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“That still leaves you with two men to talk about.”

“Not if you compare one of them to steaks and milkshakes.”

“Look, last time you talked about Nathaniel it was to complain that you were so uncomfortable around him. You talked about Nathaniel the way I felt about Louie, then about the time I thought we had common complaints, you started to change. You started getting all soft when you talked about Nathaniel, too.”

“Did I?”

She nodded. “Yes, you did.”

“Everyone noticed Nathaniel and me, before I did, even Richard.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “I do not want to talk about Richard, other than to say I met his new girlfriend, Clair.”

“Jesus, when?”

I shook my head, because there was no way to tell the story without sharing more than Ronnie wanted to know about vampires. The very fact that she got angry when I talked about the vampires in my life made it almost impossible to share my life with her. How did I explain what had happened between Richard and me today without including the ardeur, Jean-Claude, Damian, and Damian’s old master? And if I did share it all, then she’d give me another lecture about how Jean-Claude was ruining my life, or had ulterior motives. I wouldn’t even be able to argue about the ulterior motives. Jean-Claude was what Jean-Claude was; I’d made peace with that a while back.

I finally said some of what I was thinking out loud. I’d learned lately that truth is really the only way for relationships to survive, let alone grow. I wanted to be friends with Ronnie again, really friends, if it was still possible. “Most of what happened today revolves around vampire stuff, Ronnie. If I can’t talk to you about vampires, then I can’t even begin to tell you what happened.”

“Jean-Claude fucking up your life some more.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think Jean-Claude could have planned some of this in his wildest imagination. Besides, he’s pissed that Damian got to me first.”

She frowned. “First, you mean he’s upset that you and Damian are lovers?”

“I’m not sure we’re lovers, so much as we had sex. I haven’t decided about the rest.”

“You’ve always treated intercourse like it’s a commitment, Anita. I never understood that. It’s just sex, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not so good, but it’s just sex, not a vow of honor.”

I shrugged. “We agreed to disagree on that topic a long time ago.”

“Yeah, we did. You’ve been monogamous as long as I’ve known you. One date and that’s it until you either don’t want to date him anymore, or you’ve decided that he didn’t deserve the one date he got. Until Jean-Claude came into your life, you were the most straitlaced person I knew. I mean I didn’t think I slept around until I had you to compare me to. You made everybody else seem like sluts to your nun.”

That sounded sort of bitter, too. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said.

“It never bothered me, in fact you probably saved me from some bad decisions. I’d think, okay, what would Anita say, and I’d wait a while and see if a guy was more than just cute.”

“Gee, I’ve never been the angel on someone’s shoulder before.”

She shrugged. “I’m not mad about your moral values as opposed to my moral values. I just don’t understand how I ended up headed for a life of monotonous monogomy, and you ended up with a harem. It just seems wrong.”

On that we could agree. “Wait a minute, monogomous maybe, but you told me Louie was the best sex you’d ever had.”

“No, the best sex I ever had was that guy . . .”

I finished the story for her, “With the really big tonker, who knew how to use it. He was gorgeous, blond curly hair, big blue eyes, shoulders . . .”

She laughed. “I take it I’ve told this story too often.”

“It was a one-night stand, and he vanished before you woke up the next day. You tried to find him, and he’d lied about who he was, so you couldn’t find him. No sex is good enough to overcome that.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never had a one-night stand in her life,” Ronnie said.

My turn to shrug. “Can’t say that I have.”

“If you’ve never had one, then you don’t know what you’ve been missing.”

I let it