by Hannah Haze
She has. It feels a little silly. She's never owned a stuffed toy before, it's always seemed a bit juvenile and, well, not very sophisticated. But he has a cute, endearing, squishy face.
Cora: Yes. But you mustn't be mean.
Noah: He's your bear. Name him exactly what you want.
Cora: His name is Confucius.
Noah: After the philosopher? You’re such a nerd.
Cora: It suits him.
The next day, she snips Confucius’s tag from his neck and slides it between the pages of her notebook, unsure why she doesn’t place it in the bin. She considers stuffing the panda in the bottom of her wardrobe, but she can’t bear to think of him all alone in the dark, and so she finds him a spot on the shelf above her desk where he can watch her work.
Chapter Eight
The phone rings six times before he picks up, six long stretches of bells ringing in her right ear followed by six excruciating pauses, her anxiety rising a little higher with every one. She chews her bottom lip and twists the middle button of her coat around and around.
Finally, there's a click at the other end and his gruff voice, a hint of surprise in his tone.
"You alright?" he says. There's the noise of traffic behind him and the chime of a bicycle bell.
"Yes." She screws shut her eyes. "I mean, not really."
"What's wrong?"
"I just had this massive row with one of my tutors."
"Isn't that what tutes are all about? Intellectual debate and—"
"No, a proper shouting match. I told her to fuck off. And now I feel — urgh." She throws back her head and watches her breath stream out in a wisp of white.
There's a pause. "And so you called me because, obviously, I'm frequently telling my tutors to fuck off." There's a trace of venom in his voice and she pulls away the phone from her ear and scowls at it as if in doing so he'll be able to see. Then she hangs up with a violent jab of her thumb.
He calls straight back. She contemplates not answering, but she needs to talk this out of her system and she wants to talk to him.
"Where are you?" he says, no apology in his voice.
"In the university parks by the big beech tree."
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Okay?"
"Okay."
She paces around the tree while she waits for him, trying to dispel the thundering cloud of anger brewing inside. It's late January and the park is empty. The tourists left months ago and the students are tucked up in libraries or labs studying. The soles of her trainers sink into the damp ground as she walks, and soon she's treading over her own prints, dizzy with her steps and her thoughts.
The trees are bare and they stand starkly against the pale sky. Unmoving. The stillness of the weather irritates her. It should be raging like her. Instead, it's mocking her with its calmness. She doesn't like the emotion of anger. It has always burned like a poison, one she'd like to vomit out. At times, after it's infected her body, left her shaking uncontrollably, she has. Anger is green bile in white toilet bowls.
Noah arrives pushing his bike quickly along the gravel pathway. His face is hard, concerned but wary, and his grip on the handlebars is white knuckled. The bike is expensive, of course, shiny new paintwork, and complicated looking gears and brakes. She hardly uses her own. She picked it up at a sale of abandoned cycles the university holds at the end of each year. The rear brake came unattached last week and now she has to drag her feet along the road when she wants to slow down.
He stops several paces away from her as if he's afraid to come closer. Jerking his chin at her, he asks, "What happened?"
"It's bullshit — all such bullshit," she snaps.
He studies her. "Your tutor?"
"She slammed my essay in front of everyone, tore it to shreds. But it wasn't bad, she just didn't agree with my point of view. And I lost my temper and I know she’s going to report me and then what? I can kiss goodbye to my scholarship."
"They’re not going to take your scholarship away for one little indiscretion, Cora."
She glares at him. "You haven’t read my scholarship agreement, Noah. You haven't seen the conditions and the rules — the expectations.
"I haven’t, but they can’t kick you out for that, especially when the tutor was being a dick."
She hears him, but she’s too fired up to acknowledge it. "They tell you, they always tell you, that you're free to explore ideas, share your opinions. But you're not. It has to be the right ideas and the right opinions."
He nods.
"I feel," she groans, throwing her hands out to her sides, "so trapped."
