by Molly Harper
I rolled my eyes and shoved the phone down in my backpack. “My family is trying to set me up with Donnie again, that werewolf boy from the other night. Both of our families have decided we’re perfect for each other.”
“I suppose telling them ‘no’ is out of the question?” he asked. When I gave him a scathing eye roll, he added, “I only mean, have you tried to definitively tell them that you’re not willing to cooperate with their schemes to set you up with a mate of their choosing?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to live with them and you don’t have any idea of what I could lose. Do you know what it’s like for a pack animal to be threatened with exile? Or what that would mean for my life?”
“Jolene did it,” he pointed out.
“Because Jolene had Zeb! She had someone who wanted to build a life with her. I don’t know what you want. You don’t know what you want. You say it’s me. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s domesticity and security. Maybe it’s running back to your shiftless musical nomad life. Maybe it’s a hot tub full of supermodels on some yacht in the Seychelles.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what you do with your spare time when I’m not around!” I cried, rising from the couch.
“No one goes to the Seychelles at this time of year. The weather—”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Oh, my god.”
“I thought that you liked that I didn’t put pressure on you! I was trying to respect your wishes! You don’t think I hear the fear in your voice? The uncertainty? Every single word out of your mouth rings with how little you think of my love and my place in your life. But I kept trying because I thought we’re growing! I thought if you had other things in your life, the idea of losing your pack wouldn’t be so frightening,” he said.
I shook my head at him. “You really think a lot of yourself. Like you’re just going to come along and change my whole life with a few dates and some sex? It doesn’t work like that. I need to work through it on my own.”
“Why do you care so much about what they think of you?” he demanded.
“That’s easy for you to ask,” I told him. “You didn’t care about what your family thought of you. You left them and you didn’t look back. And it was such a long time ago, I’ll be you’ve forgotten how hard that was.”
“I want you to be mine, out in the open. I don’t want to have to sneak around. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want you even pretending to belong to another man.”
“I don’t belong to anybody, buddy,” I said, grabbing my backpack. “Least of all, you.”
“Buddy?” he jumped up from the couch as I walked to the door. He took my arm carefully. “Please don’t leave like this, Ty. I don’t want you walking out there on your own. Not with Augustus out there somewhere.”
“Don’t start that again!” I cried. “I think we’re done here. I haven’t felt right about us for a while now. You’ve been weird ever since we found about Augustus.”
“You mean the night when you said you would much rather get injured than have your family find out about me?” he asked. “Is it really that important? Being their good agreeable girl? Are you willing to die for them?”
I shook my head. “I’ll have the UERT guys follow me home. I know you had them park out by the end of your driveway to monitor your house while I’m here. You’re constantly underestimating me. Don’t call me. I don’t want to talk to you in the near future. I hope that clears up your uncertainty.”
“Tylene, please!” he called after me while I stomped down the driveway.
I made it home to the compound in record time, even with stopping at the end of the road and spraying on perfume. The UERT guys had to drive at top speeds to keep up with me, flicking their headlights at me when I turned off the main road towards our land.
It was quiet, and my parents were in their usual seats. Mama was working her puzzle book and Daddy was in his recliner. Always the same.
Mama eyed me suspiciously as I walked into the living room. “Jolene and her husband make an early night of it?”
“Mmhmm,” I said.
“Did you eat?” she asked. “I made meatloaf.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, backing toward my room.
“Are you all right, Ty?” my father asked, his voice softer, worried. It was more concern than he had shown for me in a long time. “I’ve never known you to turn down your mama’s meatloaf. And your eyes look a little red.”
“Oh, sure, I’m fine,” I said, sniffing. “Just allergies.”
“All right. Your Uncle Hank needs you tomorrow at the butcher shop. And Donnie Ansen’s daddy just called to say he can’t go out this week, something about an intestinal fungus. Poor boy.”
So Donnie had followed through with his offer. And he’d given himself a pretend fungus to get out of it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I went to my bedroom and flopped down on my mattress. I’d lost something significant, something real. How had it gone so wrong, so quickly? No warning, just a huge explosion of wrong and suddenly it felt like everything was over. It was like a death.
I wasn’t wrong. I knew that. He was asking too much of me and he was holding himself apart from me. And I—I couldn’t even think. I was just too heartbroken. This was the drawback of missing that stupid teenage romance phase. I was completely unprepared for just how awful this felt.
To make it worse, I’d probably just lost the friends I’d made at Specialty Books. Jane and Dick might like me, but Alex was their kind, not mine. And Gabriel would follow Jane. Cal and Nik were Alex’s friends, and I wasn’t close enough to Gigi or Iris for them to cross their partners for me. They would choose him over me. It was instinct. With one stupid argument, I’d swept all of those friendships I’d built off of the map like a tidal wave.
In a way, I thought this might be better. I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want to watch them make polite, squirming conversation as they tried to gently shoo me away from the bookstore as quickly as possible. All of the places I’d carved out as mine, I would lose. Except for the library, as long as Mrs. Stubblefield didn’t have security video of me stripping down in the garden. I couldn’t imagine she’d let me back after that.
