Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

stay for dessert at least?” Connor asked her. As soon as he spoke, he could see that he shouldn’t have spoken.

“Why the fuck are you all insisting on this?” Miranda asked. She turned an accusing glare on Karen and Doug. “I don’t need you two trying to pair me off with an old college boyfriend like I’m some sort of charity case. Jesus!” She pushed her chair aside and called Delilah from where she had camped out in front of the fireplace.

“Miri!” Karen said, scrambling from her chair, but Miranda was already through the door. Karen threw her napkin on her plate as she dropped back into her chair.

“Well, that’s great,” she huffed. “I don’t know why she has to be such a drama queen.”

Connor slumped forward, elbows on the table. “Thanks for trying, guys.”

Doug looked at Connor, his blue eyes serious.

“She just doesn’t know how to do this, and her luck has been, well… She gets angry so she doesn’t have to feel the things that scare her. If you’re serious about her, you’re going to have to force the conversation or it’ll never happen.”

Connor realized Doug was right. He sprang from his chair and dashed from the house. Miranda was already at the far end of the block and across the street. She had just shut the back door of the Range Rover behind Delilah when he called out.

“Miranda, wait!”

She frowned at him as he ran down the block.

“Are you deaf, Connor?” she said as he approached.

“We need to talk.”

“Connor, I really need to get home, so if you don’t mind—”

He interrupted before she could finish the brush-off. “I do mind. Maybe you don’t need to talk to me, but I need to talk to you. Not tomorrow, not next week, now. Will it kill you to hear me out?”

Frustration flashed across her face. “I told Father Walter I could work with you and I meant it, but I never said—”

“Ten minutes, Miri. Give me ten minutes and if you don’t want to listen anymore, I’ll drop it. I promise.”

He could see her fighting with herself. Miranda had never been one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but Connor was only now beginning to realize just how much living through the ZA had changed her. The Miranda he remembered had been understated, but she had been open, the kind of person who felt things deeply, even if she did not share that side of herself with everyone. Apart from the day he had given her the CD, the woman in front of him was tied down tighter than a drum.

She cocked her head like she was having an internal debate. “Okay,” she said. “You want to talk, fine. Have at it.”

Connor looked around, uneasy. “The curb outside the Jesuit Residence isn’t really what I had in mind.”

She almost looked like she was going to leave before she said, “Fine.”

She opened the Rover door to let Delilah out, then flicked her head in the direction of the garden behind O’Connor Hall and started off without waiting for a reply. Connor caught up with just a bit of effort. They crossed the garden, turning right when they reached the sidewalk. The perimeter wall on Lafayette Street was ahead of them, just past the buildings nearby. That left Nobili Hall or somewhere off campus. Then she turned left; Nobili it was.

Nobili Hall had once been the Jesuit Residence, before it became too big for their dwindling numbers. The new Jesuit Residence was nicer, in Connor’s opinion. It wasn’t that Nobili was an ugly building but he’d only ever been on the first floor, which was dark and gloomy. He wasn’t sure how it was possible for the interior of a graceful, enormous building to feel small and oppressive, but somehow the first floor of Nobili Hall did.

Nobili was similar to other buildings on campus but had one feature most did not: a tower. It jutted out from the rest of the building, adorned with bas relief moldings and a statue of a saint above the portico over the main entrance, before soaring high above the third story. The tower’s four-sided roof ended in a belfry-like point with a greening, oxidized bronze adornment at the top. Each side of the tower had three Palladian arches punctuated with thick square stucco columns strung together with ornate wrought iron rails, substantial and airy all at once.

Miranda paused and stooped toward her dog.

“Stay here, Delilah,” she said.

Delilah did not look happy about being left behind but settled in next to the door.

Miranda slid her Access card and waited for the green light on the reader before pulling on one of the huge wooden doors. They were the kind of doors that belonged in a castle or chateau, with inset panels and virtually indestructible metal rivets. They were nicked and scorched in places but had clearly kept the undead at bay.

Miranda headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time, never once turning back or saying a word. When they reached the third floor, she kept on going, down the hall to a metal fire door marked Authorized Personnel Only. She pushed on the bar as the card reader turned green and held it for him, then started up yet another half flight of stairs that was more like a fire escape ladder. Connor realized with a thrill that they were going to the tower.

The stairs ended at a heavy trapdoor, which gave way under Miranda’s firm shove. The lingering evening light filtered down around him as he climbed out after her, gripping the hand she offered.

She kicked the trapdoor shut once he was through and turned to him. “We shouldn’t be disturbed up here.”

It was even bigger up close than it looked from the ground. Connor looked up, half expecting to see a bell. He followed Miranda to the closest railing and leaned against it, taking in the view. He could see into downtown San Jose, the wall that surrounded it, and beyond to the foothills farther east.

With fewer people came less pollution. He had never seen the air this clear, even after a good rain. He almost thought he could see the edges of the bay to the northeast, but it had to be a trick of the eye and the evening light. For one used to a more rudimentary reality, the entire landscape felt like a burnished, golden paradise. They stood for a time, silent, looking at the landscape below.

“I had no idea how pretty it is up here,” he said.

Miranda leaned back against the railing and looked at him.

“You wanted to talk to me, Connor. So talk.”

Now that the moment was upon him, Connor did not know where to begin.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“I just don’t know where to start.”

“You can always start with sorry.”

He winced. Not because it wasn’t true but because he should not have needed prompting.

“I am sorry, Miranda. For the way I handled everything. I was young and stupid and didn’t know how to tell you. I don’t think I could have managed to make it worse if I’d tried.”

She laughed, but it was brittle and sharp. “That’s true… One day was, ‘I love you’ and the next, ‘I’ve decided to be a priest.’ No warning, no real explanation. I’d have been less surprised if you’d told me you were sleeping with Karen.”

“I was never sleeping with Karen,” he sputtered. “I know that’s not what you meant,” he added hastily at her pointed look. “I wasn’t lying about how I felt about you, Miri. But I kept feeling like I should… I don’t know, that God wanted more from me, had a different kind of plan for me. I’d thought about being a priest since I was a kid.”

Miranda looked around the tower like she could not believe where she found herself.

“I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation. Or why I’m so mad at you about something that happened years ago. It’s not like I’ve been pining for you all this time, and we both know how it worked out for you.”

He’d forgotten how skillful she was, using words as weapons. Even when she did not mean to be, Miranda could be sharp. She would make what she thought was an innocuous, offhand comment and be surprised to find its recipient bleeding on the floor. When she was trying, there was no pretense of fairness. You just got bloody.

He looked into her eyes, which smoldered like coals. He saw a challenge in them, to tell the truth. He took a deep breath. He had to look her in the eye, he knew, or he might as well not bother.

“It ended up being the wrong decision, but the first year was pretty great. I felt like I was in the right place, serving a purpose, doing good work. It was fulfilling. The next six months…I struggled. I talked to Father Walter a lot.”

“You did?”

“Walter was my thesis advisor, and later he was, well, a mentor.”

“He never said anything to me,” she said, her voice softening.

“The last time I tried talking to you, you said if you saw me again, you’d rip my face off and feed it to a dog. Walter’s too smart to get in the middle of that.”

She grimaced, somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe-almost-perhaps embarrassed. It was the first reaction he’d seen all night that was not rooted in annoyance or anger.

“I knew I told you something, but the details were always kind of fuzzy. I was pretty drunk.”

“It’s not like you were out of line. I deserved it.”

Her posture relaxed. “And after that?”

“I spent another six months trying to fit