He nods again, and his right thumb slides over the sticker on his handlebars. He's listening hard, she can tell that there's an intensity about his body trained on her words.
She kicks at the trunk of the beech tree, crunching the nettles growing around the base. Above them, a crow screeches. "I've always felt so confined, you know. I came here to uni and at last I felt like I'd been let out of a cage, that finally I'd been freed. But I was an idiot. I'm still trapped, the cage is just bigger with different shaped bars."
He chuckles bitterly. "The entire world's a cage, especially for people like you and me." He scratches his nail along the outline of the sticker. "What was the essay about?" Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he pulls out a small hip flask and, flipping off the cap, passes it to her.
"Omega and Alpha rights and responsibilities."
"Let me guess: your tutor is a Beta."
She nods and takes a large gulp from the flask. The flavour is sickly sweet, and she smiles as she coughs.
"Peach schnapps? I wouldn't take you for a fruit liquor man!"
'I didn't think you'd like whiskey."
"Well, no, but rum or gin might have been better."
He grins. "I didn't think of that." He reaches for the flask and takes a swig himself. "Shit, that's awful," he says, making a face, then shoves the flask into his pocket and tugs up the zip. "Peaches remind me of you."
"Oh yeah?" she says. Her anger is fading. She thought she'd called him to scream and shout at him, someone to let go at. Instead, his presence is calming. "You gonna say something sexist about my arse?"
He laughs, a quiet, shy sort of noise. "No. You smell faintly of them."
"Do I?"
"Yes — I can just about smell peaches above the other nasty shit."
She smiles and looks away to the ground. He's wearing black trainers, and the bike rests against his muscular thigh.
"I don't think I could describe the way you smell. Complex, maybe."
"I'm not complex. I'm simple as fuck." They both know that's not true. "Do you want to walk down to the Bell Arms? Get a drink?"
She stares at him. His expression is neutral, as ever. It's impossible to tell if he's amused or put out or wanting her company. "Yes. I want to get smashed."
"Your little friend will come and have me arrested if she thinks I've got you drunk.'
Her anger flashes suddenly, like lightning.
"Why shouldn't I get pissed? With you?"
He doesn't say anything.
"I want... I want to do whatever I want. I want to be whoever I am." She pauses and swallows slowly. "I have all this frustration, all this anger inside. But I'm not allowed to express it. I'm not allowed to be those things: angry, frustrated. Not if I want to keep my scholarship. Not if I want people to like me."
He runs his hand through his hair, pushing away the long dark tresses from his face. "You're always angry with me."
"And you don't like me."
She holds his eyes and a heat rises inside her to meet the rage. He's so magnificent, standing there, solid and unflinching, as if he has hidden roots and can't be shaken.
"I do like you."
The pub is empty. Noah chains his bike to a lamppost outside and they sit by the fire and drink pints. They talk, and after that they're friends. They meet regularly for coffee or a drink, quiet places where they won't be seen. There's an unsp
oken understanding between them they don't want others to know about this friendship. They want to keep it private, so he never comes to her house and she never goes to his.
Chapter Nine
They're friends. He isn't sure exactly how that happened, but it makes him happy. He enjoys her company. Her presence is calming, soothing, like sinking into a warm bath and letting the water dissolve away all the grime that is your life. He forgets about his anxieties and his worries when he's with her. Time actually freezes, and everything is the here and the now only.
It's bliss.
It's bliss, except for the underlying invisible line that runs beneath this friendship. Like a blood vessel; you know it's there doing its job, pumping your blood, but you can't see it with your eyes. Sometimes you sense it. Sometimes so strongly it's all you can think of. But it's never visible.
And the line is his attraction for her. Her scent alone has him hardening if he lets himself focus in on it. He forces himself not to, concentrating on her words or the parts of her with no sexual connotation. He can't look at her waist because he'll imagine his hands coiled there. He can't look at her mouth because he'll think about tugging her bottom lip between his teeth. He can't look at her thigh because he'll slip into memories about the softness of her flesh beneath the hard denim of her jeans.
