t all that unique as individuals: there’s always someone out there just like us.”

Slowly, the tension bled out of his face, as though it had never been there in the first place. He nodded, and his gaze slid over, a fractional turning of his head. When they made eye contact, she saw something grateful in his expression. Yes. You get it.

She did. They’d both found their matching animal, she supposed. Against all the odds.