by Lynn Red
“You should know,” Stacy said, grunting a laugh.
“Oh my God, you went? Thank all that’s holy!” Rush clapped his friend on the shoulder.
Stacy shook his head, smiling down at the bench. “I’ve never felt like this before, which I know is what everyone always says. But this one seems different.”
The great hippo brothers had managed to knock themselves unconscious with a mistimed headbutt exchange. “They’re gonna kill each other someday,” Stacy said offhandedly.
Rush, for his part, ran his hand through his black hair with the shock of white right in the front. “Well, either way, I won’t give you any shit about it. Any more than I have to if I want to keep my man card. But I’m happy for you. Really. You know how hard it is to keep up any kind of relationship on the road.”
“That’s the other thing.” His fist was taped up nice and thick. He wasn’t chancing any broken fingers or sprained wrists this time. “I keep thinking about settling down. Only problem is that I don’t know if I actually can. You know what I mean? I don’t know if I’m built to not be on the road all the time, living by the skin of my teeth and always going.”
Rush shrugged. “Could always take up gardening or something. Model trains? Get you one of those neat-o engineer’s hats and sit around making choo-choo noises?”
Stacy shot out a fist, grabbing his partner’s shirt, and snarling. “A what?”
Rush deftly flung a hand up, popping Stacy’s hand off his shirt and twisting it around behind the big bear’s back. He pushed a little harder until Stacy let out a grunt and started flailing. Before long, the two of them were on the floor rolling around and sending up clouds of cornstarch, hair gel and spandex.
“All right, you two, save the huggin’ for the mat,” plodding footsteps preceded a bit of heavy breathing. Paul Gagne’s regular lip-licking followed. He always did that. “Hippos are falling fat. Flat. Freudian Slot.”
“Slip?” Stacy offered. “I think you meant Freudian Slip.”
“Oh ho, listen to the college boy, huh?” Gagne was a crocodile with a lisp and a really bad comb-over. Stacy figured that he kept it like that more for the comedy than anything else, since Paul Gagne was dapper in many other ways. He always wore well-kept suits that were tailored to his peculiar crocodilian figure. “Well whatever floats your stones.”
“Boat.” Rush added helpfully.
Aside from the comb-over and the suits, Gagne was known all around the business as a malapropism artist that could easily put Archie Bunker to shame. It ended up becoming one of the many trademarks that helped him be who he was. After being together for so long, the three of them had fallen into a relationship that most employees don’t share with their bosses.
It came with the territory though. The Shifter Wrestling Federation wasn’t exactly a huge money maker, but it did well enough to keep filling gyms all around the country. Past that, the three of them had been together for going on twenty years. An eternity in the business, but for them it had just become the way things were.
“You two need to get out there and save this show.” Paul mopped his forehead with such gusto that his comb-over fell down across his forehead. “Those two morons couldn’t fight their way out of a paper safe.”
“Out of a…what?” Rush asked, squinting his eyes and turning his head to the side just slightly. “I don’t even know how to correct one.”
“The first step is shuttin’ yer damn trap, coyote,” Paul said before whistling through his front teeth.
“Jackal.”
“Whatever,” Paul chuckled. “Get out there and save this damn thing. I know you two were s’posed to go against the Hyena twins tonight, but how’s about you go out there, whip up on the hippos, and then we see what the crowd wants?”
“So, just like we always do?” Stacy smiled and cracked his knuckles. How stiff you want us to get with the hippos?” Meaning ‘how bad do you want them actually beaten up’?
“Oh, you know,” Paul said, considering. “Stiff enough to drive a nail through a glass house.”
Stacy and Rush just stared at each other for a second. “He put like four sayings together that time,” Stacy said as the two listened to their entry music and grinned. No matter how many times he heard the clashing guitars and the crowd roar, it never, ever got old. Not one bit.
“Let’s do this shit, brother,” Rush said. “Your girl all right with the life? That’s the hardest part, you know, is sellin’ ‘em on this whole damn thing we do.”
