Chapter 4: I'll Have a Blue Christmas

For Halloween we had all gone to a party, paired off in couples’ attire. Scoob and LaShell were a doctor and nurse; I was a Victoria’s Secret angel and Joe a Calvin Klein underwear model. College is really one of the only times to get away with wearing underwear out in public, to a party, cheeky underwear rimmed with lace and a matching corset, along with angel wings, dark eye makeup and glitter. Joe wore only black boxer briefs and when the pictures were developed we appeared more of a couple than usual, our model poses and smiling faces enough to convince even me that we were together. We would hold hands, flirt casually, and go home together, but that’s where it always ended, skin touching skin in my twin bed that never ended in anything but sleep. I knew too that I should end things with Adam Wadsworth, but I was scared of what that would mean, of the changes that would cause to slip into place. Looking back I don’t know how I was possibly afraid of change, of taking a chance on something new, when I’d already made the three thousand mile trek down to Texas. But it seemed to me that I could never really be with someone my mom would never meet, and so in my mind that meant being with Adam Wadsworth forever.
~
I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving. Instead, I planned to spend it alone with a full turkey dinner from Whole Foods, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade on TV. But on the morning of, I was talked into driving to spend it with Joe’s family, an hour or so away.
“What are you doing?” Joe’s voice was anxious on the phone.
“Sitting in my pajamas, about to take a shower, happy Thanksgiving!” I said, in my best attempt at cheery.
“Come here, spend it with me, please,” his voice was sincere and though I thought I couldn’t be convinced, he convinced me.
I put on a burgundy and black dress, that was too warm for the Texas November, but looked right for the fall and meeting the family, and I got in my Avalon and drove to get flowers, and then onto I-35 north. I was a little nervous I’ll admit, my hands clamming up on the stirring wheel and the open road not offering many distractions as I traveled that day to spend Thanksgiving with a family other than my own. It was weird in a way too, because I wasn’t the girlfriend, I was only the friend, and I couldn’t help but think of it that way, about what this meant in the grand scheme of me and Joe.
“We’re so glad you could come,” his dad greeted me with open arms, Texas warmth, that southern hospitality I was still getting used to my first semester down south.
“Thank you for having me,” I smiled and handed him the flowers, a fall bouquet with a little plastic turkey sticking out, the only ones they had at the only open store I had found in San Antonio. I was introduced to many family members before I found Joe, sitting in the backyard, eating a piece of chocolate pecan pie, and smiling big when he saw me.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Arshley,” he said, hugging me hard, and scooting me toward the kitchen to get a plate of food and to meet his sisters; Natalie and Elizabeth, and to meet his grandma, a very old woman who was sweet and senile and for some reason who kept thinking I was Natalie Portman off of her current issue of Vogue.
When I left that day the sun was setting and I waved goodbye to Joe’s family as the sky turned orangey-pink in my rear view mirror. It was my first holiday without her, but I didn’t think of it all day that day, instead I enjoyed the turkey and the stuffing and the company, and I relished in the fact that Joe and my relationship was platonic, because that meant I could hold onto it forever; romantic love would likely end when college did, but he and I would not.
~
Adam Wadsworth awaited my arrival at SeaTac airport as I de-boarded the plane that December, coming from Manteca where I had just spent my first momless Christmas with only my brother Adam and my dad. My eyes searched frantically for his in the crowd that evening, my hair askew from sleeping on the plane and my black stretch pants covered in lint from the navy blue blanket that Southwest airlines had provided me with. Then I saw him, and he looked the same, I mean he looked different but he hadn’t changed. He saw me a moment later and he walked to me, kissing my forehead while I clung to him like a child attached momentarily to their parents’ leg, desperate and secure.
“You get prettier every time I see you,” he said, his blue eyes smiling into mine and we stood hand-in-hand, awaiting the arrival of my baggage from the carousel.
“Christmas was hard,” I said, eyes red and traveled as he held onto me tighter. And it wasn’t that I loved him then, looking back, but rather that he was familiar to me, that I knew he loved me, and so I allowed the emotion to run freely from my body, permitting his comfort to spread over me like the feeling of home on a Sunday afternoon. He was quiet and strong and when my luggage came we got into his green Honda civic and made our way down I-5 south, toward my brother Ryan’s house. There wasn’t much to say on the drive home, even though we had been apart three months; we’d talked on the phone almost daily. He had clung to the relationship most likely out of boredom, while I had held on because it was the only real link left to back home. While I had been sleeping next to Joe nearly nightly, he had been missing me here, and I felt the guilt pains begin to twitch in my stomach as I thought about Joe while holding Adam’s hand.
