"I couldn't tell," he replies with a sincerity that can only be teasing.

Kyle finishes filling the pot, turning off the sink and moving it back to the stove. He turns the burner beneath it on and then turns his attention to Alex and the mushrooms. She's doing well. Not exactly how he might do it, probably better. It's good. To avoid staring, he busies himself by grabbing the package of sausage from the fridge and dumping it into one of the two pans he pulled out.

"I used to. Have a lot of friends," he says after a beat, more serious than before. "It's hard when your priorities aren't the same. When what's important to you and what's important to them is different."

He thinks about his family dying. While his friends were picking out colleges, he was sliding a noose around his neck and wondering if he should step off the chair. Then the military, the vampires. Kyle half forgot what it was like to be normal before moving to London. Luckily he falls back into it without too much trouble.

"Or maybe you're just really bad at small talk."