We had been driving around the city for twenty minutes with the heat turned all the way up. My woollen coat still clung to some of its moisture, but under it, I was burning up and starting to sweat. It would have been fine if I could’ve taken it off, but I was adamant about keeping my secret. I could sense that Cole had picked up on my discomfort, but he never said anything; he just turned the temperature down. The silence that had been lingering between us was filled with quiet music - at some point, he had turned on the radio.

Cole drove, going nowhere, and the road disappeared under the car’s bonnet for over an hour until we eventually stopped and pulled into a remote petrol station. I turned to watch him through the back window while he filled up from the pump. I felt guilty for wasting his fuel.

We had said almost nothing to each other since I had gotten into the car, but when he returned from paying at the kiosk and climbed back into the driver’s seat, he passed me a bottle of water. Unscrewing the cap off of his own, I watched him tip back his head and glug down half of the bottle’s contents.

I had no idea where we were, and it was dusk. I would have to ask him to take me home at some point or at least let him drop me off somewhere in my neighbourhood. I was about to when he broke the silence first.

“I guessed you’d be thirsty. Are you hungry?”

“Thank you for the water,” I muttered, having taken a drink. “But no, I'm not hungry.” I lied; in truth, I hadn’t bothered with breakfast or lunch that day, my tummy had grumbled a few times, but the music that was playing had drowned it out. “You should probably take me home now,” I said as I looked over to find he had turned about in his seat to stare at me. There was a long, tense silence.

“I know what you not calling me means, and I know you didn’t ask for my number because you didn’t want it. So, I just wanted to apologise for being overly forward. I’m sorry if it made you uncomfortable.”

“It’s taken me a while to be okay, with the reason I said yes to going back to your place with you, that's all,” I admitted, turning to face him.

“Hey, we all have urges to satisfy.” He shrugged.

“I regre-” I began, but he cut me off.

“Oh, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t admit that out loud, not to my face at least, Ana.” Cole turned back around in his seat and turned on the ignition. “It might hurt my pride.”

“I wasn’t going to say what you think...”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I was going to say I regret not giving you a chance and calling you, but…” I took a deep breath and decided it was time, to be honest. “I overheard the conversation you had with your other guest the morning after we uh-... Anyway, I guess it confused me. I know that your personal life is none of my business, but I think I was mostly annoyed that you had lied to me - your name isn’t actually Cole is it?” I glanced his way before I continued to excuse myself. “I know I don’t have any right to be angry; you weren’t obliged to tell me the truth, but if you didn’t want to tell me your name, then why give me your number?”

“Wow, this got complicated fast.” He stated as he pulled off, back onto the main road and in the city centre’s direction.

“See, this is exactly the reason why I usually don’t have a one-night-stands…” I mumbled as I rose the bottle to my lips to take another sip of my water. I stared out of the window to my left to avoid staring at him. “If I know anything about myself, it’s that I’m not very good at separating my feelings from my actions, and one-night affairs are supposed to just be about sex.”

“I agree with that, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you after.” He only glanced over at me to not take his focus off the road, but the look he had on his face conveyed something unspoken. We were zooming down a dual carriageway at speed. “And don’t act too shocked; it’s obvious I find you attractive otherwise, I wouldn’t have come on to you at all. The offer of further contact was down to the fact that you’ve stayed on my mind, which isn’t usual.”

“Alright, so what am I supposed to call you? I mean, if I do call you…”

“I wasn’t lying about my name.” He said plainly.

“But the woman you were talking with called you Nick.” I pushed. I realised I was prying at this point, but I just had to know. Somewhere inside me, I didn’t want him to be a liar, and I wanted to be able to trust him because maybe I liked him more than I was ready to admit.

“The woman was my ex-wife, Victoria, and when she married me, my name was Nicholas. Cole and Nick, they’re both nicknames.” His explanation was short and took me completely off guard.

“You’ve been married before?” I stared over at him wide-eyed and dumbfounded. I had taken it for granted that he was at least a little older than me, but he didn’t seem old enough to have been married. Suddenly I recalled he had a son too! He seemed to have already lived a whole life.