“Let’s have dinner tomorrow and just hang out,” he said as he unloaded my luggage from the trunk and we wheeled it up to Ryan’s front porch. It was pitch black outside now and I could hear only the humming buzz of the street lights as we approached.
“Sounds good,” I said and then I kissed him hard on the mouth. And as I let go of his hand and eased back off his lips I found no security in the lack of love I felt for Adam Wadsworth; not so much from that moment or that single kiss but rather from who’s lips I wished upon mine right then. Adam was my comfort from home but Joe had become my new comfort, what was familiar now, what was untied from all the haunting I felt in the state of Washington, on this porch, in the air, suffocating me.
~
I dreaded letting go of Joe that day at the airport in Austin; boarding a plane I didn’t want to go on, facing a reality I wanted to be false. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said to me then, and with that as my only glimmer of security I let go of his broad shoulders and forced back tears, tears that crept up just imagining my next two weeks in California, the baking I would do alone, without my mom, the gifts I would buy for everyone except her, the wrapping and the decorating that would bring back memories of her with every stocking hung, with every piece of mistletoe placed. But that was the thing about me now, no matter how strong of fight the tears put up I would never let them win; they would never fall down my cheeks from my lashes, I would forever hold them inside thinking it would make me stronger. It wasn’t fair for me to cling to him so tightly, Joe, I know that now but then he was what I needed, what defined happiness, what made me feel attached when I was detached from everything else. And that was the last time we would be friends again, real friends, the end of that first semester marked a transition in my feelings for him that was either love or something like it.
~
I walked into Ryan’s house that night and hugged him tightly, Chase running up to hug me by the still lit up Christmas tree lined with packages clearly marked with my name on them. I picked him up and all my love for home came flowing back and I remembered how much I was missing down in Texas. He had grown so much, his brown hair longer now and his baby face losing all of its chubbiness and transforming into the structure of a little boy. He was talking a mile a minute and showing me Batman and Spiderman and everything else that he loved that I had missed when I left him back in August. On the refrigerator he showed me a picture he had made in school, of grandma and Magic and Contessa—my mom and our dog and cat that had all died a year apart of one another. I couldn’t believe he remembered them, his four and half year old little brain drew a picture of the time grandma saved him from a big wave at the beach they had gone to a year before, and he drew her now up in the clouds, looking down on him from heaven, she had angel wings and was next to our cat and dog, watching over us.
~
Ryan and Chase’s mom, Michelle had only been dating a short while when she got pregnant. Ryan was scared and not ready to have a baby but she wanted to have it. It was one of those stories, where it didn’t work out for the two of them, but out of it came this life changing event for all of us. It’s crazy how much you can love someone from the very beginning, that instant love you feel that runs through your body organically, and you have no idea where it came from or how it got there so quickly. I was there when Chase was born, on June 28th of 1999 and when I sat holding him as he slept I felt the change that happened, and I welcomed it openly, knowing I would do anything for that tiny baby that arrived one summer evening, a week and a half early, with the rise of the full moon.
Coming home now, I felt guilty for leaving him, I wanted to hold onto him forever, not miss a minute of his changing face and speech and life. I wanted to be here because she couldn’t, my mom, his grandma. She wouldn’t get to see him grow up, she wouldn’t be able to save him from anymore waves at the beach or teach him how to make chocolate chip cookies or meatloaf, or take him to Disneyland for his birthday. That night, when I laid in bed with him, reading him the book she had written in for him “Grandma’s promises,” that promised all the things they would do together as he got older, my stomach tightened and he looked up at me, already expecting it,
“Dad always cries in this book too Auntie Ashley,” he said, his huge hazel-brown eyes looking up at me and his tiny fingers resting on my hand.
“I just miss grandma buddy,” I said, pushing back his hair and kissing his forehead. Wondering how often Ryan cried, because he never talked about it with me.
“Me too,” he said, comforting me more than I was comforting him. And I waited for his breath to get soft and heavy with sleep before I left his blue racecar bed and eased his fingers off of my hand.