And it wasn’t just the personal that I’d lost. I’d just blown a hole in my business as well. All of the contracts I’d just signed? I doubted my new clients would honor them once I was the undead’s persona non grata. Dick would withdraw the apartment offer. It wasn’t official until he handed over the keys. I would be lucky if Jolene and Zeb didn’t drop me.
I couldn’t keep my parents happy and live the life I wanted. I couldn’t be a good werewolf and a good girlfriend. I’d spent too much time trying to play both sides of the card and it finally caught up with me.
I was right back where I started, without having moved at all.
I scrubbed my hand across my cheeks, my palm wet with tears I hadn’t even realized were there.
I sniffed and tried to tell myself to be brave about it. I would just have to find new places. The fact that I’d managed it was proof that I could. And maybe I could find a place of my own that I wouldn’t have to lie about, friends that I could have, while also holding on to parts of my own life. Maybe this would be better. I doubted it was possible, but maybe.
But I would really miss Dick’s coffee drinks.
10
“Sometimes, to hold an important relationship together, you will be asked to do things that uncomfortable. Whether you’re willing to do those things is a measure of whether you’re committed to the relationship. Either way, if those uncomfortable things are illegal, you should probably rethink the relationship.”
—A Gentleman in Any Era: An Ancient Vampire’s Guide to Modern Relationships
* * *
My next Friday night was spent staring at an eight-foot-tall carved wooden possum, holding a pepperoni pizza.
I didn’t have to lie this time. I was really babysitting Jolene’s kids. She and
Zeb wanted a nice quiet evening out, so I agreed to take the twins out for pizza. There was a place in Murphy called The Hungry Possum run by a possum shifter named Barnaby who didn’t ask questions when a party of three ordered five large meat lover’s pies.
We sat in the rustic wooden booth, munching on triple-cheese bread, talking about their weeks in school. Spending time with the kids was surprisingly relaxed. They didn’t have high expectations. They didn’t ask difficult, emotional questions. They just wanted to eat and complain about fourth grade math, and how unfair it was that they had to do math at all.
And toilet humor. There was a lot of toilet humor.
Jolene, however, looked at me like she was afraid I would fall apart any minute. She knew something was going on, but when she asked if everything was okay with Alex, I just shook my head and changed the subject to the twins’ dietary restrictions. She kept trying, telling me that Jane was worried about me and wanted me to call when I was ready, but I was sure it was just something to do with whether she should withdraw the UERT unit following me around town. It was hardly necessary anymore. I mostly stayed on the compound, trying to work. And dodging my aunts’ attempts at ambush makeovers.
I managed to get out of the conversation when Joe spilled grape juice down the back of his shirt and had to be mopped up.
“So, school is good. Math is bad. Recess is your only refuge in this cruel, cruel world,” I said, dropping a wad of grape-soaked napkins on the table. “What else is new?”
“We started music lessons again,” Joe said. “The school opened up.”
“Oh?” I said, carefully. “That’s great, sweetheart. I’m glad for you.
“Mr. Alex seems sad, though,” Janelyn said, staring at me. “He’s had us playing nothing but Samuel Barber all week. He only plays American composers when he’s depressed.”
“Well, that sucks,” I replied. Even though a tiny vicious part of me was glad to hear Alex was as dejected as I was. Even if I was alone, at least I wasn’t alone in my misery. “You guys want another order of cheese bread?”
“I’m gonna stick with the meat lover’s,” Joe said, grabbing his seventh slice of pizza.
“Probably wise,” I said, picking up another piece of cheese bread.
“You seem sad, too,” Janelyn noted.
I attempted a smile for her. “Do I?”
She nodded. “Yeah, and that’s not a real smile. It’s a scary thing adults do with their faces when they’re trying to convince children we’re too dumb to know a sad person we they see one.”
“Dang it, Janelyn,” I winced. “Could you be a little less observant, please?”
“Probably not,” Joe told me. “Just think of how annoying it is to live with her.”
“You have my sympathies,” I replied.
“So why are you sad?” Janelyn asked.
“Grown-up problems.”
She lifted a brow. “And now I’m too dumb to understand grown-up problems?”
“No, I’m too private a person to share them,” I retorted.
She shrugged. “I guess I’ll accept that.”
“Thank you.”
“Tylene?”
I glanced up to see Donnie standing next to our table, his arm around Mara’s waist.
“Hi, Donnie,” I said, smiling up at them. “How are you?”
Mara pulled me out of the booth and wrapped me in a bone-cracking hug. “We’re great. Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome?” I said, confused.
“I decided you were right,” Donnie told me. “That I wanted to be happy, and that meant being with Mara. So, I went home and told my family that I was in love with her.”
“We eloped!” Mara cried, showing me a tiny, earnest diamond sparkling on her finger, part of a wedding set.
“Wow, when you rebel, you guys go full out.” I laughed. “Congratulations. And how did your family respond?”
