He appeared at Conner’s house every day. Sometimes, he would give me a smile and nod on his way in or out and other times he would stay for dinner and chat with everyone. Then, after Conner and Donna would go to bed, he and I would hang out together, talking, playing cards, or even watching movies. After six days of this, I finally had to say something. He and I were sitting in the library, playing Scrabble and drinking wine. As he was wiping the floor with me at the word game, he told me stories about his life. If I hadn’t known how long he’d lived, I never would have believed half of them. Still, I supposed that almost a thousand years of existence would present a person with opportunities to make all kinds of hilarious and sometimes dangerous choices. As I giggled at a particularly funny story he told me about an eighteenth century bordello he visited ‘once or twice’, I noticed that he stared at me intently. Not just me, but my mouth in particular. My smile died and I took a nervous sip of my wine, but his eyes stayed glued to my lips.