~
Adam Wadsworth and I had no real epic ending. We spent time together over the break and when I wouldn’t have sex with him one night, after a movie, I think that began the end of everything for us. I’m sure he was suspicious of Joe, as I told him the truth about our friendship, how we were open and honest with each other and that he spent many nights in my bed, but nothing ever happened. I don’t think he believed me, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have believed me either, because the whole thing is pretty hard to believe for anyone, especially an outsider looking in. Especially my boyfriend, who I’d never spent the night with. The weirdest part was, we didn’t share any words, I just allowed it to drift, to ease out, and to be uncomplicated. He was supposed to come to dinner on New Year’s Eve at my brother’s house, and when he didn’t show I called him and he said he was driving back to Portland, that he was sorry. And I never mourned the loss because it was not an epic one, it just seemed right as I couldn’t bear the thought of giving myself to him entirely, because there was barely half of me left, and I needed all of it for Texas.

Chapter 3: Lonestar

“Don’t drink the punch,” LaShell said, looking down at my cup in disapproval—I guess she too had heard the warnings.
It was everything I was expecting, that first college fraternity party. Full of polo-clad boys in various shapes and sizes and freshman girls all trying to flirt and fit in. I met my group outside on the patio, four soccer boys I made friends with those first few days of settling in and LaShell, who’s boyfriend Scooby was a soccer player too. I held a red plastic Solo cup of punch in my hand as I abandon the baseball team boys who’d given me a lift—making a false promise we would see each other later on—because loyalty is important to me, and I’ll always chose soccer over baseball. I wore a hot pink dress that night and the air was balmy, causing my hair to wave up loosely and stick to the back of my neck, no breeze to speak of made the closeness of bodies almost unbearable, and I got my first taste of the real Texas heat, overwhelming and intoxicating all at once, the taste on your lips always slightly salty.
“Oh, it’ll be fine,” I said, blowing her off, getting to know the soccer boys a little bit better and making conversation with strangers as I scanned the crowd for potential male bondage. Adam Wadsworth and I were still talking nightly, he was saying I love you and while I sometimes said it back, it was more routine than real, like it had been ever since that night in the swimming pool, when he said it to me and I declined to offer it back. As the Texas night wore on and the punch caught up I realized that Trinity was seriously lacking in the babe department. In fact, the only tens there were the soccer guys I was quickly becoming friends with and this was turning into another classic Ashley moment: when I realize I’ll have no one to date because I’m good friends with all the attractive guys. Shit, I thought, and I remember thinking it then, as I stared at all of the sloppy drunk coeds on the dance floor, practically undressing and grinding on anyone close to them. And next to me was Joe, who clearly had looked me over more than twice and so I grabbed him and took him on the dance floor for two songs, grinding my hips into his and feeling stares in my direction because let’s face it: Joe was a hot commodity from that first ‘let’s see if there’s any hot freshman’ party; his dirty blond hair, the sexy wavy kind, his chiseled jaw and golden skin, and his 6’2 build, that looked just about like the cover of Men’s Health magazine. I got in some sly moves and some body grazing before we all piled in the car and went to IHop for 3am pancakes. I don’t know if it was the feeling of being free or the atmosphere or the gin bucket shots that were poured into my mouth by a stranger with a turkey bester, but crammed up against him in the tiny back seat of Scooby’s two door red Lexus was where I first felt the urge to make out with Joe Houchins—and then I reminded myself I sort of had a half-boyfriend back home.
~
My dorm room was all set up, pictures framing my twin bed, my shiny new computer in its place on my built in wooden desk, and my mattress covered in the quilt my mom had made me when I was eleven. Each square a different pattern, all colors of a little girl—pinks and purples—a princess sort of feel. I brought it here and laid it on my bed, next to the newly bright colors of all the other comforters in my suite; bed sets from IKEA or Bed Bath and Beyond, mine seemed to pale in comparison, it’s pastels washing out my designated six feet of square footage, the only thing I brought that still smelled slightly of home.
The first week at Trinity was a blur: freshman orientation, placement exams, new faces; everything unfamiliar yet, somehow, unintimidating. I tried nearly every day to separate myself from my roommate LaShell, who seemed to tag along with me wherever we went: the cafeteria, the bathroom, Target. It was my first time sharing my room, my first time living with a girl (other than my mom), and thus far, I wasn’t reaping any benefits. LaShell and I were polar opposites beginning with our looks and ending with every single one of our interests. She was pre-med and I was an acting major, she was there to study, I was there to party. We fought like sisters but had no family or blood ties to make us love each other, and within that first week it was clear that my living situation would be less than ideal.