“Yeah, is that so hard to believe?” Cole glanced at me with one of his brows rose curiously. I felt guilty for my reaction. Maybe I had offended him.

“I didn’t mean to assume you aren’t the marrying kind, I just… How old are you?”

“Oh boy, we really aren’t on the same page.” Cole combed his fingers back through the slightly wavy, white locks on top of his head and sighed. “I’m... thirty-four.”

“What?!”

“In my defence, I didn’t think you were as young as you looked. I mean, you’re shocked because you’re a student. So you’re what, anywhere between nineteen and twenty-five?”

“How could I be anything other than a student?” Despite his explanation, he made less and less sense, and now I was more confused than I had been when I got into his car again. “I’m twenty-one.”

“Like, you’re actually just twenty-one?”

“Yeah… twenty-one-years old…” I clarified, but his repetition of the question was odd.

“Fuck.” He muttered under his breath. In resignation, he blew out a sigh that puffed out his cheeks as it left him.

“I know, right! You’re thirteen years older than me.” That was the last thing I said for a while. I was trying to wrap my head around the new situation we found ourselves in, and it was more complicated than I had thought. Not only was I still keeping a massive secret from him, but he was also almost a generation older than me.

My time with Cole was coming to an end, so I told him where to drop me off. Parked in front of my local corner shop, I climbed out of his car, but before he could pull away, I tapped on his driver’s side window. He obliged by putting the window down so that we could talk. “Cole, thank you for today. For wasting your time and petrol on me.” I looked to my left and right, ensuring that the coast was clear before I leant closer and almost through the open window. “About the age gap thing... I don’t actually mind.”

“I don’t know what to say…”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

Inside, I shed my coat and black funeral dress. Once I was alone and wallowed in my grief, tears came easily. With my stereo turned up and an open bottle of wine in my hand, I sat on the side of the bathtub and cried while the water ran.

All cried out; I climbed in and let the water wash away all my aches and pains. I knew I would always have a wound due to my parents' loss, but I also knew that I would be okay; it would just hurt for a while.

The bubbles were dissipating, but I didn’t feel like getting out yet; I hadn’t finished my bottle of wine. I topped up the water and turned my mind to something else. I mulled over my weird afternoon with the man I could now confidently call Cole. He had mentioned I shouldn’t feel guilty for using him to satisfy an urge, but that wasn’t what was bugging me.

I wish I had asked to go back to his place with him. I didn’t want to be alone. I had friends I could invite around, and they would’ve dropped everything to be there for me, but when I was around them, I had to be the Ana they knew and loved. Right now, I wasn’t feeling like her. I wasn’t even sure if she existed anymore; there had been so much change as of late.

Around Cole, I could be whatever version of myself I wanted because he didn’t know whether I was being true to myself or not. He was a stranger, so why would he care?

[Saturday 30 January 2010]

A lot had happened since school started back up in the new year. I proactively came up with a temporary solution for disguising my pointy ears until I could visit my uncle in Germany and have the concealment spell reactivated by someone skilled in elven magik. Seeing as I was at least half-elven, I had taken some time to seek advice from the estranged relatives I had on my father’s side of the family.

On their recommendations, I got in touch with a warlock called Lucan, who supplied me with a salve and an easy enchantment to glamour the pointed ends of my ears and give the illusion that my ears were ‘normal’, or mortal rather. I was still struggling to adjust to the vocabulary that came with no longer being mortal.

My cousin Elia had pulled me up numerous times for saying mortal things were normal, but in fact, something mortal had nothing to do with it being normal. It was easy to be racist when I lived as one race for so long when I was actually another. Elia had elected herself as my advisor. Having talked almost every day for a few weeks, I decided that I liked her a lot. She looked my age, but one of the things I learned about elves was that their looks could be deceiving. She was eighty-four! When I went silent in shock, she went on to explain that my father was not fifty-four when he died at all but nearing his 200th birthday.

