“So very badly,” I murmured, making little bubbles ripple over the surface of the water. I sank further and let my face slide under, enjoying the warm sensation of the water soaking through my hair to my scalp.
Mathias had been my European History professor at Northwestern. He taught evening classes, naturally, bringing tales of his ancient childhood to life with his lilting Nordic accent. Picture a well-built, paperback-romance Viking in jeans and a faded corduroy blazer. He tied his wheat-colored hair back with a strip of leather he claimed he’d been carrying since the seventh century.
I was an innocent teenager out in the world on her own for the first time and confident in my ability to make my own choices. Which, of course, translates to: I was a total idiot. I had fallen into the classic undergrad trap, plunging headlong into an ill-advised affair with a man who “understood” me as the “mature and independent woman” that I was at the ripe old age of nineteen. He assured me that it was the “bright inner light” of my soul that drew him to me and not the delicious rarity of my AB-negative blood.
Well, to be fair, he also liked the way I did his laundry.
I broke through the surface of the bathwater, sweeping my hands back over my wet hair and wiping my eyes. I leaned back against the rim of the tub and wished I’d brought vodka upstairs instead of tea.
By the end of sophomore year, I had been practically living in his off-campus apartment, providing his evening meals, folding his socks, and grading his tests. I was basically an unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box. When my parents found out that I was “consorting with the undead”—thanks to the ill-timed surprise visit to the dorm room I was barely living in—they cut me off. Completely. They just couldn’t risk someone from the club or church or my dad’s business circle finding out that their child was tainted by association with vampires. For all intents and purposes, I was no longer their daughter. No tuition. No mention in the annual family newsletter.
So I was an uneducated, unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box.
My parents couldn’t have made it easier for Mathias to take advantage of me if they’d written him a manual. Without their support—financial and emotional—I was so vulnerable that I was open to anything he suggested. I officially moved in with him—without any other faculty knowing, of course. He didn’t want anyone to “misunderstand” what was happening between him and his former student. And I went willingly because I was just so grateful to have someone who I believed loved me for me.
What followed was six months of subtle, carefully designed put-downs detailing my many failures. Oh, sure, I found wildly inappropriate e-mails from his undergrad students that he’d printed out and left on his desk. But I forgot to pick up his dry cleaning that time. Did I have any idea how that made him feel? Knowing that I didn’t care enough to retrieve his precious pleated slacks? I didn’t keep the apartment clean enough. I didn’t read the right books or listen to the right music. I didn’t eat the iron-rich (disgusting) foods that made my blood tasty for him. He couldn’t take me to faculty gatherings because my conversational skills—or lack thereof—embarrassed him.
With each new criticism, I twisted myself into knots trying to improve myself, to mold myself into the sort of girlfriend who would make Mathias proud. But he kept raising the bar. I spent too much time around my silly human friends, he said, so I withdrew from those circles and spent more time at the apartment with Mathias. My food expenses were too much for his budget, and besides, I was getting a little too “hippy,” anyway, so I limited myself to the blood-enriching diet Mathias recommended.
He kept finding faults until I’d changed so much I barely recognized myself. And then Mathias found fresher, younger sources, and suddenly I wasn’t needed anymore.
By the time I found my stuff neatly packed into boxes outside of what was no longer my apartment, I was a hollowed-out husk of a person. He’d taken everything from me—my blood, my love, my time. I had given him what I believed was most precious, and he had thrown it away like it was nothing.
Also, I had no savings, no job, no housing, no car, no credit. I tried to think of it as a blank canvas upon which to paint my brand-new life, but mostly, I was just broke and homeless.
I couldn’t go home to my parents. Over the previous years, I’d tried to reach out to them. I’d sent Christmas letters and cards for their birthdays, which they’d sent back marked “Return to Sender.” Eventually, I gave up and skipped my usual Father’s Day card. They took this opportunity to contact me and tell me how disappointed they were that I was no longer groveling as expected. That was the last I’d heard from them.
I crashed on the couch of the last human friend I had, or rather, a former roommate of that last human friend I had. Terri stopped talking to me after I canceled a third brunch date with her. (I’d overslept.) But Julie was super-nice and willing to accept dog walking in exchange for short-term rent. I went online, pouring my heart out in a support group chat room for women who’d survived abusive relationships with men, both undead and living.
I was reminded by several of the chat room members that I shouldn’t close myself off from the world of vampires. Mathias Northon was not a dick because he was a vampire. He was just a dick. They referred me to a counselor and suggested a number of ways I might be able to support myself using my familiarity with vampire culture, such as providing my services as a blood surrogate. It turned out to be a career choice that fulfilled me and healed a little bit of the pain I associated with the undead. I followed my clients on their migration to the Hollow. And my online friends may have exacted some revenge on Mathias that I never spoke of publicly, in order to prevent my being called as a witness for the prosecution. I was happy and settled, but if you guessed that this story ends with “And she never relationship-ed again,” you’d be correct.