She brought sugar gliders, two of them, those little rodents that “fly” through the air by gliding with webbed appendages and that stunk up our shared closet in a mere matter of days. I was too nice to be openly annoyed, and too determined to mask the odor with my fresh scent Febreez that promised me a college dorm room that could smell sweet no matter what it was up against. But Febreez lost the battle over time and I prayed my clothes wouldn’t absorb the smell of rodent as I tried to meet new friends.
Tuesday was my first day of class, and I rolled out of bed at 10am, though I had woken up far before that to the sound of the toilet flushing when it was still dark outside. LaShell was already reading her thick Biology text book when my alarm went off, jarring me from false dreams.
“Morning!” She called over to me, though I had already told her not to greet me cheerily before my shower and coffee.
“Morning,” I grumbled back on my way to the shower, which was already occupied by my singing suitemate Janet—the oober Christian who wore jumpers and mom jeans, but was so sweet and endearing it was difficult not to love her.
After my turn in the shower I departed with wet hair, because in Texas only the crazies use blow dryers in August, and LaShell not only blew dry but also straightened. I shoveled down some Special K at the dining hall, reluctantly with 2% milk, because the small cartons of non-fat were already all gone, and I thought to myself, ‘this must be how it starts…the freshman 15…’.
I arrived at acting class in Ruth Taylor Theatre sweaty and still a little tired, looking around the room of peers that were all 5 or 6 minutes early, wide eyed and ready like me. The professor looked like a hippie, with a long flowing dress, bare feet, and an aura of ease. Her short hair and red framed glasses framed her kind blue eyes. She sat cross legged on the floor and invited us to remove our shoes and do the same. With one minute left before start time, in sauntered Joe, in a green polo shirt and khaki shorts, looking red cheeked and flustered.
“Hey,” I waved over to him and motioned for him to sit down beside me.
“Hey, I didn’t know you were in here,” he smiled, looking a little relieved to know someone.
I felt the opposite; acting class was the class that mattered to me, where I wanted to grow and explore, and the slight crush that I may or may not have felt seemed to go against my inhibitions I was priorly calling upon to help me succeed in there.
“How’s preseason going?” I asked him, but I wouldn’t get an answer because that’s when class began. We paired off for an icebreaker exercise and he and I ended up being in a silent staring pose for five minutes. Five minutes seems short until you are asked to silently stare at someone who is essentially a stranger who you find fairly attractive and you are asked to take each other in; every inch and angle. This can be intimidating, when standing across from a handsome soccer player, trying not to blush—my acting skills were faltering on day one.
“You were so uncomfortable,” Joe teased afterward, giving me the elbow. And I smiled shyly, my silence not offering a response. I shrugged my shoulders. After more icebreakers and yoga poses we were given scene assignments from Stacey—the hippie professor—and when my name was called out it was alongside Joe Houchins, who would be my scene partner, who I would spend many hours of my time within the next several weeks; rehearsing. We were then handed the scenes and as we read them to ourselves I gasped audibly when I arrived at the sex scene in the end. When he looked up, he was blushing.
Our final exercise that first day was to bring in a poem that meant something to us and read it aloud to the class. I brought in something I had written about my mom the year before; back in February when we knew that the cancer would kill her. I chose the poem because it meant something to me, and I thought nothing of it other than that it would be a short read for my first class presentation. I was third to read as we went around the circle:
“It wasn’t the day they said cancer.
It was the day after that.”
That was all that came out before the tears burst from a place I didn’t feel or see them waiting, a dark corner perhaps, hidden from me entirely. They came down so hard and fast, that I removed myself entirely from my body and sat there, watching myself cry in front of strangers, shaking my head at the mess that sat before me, unable to control it in the slightest. That’s when Joe took the paper from me, damp from my sweaty hands and finished reading it aloud,
“It wasn’t staying home from college,
It was helping her get dressed.
It wasn’t the day she started chemo,
It was the day her hair fell in chunks into my fingertips.
It wasn’t crying by myself,
It was watching my brother cry in bed next to her.
It wasn’t the hospital,
It was having to help her climb up the stairs at home.