It's getting more difficult. Everything about her sexualised, erotic, evocative. The tip of her shoulder, the point of her elbow, the knuckle of her fingers. He'd like to lick, suck, taste them all. He wants to love every part of her. Fuck, even her arsehole — especially her arsehole.
This meeting is the fourth time since she'd called him and he'd gone to meet her below the beech tree.
She is there first. She always is. He can't bring himself to be on time. He doesn't want her to spot his eagerness.
She's curled up on a bench seat in the corner of the pub, her feet tucked up beneath her, leaning against the chair's arm and reading a book. She's engrossed, her eyes sweeping across the page as she chews on her left thumbnail.
He halts and takes a deep breath in. For a moment, he considers walking away. Just a silly, fleeting thought. He could no more leave than he could stop breathing.
Her eyes halt and he knows she's caught his scent. They are both frozen, and he resists the urge to sniff and try to deduce what she's feeling.
With his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, he stalks forward and she lowers her book and smiles up at him. A genuine smile, like she might actually be happy to see him.
"Hi," she says, and her voice is almost a sigh.
"Hi." He pulls out a chair and goes to sit, then remembers he needs a drink. "Can I get you anything?"
"Got one already, thanks." She points to her pint with her closed book, placing it on the dark varnished table.
It's an old man's pub. The patrons belong to the town and not the university. A couple of old boys sit on high stalls at the bar, propping up either end. One is talking to the barman as he unloads steaming glasses from a wire tray, the other has spread out his paper and studies the aggressive headlines.
Noah orders a pint of dark ale, sipping away the fine layer of creamy head as he waits for the barman to ring up the total. He taps his credit card against the contactless machine and returns to Cora.
She's so tiny, he thinks as he draws out a chair and sits opposite her. She's economical, there's no waste to her, nothing unnecessary. But she's not fragile. There's a power to her, twitching in her joints and in her muscles. He always gets the impression that at any moment she could spring into motion.
He shrugs off his jacket and takes another mouthful of drink. She smiles as she watches him, waiting for him to swallow.
"You okay then?" he asks.
"Yep."
"What you reading?"
"Just some trashy romance novel."
His mouth twitches, and he tries to cover it with his hand.
"What?" she says, smiling wider in that way that grounds him.
He can't help smirking. "You ... read romance novels?"
"Every woman reads romance novels."
"I had you marked as being into high end literature."
"Well, I like that too but sometimes I want something fun and, I don't know, happy."
"Shit." He shakes his head, returning her smile. "I'm genuinely surprised."
"You cold hearted Alphas can't enjoy a good romance?"
"Hey now," he says, his mouth twitching. "It's not what I'd choose to read or watch."
"I don't believe you've never seen a RomCom."
"Maybe, I don't remember."
She laughs at him. "You're so full of shit."
"I'm serious."
"What is your favourite film then?"
"The Departed."
She screws up her nose. "Is that that gangster film?"
"Yeah, it's brilliant."
"But really violent, right?"
"'Suppose." He pauses. "I really thought you'd be into that sort of thing too."
"Mindless violence?"
"No, psychological thrillers, political intrigues, social commentary — that stuff. Not fluff."
"I do like that. But sometimes you need a little sweetness with your sour."
He jerks his chin at her. "What's your favourite film?"
"Hmm. Probably When Harry met Sally. I watch it quite a bit."
"I've never seen it."
"You should." She picks at the skin around her little fingernail. "We could watch it together."
The muscle beneath his eye jerks. He tries very hard not to inhale deeply and get an understanding of her intent. He fails, his nostrils flaring as he draws her scent in. She watches, very still. But her emotions are a whirr of contradictions he can't understand. "You inviting me round for a movie night?" he finally says. "I can't see your flatmate approving." There's a trace of bitterness in his voice.