The two made their way out of the backstage area. They pushed through the curtain, into a sea of flashing cellphones and screaming fans. Just like always, a flutter of excitement coursed through Stacy’s guts, but this time, there was another thought in the back of his mind. It wasn’t just about the surge of the crowd and his drive to please them. It wasn’t just about him and his blood-brother kicking some ass and then going out for drinks. This time, there was some twist of insanity in the lizard part of his brain. Something told Stacy he had something else to think about now, and before he knew it, he wasn’t even in the world of tights, leather pants and turnbuckles anymore.
He was sitting in a rocking chair in White Lake, in front of a house he didn’t recognize but felt completely at home occupying. For just a fraction of a split second, the giant bear with the mass of black hair and the huge traps was an old man hunched over a checkerboard. And across from him? Garnet had a wrinkly old face, twinkles in her dark brown eyes, and that little half-smile that made his heart sing.
“Son of a bitch,” Rush grunted, snapping his partner back into reality. “You just got googly eyes, man. You got malaria or something?”
“Worse,” Stacy grunted. “I think I’m in love.”
6
“So what’s the story?” Lita was on the phone, demanding to know the scoop before Garnet herself knew anything.
“Morning Glory,” Garnet said, making a bad joke about Oasis. She smiled to herself but figured she’s the only one who got the joke. That was okay though. “Sorry, rock music joke. Anyway, I have no idea. I just got into Toledo about fifteen minutes ago and pulled into an Arby’s.”
“Gross.”
“Yeah, I’ll say. When I hear about a hot beef and cheddar sandwich, I don’t imagine pastrami bathed in Rico nacho cheese on a Hawaiian roll. Either way, it did the job. But I gotta say I don’t even know what the hell I’m looking for.”
Almost immediately, and to her infinite frustration, Garnet started thinking about twinkling blue eyes and a half-cocked grin. She shook her head to try and clear the thoughts, but it was no good. That damn bear was in her brain and there wasn’t any getting him out.
“Hellooo?” Lita drawled, “Earth to Garnet? Report in, Garnet?”
“Shit,” she chuffed. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”
“Better not be a man. I can’t lose my best reporter to shit like a family and love. Not before this story’s done anyway.”
Garnet smiled despite herself. “Yeah, uh, I probably won’t have any kids in the next week. It isn’t that fast even for rabbits.”
“Oh hell, it is a man, isn’t it?”
Lita had been her editor for as long as Garnet had been writing, but she’d never been a particularly close friend. Was she someone she could count on? Yeah, of course. And Garnet knew if she had any troubles that Lita would help. But a friend? Someone to open her heart to and lay out all her nerves and feelings? Lita was so gruff and terse that it was hard to imagine her having a softer side, but… it must be there, Garnet had always thought.
“It… might be?” she ventured. “I know you’re not all into heart felt yammering, and that’s fine. I had a date last night, so I’m kind of in a glowy place.”
“Did you do it?” Lita asked.
“Do what?” She paused for a minute and then realized what Lita was saying. “Oh jeez, really?”
“You said you were glowing. I saw on a TV show that after people do it, they get glowy. Something about
hormones or… listen, I’m not an expert on sex, but I did watch that show with the old woman who showed off dildos a few times. She had those dolls that she posed.”
Garnet felt herself flushing enough to match her name. “Of all the times I’ve thought about Talk Sex I never imagined it would come while I was talking to my boss. No pun intended.”
“What?”
“Never mind all that.” Garnet cleared her throat. “Listen, how about we talk about the story?”
“I want to hear about the man. Is he big? Muscular? Does he have a big…er…”
“Yes, yes, and I have no idea,” Garnet said in a hurry, “but I’m sure it’s proportional, so yes. Very much. Can we move on now?”
“We can, but only if you promise that as soon as you know, you’ll tell me. We’re all newswomen here, right? Everything that’s fit to print, or, you know, whatever it is we do.”
“Right,” Garnet said, smirking despite her embarrassment. “Uh, sounds good. Now, will you tell me why I’m here past a vague notion about a protest or something?”