“Tossed me right off the compound,” he said, grinning. “I’m the family shame.”
“But no one has said anything to me,” I said. “My aunts still think we’re going to the movies next weekend. They said you had a fungus!”
“Yeah, my daddy hasn’t had the heart to tell anyone. They might send one of my cousins to the movie theatre and try to convince you that’s how I looked all along,” he said.
“Well, I’ll try to be nicer to him than I was to you,” I said.
“Oh, hell no,” Donnie objected. “You were nicer than I deserved. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Do me a favor and don’t tell your family that, okay?”
“We promise,” he said as Mara wrapped me in another rib-crusher of a hug.
“Have a good night,” I told them, as they left for their own booth.
As I sat down, I looked at the twins. “You didn’t see anything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Janelyn said.
“I’m not sure we saw you tonight,” Joe told me.
A few days later, I was back at the library, and everything felt so shabby after the charms of Jane’s shop. Mrs. Stubblefield was not pleased to see me and somehow, despite all being empty, none of the study carrels were open for me.
I checked my email, again, expecting to find some cancellations from Jane’s friends. But all I had was a note from Libby, saying she really liked the new Facebook business page I’d set up for her and a thank you from Meadow, who said her customers had mentioned how much more user-friendly her website was now.
What if I’d misjudged all of them? What if I could go back to the shop and work and see Dick and his magical coffee creations? I would feel like an idiot if I was suffering the pains of the library tables for no reason.
“Now, what’s making a pretty girl like you frown like that?”
I looked up, finding a vampire standing over me. It was the same guy who had tried to talk to me at Southern Eclectic, the one without a scent. He was a perfectly nice-looking guy, I supposed—light brown hair in a spiky, tousled style, deep brown eyes, almost cherubic lips that could have been seen as sensitive if they weren’t turned in a smirk. He still didn’t smell of anything…except rubber that was so new it reeked of chemicals. It was all I could do not to gag as I glanced under the table. Yep, brand new sneakers in a neon-colored European brand I didn’t recognize. Was he trying to impress me with new shoes or something? Did I seem like the kind of girl who would be impressed by that sort of thing? I hoped not.
My phone buzzed. I shoved it into my backpack, unwilling to even let him see who might be calling.
“Nice to see you again,” he said, giving me what I’m sure he thought was his most winning smile.
“Hello. I don’t want to be rude.” I paused to gesture towards my laptop. “But I’m working and don’t have time for company.”
“You’re working? At the library?” He flopped into the chair across from me.
“I didn’t invite you to sit down,” I noted.
He shrugged lazily. “It’s a public library.”
“The fact that you have to say that should tell you what a bad idea this is.”
He smirked at me, as if it was adorable that I thought I had the right to say who could be near me. I didn’t like the way this guy was looking at me. I wanted to put my laptop away, to make it as easy as possible to get up and get away, but I also didn’t want him to think he’d rattled me. Apex predators recognized a standoff when they saw one.
“So, I guess your date the other night didn’t go so well, huh?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“So, what’s your deal? Where are you from? Why do you spend so much time in the library? Was that guy the other night your boyfriend?”
“Why would I answer any of that?” I scoffed. “I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Greg.”
“Of course it is,” I sighed. My phone buzzed again, almost insistent.
I wondered if it was Mama, trying to get me to come home.
“What’s yours?”
“Not interested.”
“That’s an unusual name.”
“Not really. I come from a long line of Not Interested’s.”
“So, how about I take you out, sometime?” he asked, giving me that grin again.
“Not. Interested.”
“Why not?” he demanded, his tone getting whinier with each word. His jaw set in an irritated line as he stared at me. “You know, they say once you start dating vampires, everything else is just pointless. Usually, sayings rhyme, but not much rhymes with vampire.”
“Ew.” I frowned at him. The good news was that I hadn’t objectified Alex sexually because I was fascinated by his vampirism. This guy was a vampire and I was pretty repulsed by him. He seemed to think he was owed something, specifically owed something by me—for reasons I didn’t understand. And to my surprise, I couldn’t care less.
He was getting really upset with me, and the anxiety I usually felt in situations like this seemed non-existent. The annoyance that I felt burnt through it like the sun through fog. Was it because I had started to see the shop as home? Like I’d broken some sort of programming?
“Oh, come on. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“This?” I noted. “Spending time with someone who starts so many sentences with, ‘Oh, come on’ and doesn’t see anything wrong with that? Someone who won’t take a hint?”
“But I see you with vampires all the time,” he objected.
“Vampires that I know, that I like. That has nothing to do with you.”
“Just one drink,” he said. “What do you have to lose?”
“Nothing. I’m just not interested.”
I shoved my stuff into my backpack and walked out of the library. I could hear him following me and I was immediately annoyed. I didn’t want to go home and show him where I lived. But I didn’t want to walk around town, vulnerable, either. I was just as strong and just as fast as this guy, but he seemed to have a lot of skeezy on his side. You couldn’t underestimate skeezy.