"Oh no, I meant online. Virtually."
"Right." He hopes the sudden dejection isn't visible on his face. Swiftly, he reaches and lifts his pint glass to take another swig. The door to the pub opens and a man balancing a box on his shoulders struggles in, a cold wind whipping in after him.
"What did you do to your hand?" she asks, pointing to the knuckles of his left hand. They are swollen with a criss cross of brown grazes.
He flips his hand over to examine the injury as if he didn't know it was there. "Ahh, nothing."
It had happened the night before. He'd been coming home from training, wrapped up in his tracksuit with a puffer coat zipped over the top, his kit bag over his shoulders. It had been an intense session and he'd pushed himself hard. Now his skin had the salty taste of sweat and stale odour. He wanted to get to the house and take a long shower.
It was nine o'clock but the street was still busy, cars slicing through greasy puddles and the pavements full with students returning from studying, or loaded with shopping bags. Some were out for the night, obvious from their lack of coats. Wednesday night was student night at the nightclub, a long line of cold and chattering people already wound down the pavement. He passed them, mindful of the eyes that examined him as he did, conscious of a mixture of desire, jealousy and aggression hanging in the air. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled, and he walked faster, sensing some threat invisible in the line. But it was too late. The threat, three large men, clearly wasted, further up the queue, had spotted him. They were bored and frustrated — he could read it in the way they stood, in the way their eyes raked the scene, looking for excitement, searching for a fight.
"Hey Alpha!" one shouted, a squat fair man, shorter than Noah but well built. Noah kept walking, wishing he'd plugged in his earphones. "I said hey you!" The man stepped out of the line, blocking Noah's path.
He tried to remember all the things they'd taught him over the years — don't make eye contact, focus on your breathing, tune in to your senses, walk away. He tried — aware of the brightly lit bus bumbling past them on the road, of the moist air cool on his skin, of the stink of
old urine permeating from the cracks in the concrete, of the whispering of anxious voices, of the taste of his own saliva on his tongue. But the smells of the threat and danger were already speaking to his Alpha — his blood pumping hot and violent through him — so he curled his hands and stared into the man's face.
"What?" he growled.
The other man planted his feet and drew up his forefinger, pointing it at Noah like a gun. "You got a problem, Alpha scum?"
Noah glared at him, his brow drawn down over his eyes. "No." He continued to walk forward. The man's friends joined him on the pavement, flanking him with sneers on their faces. One gripped a bottle half full with beer that sloshed on the floor as he moved.
He could make a swing for the first one suddenly, before he'd realised what was happening, stun him and then face the other two. He was bigger than them and his Alpha genetics gave him a strength they didn't possess. But it would be precarious. If that one with the bottle glassed him, he'd be out of the fight. His Alpha snarled and spat inside him, urging him on, desperate to sink his teeth into fresh violence. He shook his head.
The three men laughed at him, one gobbed at the ground between them, a fat frothing blob of drool.
Noah took another step forward, his whole body taut and straining with contained rage. The men flinched but held their ground, and the line of people around them drew back silently. He jutted his jaw at them with a disdainful smirk, then turned slowly, the line of people parting as he strode through. Behind him the men cat whistled and mocked him, but he kept his chin high and stepped off the pavement onto the road.
Halfway across the road he heard it, a whistling sound. Instinctively he ducked to the side as a bottle came zooming past his ear and smashed on the ground beside him, sticky liquid and shards of glass striking up into the air, smashing against his leg. He winced, then turned — his Alpha now in full control. Snarling, his tight fists almost painful, he pushed his way through the line.
"You fucking pricks!" he screamed. "Where the fuck are you?" But they'd gone. Disappeared. He scanned the line, forcing his way through. One girl whimpered and clung to her friend. Others began to scatter and he could hear whispers of Alpha and dangerous and crazy. It only added to his fury. "Come back, you dickheads!"
