Chapter 33: The Real Present

The car ride home was quiet, Jonathan sinking into his seat and silently thinking while being pleasantly tipsy. He was reflecting, suddenly, about being twenty-three.

It was a moment of realization and acceptance. He was, he concluded, an adult. He probably had been for a while now, but his birthday made him confront this in a more direct way. Jonathan was in the “real world” now, and it was completely different from what he’d expected. It was harder in some ways, easier in others.

It was a lot scarier, that was for sure. Jonathan glanced at Alphonse and thought of reaching through time to tell his fifteen-year-old self that he was being driven home from a birthday dinner by a vampire.

‘But Alphonse isn’t scary now,’ he thought. ‘He just… he didn’t want to hide who he was from me.’

The thought struck Jonathan as shockingly lonely. He watched the vampire, focused on the road, and pictured him throughout his immortal life, with no one by his side.

‘Until now,’ he thought.