It wasn’t when she fell,
It was seeing her use a walker.
It wasn’t the hospice bed in our living room,
It was watching her sleep in it.”
I was out of control, sobbing, now more from humiliation than anything else, and so I walked out and left class that very first day, and Joe followed close behind. I didn’t say anything for several minutes, maybe more, and when I looked back he was there, smiling patiently. I didn’t owe him anything, I knew that, but I offered it up anyway, because there was nothing but the truth waiting there now, everything else had come out already.
“She died,” I said, praying the tears wouldn’t work their way up the well again.
“In May, she died,” I looked at him and something seemed to click, like he understood everything from that poem, and he knew how to handle what I was saying now.
“You can talk to me,” he said, looking me in the eyes and then, unexpectedly, hugging me for how long I needed to be hugged. I realized then that I hadn’t hugged anyone in two weeks, since I hugged Ryan and Chase goodbye. My mom hugged me every day, and it’s so stupid, the small things like that that you remember later, when someone hugs you unexpectedly and you hold on too tight, trying to make up for the loss, trying to feel something that’s not meant to be felt again. Joe’s hug felt real, strong, safe, it felt like home three thousand miles from anything like it.
“Let’s go get something to eat,” he said, and he kept his arm around me the whole way to the Coates cafeteria, and it felt comforting, in a way that a family touch does, and we sat down and ate tuna sandwiches and talked about her—my mom. I hadn’t told anyone here about her, it was easier that way, and I didn’t know then if the black blob inside of me would release a little bit now, or continue to tighten and feed itself all these miles away, the guilt of leaving mixed with the pain of losing her that grew daily here, that bread from the sun and the new people and the fake life I was living without her.
~
Joe came over for rehearsal that Friday, sweaty from practice he sat on my bed and we practiced the kissy stuff first, to “get it out of the way.” He’d never acted before and when we started kissing and touching and he stuck his tongue in my mouth I didn’t stop him. I expected to feel something, or an inkling of something, but there was nothing, and I was relieved. Then we got down to business with the lines and the memorization and the acting that had nothing to do with the kissing. We worked well together, great chemistry and an easy flow for dialogue; I was a little excited about acting again.
When we finished I opened the door, to find LaShell and Scooby eavesdropping outside, and the four of us sat down on the carpeted floor and had a bowl of cereal and talked until it got too late for anyone to consider walking back to their dorm rooms, (even though they were only minutes away), and so we had our first sleepover, Joe and I at least, the two of us huddled in my twin bed, pretending not to spoon, while LaShell and Scoob openly spooned on her bed by the window. It all felt so comfortable that I eased into it without thinking about the fact that Joe and I were sleeping together, with nothing sexual in the mix, except the rehearsal make-out session that we both knew was business casual. He never mentioned that he had a sort of girlfriend back home, just as I never mentioned Adam Wadsworth, because if there was really nothing going on between us, what did it matter?
The sleeping thing became routine, so much in fact that it became expected, and on the few nights that Joe didn’t show up at my door in the evening or after class, I would find myself slightly sad and disappointed. We wasted hours together watching bad TV and making each other laugh—and somehow we became the talk of the tiny Trinity population, the “will they or won’t they” couple who ate breakfast together every morning and slept together every night but just wouldn’t fess up to being in love. The funny thing is; we weren’t, and regardless of the comments or the unusualness of the relationship, it was everything I needed at the time. Our acting scene went phenomenally well, and I had become a regular at all the soccer games, painted shirt, screaming voice, and a seat beside the players’ families in the bleachers. All of my activities became the four of us; Me, Joe, LaShell, and Scoob—the couple and the non-couple, and by the time the fall officially blew in I felt at home in the Lone Star state.
~
Fall in Texas doesn’t really count, because the weather stays similar and you still don’t need a jacket when it gets dark at night. The mosquitoes start to quiet down and the humidity doesn’t kill you upon contact, but nothing really marks a significant change to tell you it’s arrived. Back home you could smell fall coming in the air, right around my birthday, October 9th, my mom would smell the air outside and say that fall had officially arrived. It’s really the only season you can smell coming, the fall, but in Texas I felt cheated out of my favorite season, I couldn’t feel her there with me without the fall. So on my birthday I didn’t want to celebrate, because I was melancholy and estranged, and I went to bed at 10pm when I heard a light knock on my door that I thought was just the wind. When I ignored it, it got louder and so I went to the door and peeked out in my nightgown—a long T-shirt I had stolen from my brother.
