“About me? So far all I know about you is that on occasion you turn into a bat, you like meat pies, and you’re into unicorn porn.”
I’ve literally never had anyone describe me so poorly in my life. “You’re an extremely perceptive person. All I know about you is that you think I’m going to just start snacking on you as we walk through the park.”
“A legit concern if I do say so myself.”
“So?” I ask, since I kind of feel like he’s avoiding the question.
“Well, my favorite color is lime green, favorite food is chocolate ice cream, and I have two men locked up in my basement. They like it though.”
“Do they?” I ask, which makes him laugh.
“You?”
“Oh… umm… different questions than I thought I’d have. Let’s see… I like red, I have to say that it’s a hard choice but blood is probably my favorite, and I don’t have anyone locked up in my basement because I don’t have one. They’re all in the attic.”
River nods like he approves. “Makes sense. Going down into the basement to feed them is always a little creepy, so I’m not a fan of it. But then you have the ghosts in the attic. Ooh, seesaw with me,” he says as he heads over to the children’s part of the playground and hops onto a seesaw.
He gives me a cocky look that weirdly makes me walk right over to the seesaw and get on. “I think this is made for children.”
“We’re all children at heart,” River says as I push off the ground. He’s a little under six feet, but he’s thin compared to me, so the seesaw isn’t too evenly balanced. He doesn’t seem to mind as he kicks his feet, searching for ground. “Quick. In all your years, what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“The strangest? Oh man… maybe myself on this seesaw. If my buddies from work saw me right now, they’d probably laugh at me for life.”
“They sound fun but they’re probably just jealous. Are they vampires too?”
“All but one. But his personality is enough to make up for it.”
“You’re kind of weird for a vampire,” he says as he kicks off.
“How so?”
“I feel like you’re not judging me for being human.”
Ahh… I see he’s met some Marcuses in his life. “I work with a vampire like that. He’s tough and gruff and so superior to every human… but also undeniably head over heels in love with one.”
River smiles as he lifts his straw to his lips. “Really?”
“Yep.”
“I love that. Okay… next question. If you had one day left to live, what would you do?” he asks and my mind flashes to Dorothy.
“Hmm… I guess I’d spend it with the people I love and care about. I’d make them take me to Disney.”
“That’s adorable and I love it,” he says.
“You?”
He purses his lips as he thinks about it while we continue to seesaw back and forth. “I’d spend the entire day with my family and tell them I’m sorry.”
The answer is surprisingly sentimental, especially for River.
When I don’t press, he catches my eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask what I’m sorry about?”
“Sounds kind of private,” I say.
He grins as he hops off the seesaw, leaving me to crash down but my legs catch me before I do. “Nah. It’s about the ice cream incident!”
“Sounds spooky.”
“It is. I love ice cream so much that any time I’d see a tub in the freezer, I’d just hide in the bathroom and chow down on it. They took to hiding the ice cream from me whenever they got it. Literally, they kept an old fish sticks box that they stuffed it inside. I was so confused why we always had fish sticks in the freezer but never ate them. I was… what you’d call a troubled kid.”
“Like in school?”
“No, just when it came to ice cream,” he says as he walks backwards away from me. “Your turn to pick our next event.”
I look around, and I can’t help but wonder again why I’m following this strange human around a children’s playground.
When I don’t immediately pick, River says, “We could swing? Not the sexy kind, but the playground kind.”
“Ah, thank you for clearing up that confusion for me,” I joke as he plops down on a swing.
“I’m just thoughtful like that. At least, I try to be.”
I sit down next to him and start swinging.
“Did they even have swing sets when you were a kid? Did you just play with rocks?” he asks, acting honestly curious.
“We actually didn’t even have rocks. They weren’t invented yet, so we had to make do with sticks and mud.”
He laughs as he swings harder. “I’m sorry. That sounds traumatic.”
“Did you get rocks to play with?” I ask like I’m jealous.
“Even better. I got pebbles.”
I grin as he kicks his feet, swinging up higher as I start to match his pace. But just as quickly, he puts his feet down, skidding to a halt and jumping off.
“You alright?” I ask.
“Yep… just feel a bit car sick… swing sick… motion sickness! There we go. That one,” he says as he hangs on to the chain of the swing. “Will I ruin this if I throw up my smoothie everywhere? How disgusted will you be? I’d be all like ‘Hey, dude, come check out my sexy blah’ all over, ya know?”
“It’d take more than that to drive me off,” I assure him. I’ve seen far worse at work and throughout my life. Things were much more… disgusting back then with the swords and the guns and all that. “Do you need something? Want some water?”
“No, it’s passing. I’m good,” River says as he sits down in the mulch. I get off the swing and walk over to him. “You sure you’re good?”
“Yes. It’s my family tradition to get so flustered by a hot man that I just wallow around in some mulch. Is it working?” he asks with a forced grin.
“Very much. If there weren’t children around who knows what I’d be doing.”
“I mean… you can’t even take your sunglasses off because of the sun so… I’m not sure what you’re even talking about.”
I grin at him as I realize he’s quite right. “Yeah, but the heat coming off this mulch is too much for me to handle.”
When I reach out to him, he ducks back, making me hesitate. Did he think I was going to do something bad to him? Maybe vampires make him nervous. Without missing a beat, he holds his hand out to me and I carefully pull him up to his feet. We take a lap around the park, just talking about nonsense as he makes me laugh and smile. And when we make it back to the playground, River turns to me. “I really should head home, but I had fun. Maybe I can actually buy you a drink sometime.”
“I could give you my number and maybe we can go somewhere else next time?” I ask.
There’s a brief moment of hesitation, like he’s thinking about it, before he smiles. “On one condition.”
“That I don’t eat you? I’m not sure I can promise that.”