Adjusting to my new identity was proving to be a minefield, but it was a less significant change that was causing the most frustration. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Cole for over a month. He had been actively avoiding me, and when I gave up trying to bump into him at the Omen, I tried calling his mobile to find that the number was no longer in service. I got the message loud and clear; ‘stay away from me’. I couldn't fathom why he felt that way though when I had told him that the age gap didn’t faze me. I couldn’t figure out his issue, didn’t older men like younger women?

Saturday night coincided with Lindsay’s twenty-first birthday, and she had decided that she wanted to go to the Omen and go wild after her birthday party. Promising that there would be no hook-ups and that she would remain faithful to us girls, we all hit the dancefloor. The liquor was flowing, and Lindsay was blowing the money her dad had given her towards next terms textbooks on booze.

With my fill of liquid courage topped up by the last round of drinks, I made my way over the dance floor to lean on the bar to glare at Cole while he worked. After twenty minutes, although it seemed a lot longer, he caved and walked the length of the bar to serve me specifically. He didn’t ask what I wanted and made me a drink without shifting his dark eyes from mine; when he finally slid the glass over to me, he made his request.

“Will you stop staring at me now?”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

“Because being involved with you is a lot more complicated than I first thought. You should forget about me.”

“What about you? Are you going to forget about me? Am I not on your mind anymore?”

“That’s my problem, not yours, Ana. Please, avoid me like before.”

“But I know you didn’t lie to me now. Why would I avoid you?”

“Because... I’ll always have secrets. Go back to your friends.” Cole nodded over to Lindsay, who had been watching me talk to him. “Enjoy the birthday party.” He had obviously noticed her ‘birthday girl’ sash.

Fine! If he wanted to play the Oh so mysterious guy I couldn't have act then I would definitely him alone. I didn't have the patience to deal with a man with that sort of ego anyway, I had way too much going off in my life. I had hoped that he might be my escape but it sounded like he wanted drama.

Turning from the bar I retreated back into the dancefloor, I didn’t want to end up too distracted from Lindsay’s birthday bash. I was a better friend than that. That was how I ended up holding back her blonde locks as she threw up in my bathroom at three am.

“I saw you were talking to that bartender tonight. He’s ridiculously hot, huh?” Lindsay mumbled as she keeled over sideways and away from the toilet. She wiped her vomit-stained lips on the back of her hand. Her eyeliner had run down her face; she looked like an emotionally damaged 1950’s housewife. It was dramatic; she could have been the pin-up for reckless youth. “I’m sorry you got turned down...” She pouted over at me before pulling her face into a smug sort of grin. “But if I’d known you were going to try it on with him, I could’ve told you not to bother. You know I’ll always look out for you, right?”

“I didn’t get turned down, Lindsay.”

“You can tell me. It’s okay. You looked so bummed when you came back to dance with us.” She reached over and patted my knee with a forced sympathetic expression. “You didn’t stand a chance with him, though, Ana.” I could not believe my ears. Before I could say anything, she continued, “He’s been eyeing me up for ages.” She had obviously noticed my confused and astounded expression because she carried on explaining. “Every time we’re at the Omen, he’s always looking over, and every time I catch his eye, he looks away; it's so cute.”

“How do you know he hasn’t been looking at me?” I asked, already disgusted with how conceited she was being, but I wanted to pump her. I wanted to know what she would say if she thought that I was up against her for Cole’s attention.

“Why would he be looking at you, babe?”

“Maybe he thinks I’m hot.”

“He looks like the type of guy that likes someone more… confident, don’t you think?”

“If you’re so sure he’s after you, why not try your luck next time we’re out?”

“Don’t be bitter, Ana. I just said I’m sorry you got turned down…”

“I didn’t get turned down!” My temper was getting the better of me, so I decided to leave her to fend for herself. “But could you be less of a bitch?”

I put what she had said down to the booze, but she had always been mean. She was half right, though; I had taken a chance on Cole, then stupidly teased him by playing hard to get only for him to loose interest. That’s why I cried into my pillow that night until I eventually fell to sleep. It was starting to feel like all I did when at home was cry.