Read You Suck: A Love Story for Free Online Page B

me and noobs,” Clint said. “Did you say that Tommy’s a vampire?”
    “Indeed. I saw him not two hours ago. As pale as death.”
    “Well, that’s not good.”
    “Your talent for stating the obvious is unprecedented, young man.”
    “Come in.” Clint stepped away from the door. “We are going to need to pray on this.”
    “Well, there’s a start,” said the Emperor.
    “Then I need to call Tommy and tell him to never mind about coming to work,” Clint said.
    “Splendid,” said the Emperor, without a hint of sarcasm. “I believe we’ve achieved a new level of doomed.”
    Y ou’ve always been good to me,” Jody said.
    “Well, I try,” Tommy said.
    He was going up the narrow stairway to their loft. She was slung over his shoulder, her forehead
    bounced off his belt with every step. She seemed so light. Tommy was still amazed at his newfound strength. He’d carried her ten blocks already and he wasn’t even feeling it. Well, he was a little tired of listening to her, but physically he wasn’t fatigued at all.
    “I can be such a bitch sometimes.”
    “That’s not true,” Tommy said. Yes, it was.
    “Yes it is, yes it is. Yes I am. I am a total bitch sometimes.”
    Tommy stopped at the top of the steps and dug in his pocket for his keys.
    “Well, maybe a little, but-”
    “So I am a bitch? You’re saying I’m a bitch?”
    “Oh my God, is the sun never going to come up?”
    “Listen, you’re lucky to have me, you wuss.”
    “Yes I am,” Tommy said.
    “You are?”
    He swung her over to her feet, then caught her before she went over backwards into the wall. She had a big goofy smile on her face. Sometime during the evening, blood had dripped down the front of her blouse and there was some smeared on her lip. She looked a little like she’d been punched out. Tommy tried to rub away the blood with his thumb. The cloud of alcohol breath she let go on him made him wince.
    “I love you, Tommy.” She fell into his arms.
    “Right back at you, Jody.”
    “I’m sorry I gave you noogies. I’m still learning to harness my powers, you know.”
    “That’s okay.”
    “And called you a wuss.”
    “No problem.”
    She licked the side of his neck, nipped at him. “Let’s make love before the sun comes up.”
    Tommy looked over her shoulder at the destruction they had wrought on the loft the last time they’d done it, and he said something he never thought he would hear coming out of his own mouth. “I think I’ve had enough for to night. Maybe we should just lock down.”
    “You think I’m fat, don’t you?”
    “No, you’re perfect.”
    “It’s because I’m fat.” She pushed him away and stumbled into the bedroom, then tripped and tumbled face-first into the shredded remains of their bed. “And old,” she added, although it was only through his acute vampire hearing that Tommy understood this, since she was speaking directly into the mattress.
    “Fat and old,” she said.
    “You’re going to get whiplash from those mood swings, Red,” Tommy said quietly as he climbed into bed with his clothes on.
    Then he lay there beside her thinking about all that they had to do, about how they were going to have to find a place and move without going out during the day, and beyond that, just exactly how were they going to survive and stay hidden? The Emperor could tell. Tommy could tell he could tell. And as much as he liked the Emperor, it wasn’t a good sign. And so even as he worried, and listened to his girlfriend yell at him, C. Thomas Flood became the first vampire in history to actually pray for the sun to come up.
    A few minutes later, his prayers were answered, and the two of them went out.
    S ince becoming a vampire, Jody had always hated the way consciousness came on at dusk like the streetlights coming on. There was no groggy twilight between sleep and wakefulness, just “bam, welcome to the night, here’s your to-do list.” Not to night. To night she got her twilight, her