Frederick seemed genuinely surprised by my comment. “Do I know how to dress well?”
I huffed a laugh. If I didn’t know better, I’d have accused him of false modesty. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a light blue button-down over which he’d pulled a deep burgundy sweater—none of which we’d purchased at the mall the previous week.
Even if I hadn’t kissed him the other night—for science and comparison purposes, of course—it would have been all I could do to keep my hands off him. I was almost afraid to take him to Sam’s party looking like this. I didn’t know Sam’s or Scott’s friends well enough to know how they might respond to Frederick walking into this party like the world’s most oblivious sex on a stick.
“You do know how to dress well,” I confirmed. “You look like you just walked out of a J. Crew photo shoot.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “What is a J. Crew photo shoot?”
I waved my hands. “You know what I mean. How could you possibly not know exactly what you’re doing, dressing like that?”
He paused, considering my question.
“Maybe when a person turns into a vampire, they acquire an encyclopedic and instantly updated understanding of how best to dress for purposes of blending into modern society and attracting victims.” He gestured to himself, giving me a broad, dazzling smile. His eyes twinkled with amusement. “What you see before you is the result of millennia of vampiric genetic evolution, Cassie. Nothing more.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him and folded my arms across my chest. “Spare me,” I said, though I was on the verge of laughing. “There is no such thing as vampire osmosis or I wouldn’t be here. And we didn’t buy you those clothes at the mall.”
He gave me another smile, more bashful this time. “Fine, fine. You’ve got me.” He pointed at the television. “I’ve been watching subtitled Korean dramas on Netflix.”
A pause. “Korean dramas?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Did you know that about a decade ago, South Korea’s government began investing massive sums in its entertainment industry? It’s an entertainment powerhouse now. It has made a science of dressing its actors and actresses attractively. Between our trip to the mall and Crash Landing on You, I’ve learned an incredible amount.”
I hadn’t seen any Korean television before. But if Frederick had learned how to dress by watching it, I wasn’t about to complain.
“Crash Landing on You?” I asked. “Is it good?”
“If vampires were capable of producing tears I would have cried my eyes out.” Then he glanced at his new wristwatch—something else we definitely didn’t buy together. He’d gotten alarmingly good at online shopping—especially for someone who’d originally been so dead set against connecting to the internet. “It’s time for us to leave for your friend’s party. Shall we go?”
I nodded and grabbed my purse, trying hard to tamp down the irrational wave of possessiveness that suddenly came over me at the idea of sharing Frederick for an evening with Sam and his friends.
“Oh, before I forget—I want to reassure you that I have given some thought to possible conversation topics for this evening.”
“Oh?” This was good news. I’d hoped tonight would be an opportunity for him to practice interacting with people in a relaxed setting. If he’d thought things through a bit, so much the better.
“Yes. I spent four hours on the internet after you went to sleep last night, researching topics of most interest to people between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. I noted my findings on a scrap of paper.” He patted the front pocket of his jeans nodding proudly. “I am bringing the list with me in case there is time on the train for me to study before we arrive.”
My stomach sank. I’d wanted him to have enough familiarity with current events that he would be able to vaguely follow conversation. Maybe even make a casual reference to current music, or skyrocketing rents in the city, or the slow, inexorable decline of capitalistic society. If one of those topics happened to come up, of course.
But it sounded like he’d sat up all night on Wikipedia. That hadn’t been my intent at all.
“You didn’t actually need to memorize anything,” I said. “Or really study anything at all.”
His smile slipped. “Oh.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said quickly, hoping I sounded more certain of that than I felt. In truth, I was suddenly very concerned Frederick was about to become an in-the-flesh embodiment of the How do you do, fellow kids? meme. “Always better to be overprepared than underprepared, right?”
He straightened a little at that. “True.”
Worst-case scenario, I told myself as we made our way down the stairs, Sam and Scott would just become further convinced I was living with a weirdo.
* * *
It was immediately obvious that I was not the only one who thought Frederick looked good that night.
Or, at least, it was immediately obvious to me. Frederick, on the other hand, seemed completely unaware of the effect he had on the people we passed on the street. His eyes seemed to be everywhere all at once as we walked through the frigid late-autumn evening towards the El, studying our surroundings like he expected to be quizzed on everything later—but the appreciative once-overs and open-mouthed stares he earned from passersby went right over his head.
“Is this how you get to work every day?” His voice was full of wonder as we descended into the underground El station. Frederick seemed to be the only person not bundled up like a shapeless potato against the cold. It hadn’t occurred to me before now that he didn’t get cold the way humans did, though in hindsight it probably should have. Either way, the lack of extensive bundling up only enhanced his attractiveness. A group of young women making their way up the stairs stopped mid-conversation and turned to watch him as he and I approached the ticket vestibule.
“Sometimes I take the El to the library, yeah,” I said, clenching my jaw a little and fighting against a wave of irrational jealousy. Everyone was right to think Frederick was hot, of course. I had no business being jealous. I had no claim on him. “Other times I take the bus.”
When we got to the crowded platform, Frederick stared anxiously up at the sign flashing the names and wait times of the different trains that were due to come through the station.
“You really haven’t taken the El before? Or a bus?” I knew he hadn’t, but I still couldn’t fathom someone living in Chicago for any length of time without at least occasionally taking public transportation.
“Never.” His eyes widened when the flashing 4 minutes by the name of the northbound Red Line train changed to 3 minutes. “I haven’t been on any kind of train in over one hundred years and . . . well. It worked differently back then.”