As Lita dutifully explained the situation, Garnet constantly found her brain drifting dangerously close to thoughts of her bear. She thought about how it felt when The Mating Call gave her that ring, and Eve surprised her with a bear named Stacy. And then she remembered the way his hand felt against hers, the softness he used when he held her, and the way he squeezed her hand, then gave her a hug that could have suffocated a bull moose at the end of the night.
And after that, all she could think about was kissing him again, tasting those lips. She almost moaned thinking about that brief smell of his scent and the gentle rasp of his stubble against her cheek.
And before she knew it, Lita was done talking, and Garnet didn’t hear a single damn thing she had said.
“You get all that?” Lita asked, clicking her tongue against her teeth. “Please tell me you weren’t daydreaming about Prince Charming the whole time I was explaining in detail what your responsibilities were?”
Garnet bit her lip with one of her pointed canines. She chewed until a shot of pain snaked down her neck. “I… uh… maybe? I was listening. Really. Honestly.”
“Don’t you think you oversold that a little? Like when you see a used car lot’s commercial, and the guy keeps going on and on and on about how honest and real their salesmen are? And how they’d never rip anyone off or make a person sad, or take advantage of someone for being dumb?”
Garnet grunted. “Sorta. I don’t really watch live TV.”
“Let’s try this again, huh? And this time, I want you to take that notepad out of your pocket, and get the pen out from behind your ear. Come on,” she urged, “I know you Garnet. Get out the pen and the paper.”
With a sigh, Garnet retrieved the only tools she considered the requisite tools of reporting. “All right, shoot.”
“You have your stuff? Notepad and pen?”
“Yep.”
“And you’re not thinking about Captain Muscles?”
“Nope. And his name is Stacy, not Captain Muscles.”
“Stacy? Really?”
“Yep. But he goes by his middle name, Blade. And remember, gigantic muscles.”
“Blade? Sounds like he’s trying too hard. Damn,” Lita said. “I’m starting to get a little glowy myself.”
Garnet snorted a laugh so hard she almost sucked the pen up her nose. “Okay, okay, enough making fun of me. What’s the story.”
“Morning Glory, right?” Lita said, laughing her loud, bellowing belly laugh.
That right there is why Garnet loved her. If nothing else, Lita wasn’t going to say anything she didn’t mean. She wasn’t going to go on and on and on about anything she didn’t really mean. She might not always be the kindest, fluffiest, warmest person on earth, but what that meant was that when she was, you knew she really meant it.
There wasn’t a thing in the world fake about Lita Dalton. Not a thing. That was another thing that got her thinking about Stacy. He didn’t have the first pretension about anything. As Lita rattled on about this and that, and Garnet wrote down everything that sounded important, but she couldn’t help her thoughts drifting constantly to Stacy and the way he laughed.
Maybe that’s what it was, Garnet thought, maybe that’s why she liked both of them so much, because they weren’t scared to laugh loud as hell.
Oh my God, Garnet thought with a lump in her throat. I don’t just like that guy. I think… I can’t have fallen in love over a four hour Thai meal can I?
“Yeah, you could,” Lita said. “Although I’m guessing you didn’t mean to say that out loud?”
“Oh God,” Garnet said. “I’m cracking up.”
“That’s what love is like,” Lita said. “At least, that’s what I heard on TV.”
*
After a long series of instructions and a whole bunch of calls to local authorities to make sure Garnet wasn’t going to find herself on the inside of a jail cell, she made her way to downtown Sun’s Hollow, Ohio. This place was a decently populated little shifter tourist trap town hidden away in a valley.
It was charming, in a small town, stuck in the 1950s sort of way. And it was definitely a pretty place, with the town being framed in greenery and rivers. Oh and then there was the fact that it had a massive selection of outlet malls, which Garnet had scoped on the way in. Except right then, she wasn’t thinking about Kohl’s sales, or getting a good deal at the Coach outlet on that new handbag she’d needed approximately forever. Instead, she was primarily concerned with the fact that she was making her way through what would be a warzone if it were anywhere but the US of A.
