My eyes close and I shake my head. “You still haven’t convinced me that vampires are real and now you want to convince me that I AM one?” My voice starts to raise. Darren looks upset at me. I do not care right now.“Don’t you feel the bond between us?” He asks the pavement. I look down as well, and feel Louise tugging at the leash to keep us moving. “This mate thing you keep talking about… is it like Jacob and Renesmee?” I asked. “I don’t know who those people are.” I laugh, “Twilight, you old man” a look passes over his face as he tries to remember which character did what, “Oh! The demon baby and the werewolf?” I laugh at his description and nod. “I don’t really know that much about Twilight,” he confesses, “I just saw that you had the poster in your room, so I tried to impress you.” I look at his face, and see all of the vulnerability I have come to love on his face. We are both blushing. I turn backwards as we walk and poke his chest softly “You had a crush on me!” I sing to him

I wake up to the smell of bacon cooking. When I make my way into the kitchen, my mom is stirring pancake batter with a very old whisk. It scrapes against the bottom of the bowl in a familiar pattern. “Good Morning, sleepyhead!” my mom greets me happily, but with a pointed look at the clock, it’s 11:00. “Did you get some good sleep in your old bed?” I nod and grab a mug from the cabinet. I pour myself a large cup of hot coffee and ask “Do you need my help with anything this morning?” I offer her the milk as I add it to my cup, she's already mixed all the milk she needs into her batter. “I’m good on both, you just sit at the bar and look pretty.” I sit down and start fluttering my eyelashes at her. “Pretty enough?” I ask, flipping invisible hair over my shoulder. “Always!” She says without turning around.Before I finish my coffee, she’s finished the food. Everything she made was wonderful, and Bailey got a few pieces of my mom's bacon for ‘helping her out’. I stirred the syrup around

I sat on the bus, lost in thought as it made its way back to my dorm. My mind was still reeling from the conversation I had with my mother about my parents' love story and my father's slow decline into death. It was a lot to process, but her words stuck with me: "Love doesn't make your choices for you, but baby, I hope you always choose love."As the bus bumped along the road, I found myself thinking about Darren. Despite the risks and challenges that came with being involved with him, I couldn't deny the intense feelings I had for him.I knew that Darren was different from anyone I had ever met before. He was so silly and sweet, nothing like what I would expect from a vampire. But he also had a dangerous edge that both scared and excited me. Even as I sat on the bus, staring blankly out the window, I knew that I couldn't resist him any longer.So, I made a choice. I chose love.I knew that loving Darren would come with its own set of challenges and risks. He was a vampire, after all