“Happy Birthday to you…” Joe sang in his best singing voice and he hugged me hard and handed me a mixed CD.
“Thanks,” I said, and I slipped the CD into my player and laid down on my bed, not caring that I was in my underwear and a t-shirt, and him not seeming to either.
“I put a bunch of stuff on there I think you’ll really love. Damien Rice, Imogen Heap, and some other stuff,” he said, lying down beside me.
We listened in silence to Damien Rice’s “Delicate” and it reminded me of Joe even as he lay there, then, beside me in bed. That was the first time I wished for him to kiss me, but he didn’t, and instead he slept over just as he had done for a month and a half, but somehow tonight was different, even though fall hadn’t come, something else had happened in its place. I was 20 now, and I felt like I had earned the extra candle this year.

Unrequited Love: the vampire craze, and how it swept me off my feet

I’ll admit; no one was more skeptical than me. Sure, I’ve watched some “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and secretly enjoyed it, I loved watching Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt play vampires back in 1994, but I would never under any circumstance think of myself as a vampire-fanatic. This was of course before I bought a hardcover edition of Twilight at the airport back in 2008 when my plane was delayed and its black cover with the glossed red apple jumped out at me from its display in the window and said audibly: “buy me, read me, you know you want me.” Something about that apple—I had to have it. And so I tossed it up on the counter with my pack of cinnamon flavored gum—the first hardcover book I have ever purchased in my adult life. On my nearly seven hour cross country trip from Boston to San Francisco I read all 512 pages of Twilight, and it was love at chapter two.
I was embarrassed at first, my shame coming over me even on the plane as people noticed what I was reading and scoffed slightly; I too was openly put off by this whole new world of vampire fandom. That was until Edward swept me off my feet and took me off that plane and into the simple love story that all started in a sparkling meadow in Forks, Washington—only 100 miles from where I grew up. The next day I went to four stores to find all three of the other books, and I read each of them slowly, savoring each chapter, hiding in my room, loving every minute.
The vampire, much like many styles of clothing, seems to evolve and return every decade or so—new and improved, hotter than ever. Just like those neon pink eighties tights in the back of your lingerie drawer that are suddenly back on the mannequins in store windows. As much back in fashion is the new wave of vampire—Edward Cullen in the Twilight saga. Edward has replaced the last decade of decadent night prowlers like” Buffy’s” boy toy Angel and Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in “Interview with the Vampire.” What makes each new wave so interesting is how they are becoming more and more human.
It started with the scary movie, the bump in the night, the fang marks on her neck—all images that made our skin crawl and make known there was something to be feared. But now, we want to invite him in, Edward that is, he is the man we dream about, the love we hope to find. So he happens to feed off of blood and not come out in the sunlight; face it ladies, you could do worse! Women and girls everywhere have fallen fast for the lovely and handsome Edward Cullen, who protects young Bella and loves her unconditionally. He romances her with his old worldly charms and sweeps her off her feet with his mysterious ways. Edward Cullen is the most humane vampire we have seen thus far, who overcomes his thirst for human blood and settles for animal blood, he is the vegetarian of the vampire world, a true saint it seems.
But underneath the cool, human esque exterior, we seem to forget that he lives not in reality, but in the magical world of a four book series that has overwhelmed in popularity with the female crowd. It seems that since the vampire was introduced in America in 1819 as a scary monster to be terrified of and shunned he has now evolved and overcome that stigma to be Mr. Sexy, circa Twilight 2005. Edward Cullen, or the actor who portrays him: Rob Pattinson, have become common household names—exhausted to the point that even the general population of men are in on him, even if they don’t know him like I do. And is it really fair to compare mere mortal men to the immortal Edward Cullen?
It’s not so much the fantasy of Edward that attracted me, but rather the reality of his love for Bella. It’s romantic—a modern day Cinderella, with more blood and less singing animals but still, we want to believe it will happen to us. Vampires are the prince charming for adults, in a much less hokey sense with the acknowledgement that we may be bitten and bleed at any time. But isn’t that true in every relationship? We enter with the risk of getting hurt? We are all waiting to be carried away not on horseback, but rather in a five speed Audi, with Edward Cullen’s cold crisp hand cooling our warm one, while he stares over at us with his bedroom eyes.