“No buses?” she asked Lita via text. Her editor, and acting advocate at the present, was sequestered away in the business district of Santa Fe. Of all the places in the country where shifters and humans happily mixed, Santa Fe was the one that seemed the most normal. Or the craziest, depending on how you read it. “How am I supposed to get through here?”
“Take a bike? Use your feet?” Lita asked, not helpful at all. “I have no idea.”
In front of Garnet, the streets were littered with people chanting slogans and holding weird signs, one of which read HEALTH INSURANCE FOR SHIFTERS OR GO TO HELL. A couple of old sedans were turned over, one of them with a bumper lit aflame. However, on all the streets around this one, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence that anything was wrong whatsoever.
“What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“News?” Lita texted back. “I have no idea, anything that seems like it shouldn’t be happening.”
Garnet huddled herself down into an alcove near the ‘action’ and started scribbling abstract notes that only she’d understand. No police on scene. No looting, except for the Walgreens. Check Macy’s for sale. Call Stacy ASAP.
When she penned the last note, she just about jumped out of her skin. Why the hell was she acting like this? She couldn’t figure it out for the life of her. This guy had managed to get completely under her skin in a day and a half. That wasn’t her, not at all. I’m stoic and hard to get through to, Garnet thought. I don’t communicate well and I’m a hermit. I’m a hermit that fell in love.
She swallowed, hard. “I’m going to miss my date with Stacy,” she texted to Lita, immediately confused why she hit the send button.
“Sorry? Call him. Maybe Captain Badass has always wanted a trip to Tourist Trap, Ohio?”
Garnet bit her lip. She hadn’t thought about it, but what the hell? Maybe her bear had a deep-seated love for antiquing and outlet shopping? “Can’t hurt to ask, even though he’ll probably think I’m crazy.” she texted back. “Thanks.”
“Honey, you do whatever the hell will get your head back in the game. I hope you get laid, and SOON. Now get to work.”
Garnet didn’t even have time to blush before a chunk of concrete, or maybe it was a vase—it was hard to tell—whizzed by her head and exploded on the door behind her position. “Damn!” she squealed, jumping back even further
into her alcove. Sharp bits of something hard bit into the back of Garnet’s neck, but she didn’t pay attention. She had to get some kind of story if she wanted to get a paycheck.
She had about fifteen different problems bearing down on her brain, but when a single, totally innocent message from a certain mountain of bear muscle buzzed her phone in her pocket, Garnet kind of forgot about all of it for just a few moments. “I mean,” she said to herself in a self-lecturing tone, “he is big and strong and all that, so if anything’s really dangerous here, he can be my body guard. Like I need one,” she scoffed. “I’m enough of a bodyguard for myself. What do I need a big badass around for?”
But even as she was talking to herself, she felt her stomach twitching. It wasn’t a bad ‘about to hurl’ sort of twitch, rather it was an anticipatory sort of thing, like she was about to see a movie she had been looking forward to for years. All things being equal, she had really been looking forward to something like this for a long, long time. But the timing was never right.
And now, the timing was absolutely, totally, completely wrong, but that didn’t matter. Maybe that’s what made it all seem more real to Garnet. Even in the worst possible timing, she couldn’t stop thinking about the guy.
She remembered the phone in her pocket and plucked it out as the protesting crowd began to surge at the other end of the alley and hyenas in police uniforms surrounded them.
“Hey, just seeing if we were still on for dinner,” the text read. Garnet’s heart sunk into her boots. “Really looking forward to it.”
She sighed, heavily. Of all the damn luck, all this had to happen right now. “Only if you’re interested in coming to Ohio. I got a surprise assignment.”
A few moments later, he responded. “Cleveland? I’ve always wanted to see Cleveland. Big Drew Carey fan.”
Garnet snorted a laugh, thankful that people were much more interested in the conflict than in her embarrassing nerd laugh. “No, Sun’s Hollow, shifter tourist trap. I’m still waiting on my hotel info, but I hope it has a good bath tub. It probably won’t, hotels never do.”
