Wolf Pack

by Bridget Essex

  “Um...you were wonderful?” I say, then, because I'm kind of confused. She really was amazing...maybe she just needs to be told how good she was. Yeah. That must be it.

  “That's it?” she persists, her one brow high, a smile more than tugging now at her mouth—she's smiling widely, laughing a little.

  When I stare at her again, she laughs even more, covering her face in her hands and laughing into her palms.

  “Oh, God, I'm sorry,” she says then, rolling over and wrapping me in her arms. She smells so comforting, her scent one I already seem to know by heart, the warmth of her skin against my own something purely delicious. She holds me close, pressing her mouth against mine, kissing me deeply.

  “I'm sorry,” she repeats, her smile warming me from the inside out. “It's just...funny. That's...really all you remember about last night?”

  “Well,” I tell her, smiling as I draw a hand through her hair. It's so soft and curly against my fingers, shifting like red satin across my palm—it's exactly what I thought it would feel like. “I did have an interesting dream,” I tell her then.

  “Oh,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “What did you dream?”

  “There's probably something Freudian going on,” I tell her, raising one of my brows now, “but I dreamed you became a wolf.”

  Kennedy was in the middle of working a trail of kisses down my neck, but she stops now, her lips pressed against my skin.

  I sit up a little, because there's something nagging at me...

  I glance down, and bite my lip.

  I'm wearing my boots.

  I know, absolutely, that I did not take Kennedy to bed while wearing boots.

  I glance to the glass wall...

  The sun is rising, but because of the mountains, it's not bright daylight yet. But I don't need bright daylight to see the fact that there are wolf tracks outside in the yard. Wolf tracks, and human tracks, both.

  Kennedy trails a hot finger down my back, making me shiver. “Was it a good dream?” she asks me, her low voice a growl. I glance down at her, down at her sparkling eyes and her smiling mouth.

  I take a deep breath, lie back down, pillowing my head on her shoulder as she draws me close.

  “A...very good one,” I say tentatively, considering things.

  We stay very quiet for a long moment as my world view is neatly exploded, and then reordered, as Kennedy traces her fingers up and down my arm, her breathing steady as she brushes her lips to the top of my head.

  “Funny how everything can change in a night,” she says quietly then.

  I reach up, cupping my hand at her jaw and chin, pressing my fingers gently through her hair as I rise on an elbow, staring down at this raw, fierce, gorgeous creature.

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “Funny, that.”

  And, without a single regret in the world, I lean down, and I kiss Kennedy fiercely, the old me and the new me becoming, in that moment, one.

  The sun rises over the Rocky Mountains, shining down on the wolf tracks behind the retreat center. There might be a logical explanation. It might just have been a very good dream.

  But, no matter what or who she is, Kennedy's kiss is bright and real and the most wonderful thing I've experienced since I can remember.

  “So,” she tells me, her mouth twitching upward at the corners as she tries to maintain a serious expression. “Are you ready for your morning yoga session?”

  “Oh, God,” I mutter, chuckling as I hide my face in her shoulder, feeling my cheeks color. “I...actually have something to tell you...”

  “Don't worry,” says Kennedy softly, gently, working her fingers into my hair and kissing me fiercely. “There's a first time for everything,” she promises me. “Or, you know...” she tells me, one brow up, “we could postpone the yoga...” She trails her fingers down my bare stomach, causing me to shiver. “Just for a little while...”

  Kennedy pulls me down on top of her with a low, throaty chuckle then, and I pull off my boots with a laugh.

  After all, you only live once.

  -- Wolf Queen --

  “So, this is a little weird...”

  I look up from my desk and stare at my boss Douglas in surprise. Douglas isn't the type of man who I would ever expect to call something “weird.” To be honest, I assume the man eats Weird Flakes for breakfast—and that's an assumption that I harbor with a great amount of affection. Douglas has made an art of weird.

  Today he's staring down at me with his cockatiel Rudy perched on his bald head. The bird, squawking angrily, keeps slipping over Douglas' forehead because of said baldness. Not a lot of traction there.

  “Hit me with your best shot, Doug,” I say, leaning back in my faux leather chair and smiling widely as I spread my hands. “If you think something's weird, it's got to be really, really weird.”

  “Oh, it is,” he tells me with a grimace, helping Rudy off of his head and onto his brightly colored shoulder. The cockatiel hunkers down on the floral-printed fabric of Doug's Hawaiian shirt, his feathers fluffed. Then Doug clears his throat, running a hand over his bald pate, which he always does whenever he's nervous.

  “So, Amber,” he says, drawing out my name as he gives me a funny look, one brow raised. “Did you know that Howl was sold?” he asks me.

  “Howl? As in the nightclub?” I blink at him as he nods.

  I shrug a little, perplexed. Howl is a nightclub down the street from us here in Lakeview, one of the gayer, more colorful and all-around wonderful neighborhoods in Chicago. I've never stepped foot over the threshold of Howl, and not just because nightclubs aren't my scene. I passed Howl plenty of times on my way home, and the loud Top 40 music that poured out of those doors told me all I needed to know: that the place was probably full of straight, high, drunk college kids tossing back tequila shots and margaritas while sloppily hitting on one another. Thanks, but no thanks.

  “Well, that's not the weird part,” says Doug, his tone becoming a little wheedling as his smile grows. “We want to cover the club's grand reopening for the paper, of course.”

  “Do we?” I groan, folding over and hitting my head softly on the desk.

  “Amber Clancy,” says Doug, his southern accent becoming more pronounced as he juts out one of his hips and puts his hands on both of them, tut-tutting like a chastising mother hen. “Do I pay you to sit around here and look pretty?”

  I chuckle a little and swat at his arm. “Hey, that's why I earn the big bucks, right?” I tell him with a wink. And then I groan again, shaking my head, my curly black hair sweeping over my shoulders. “So, are you saying you want me to go down and interview the new owner or something?” I ask him, as I fold my arms in front of me. “Get the big scoop on why anyone would want to buy the only straight club within ten blocks of the gayest neighborhood in Chicago?”

  “Well, something like that—but maybe phrase it a little more nicely,” says Doug, removing the pink boa that was draped around his neck; Rudy had begun to groom its feathers with his beak. Smiling, Douglas slings the boa around my neck, instead.

  “But,” he tells me evenly, biting at his lip as he adjusts the boa to his satisfaction, “the really weird thing is that they asked for you, specifically, to come interview the new owner for this article. You!”

  “Wow, you're doing wonders for my self-esteem,” I smirk, tossing my cell phone and an old-fashioned yellow legal pad into my big purse, along with a handful of pens. I pin Doug in my sights and snort as I unwind his sacred boa (he always wears it when he's editing) and set it reverently on the desk. “Is it really so hard for you to believe that people actually read Proud and Windy—and that they might love my articles?”

  “Honey, none of us has any illusions about our precious little paper here,” says Doug, shaking his head with a soft chuckle. “We all know that people read Proud and Windy,” Doug tells me, patting my shoulder, “for the Personals section. But, hey, the sponsors keep buying ads, and we keep on publishing, so hell... It keeps us in peanut butter, right?”<
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  “Right,” I tell him, my lips twitching into a grin despite my resolve to keep teasing him. “Lots of peanut butter. Because it's all I can afford to eat on this salary,” I say, raising an eyebrow.

  Doug lifts his hands in an “I surrender” position and shakes his head. “Howl is paying for a full-page ad in next week's paper, and they've pledged to keep putting that ad in, weekly, for the indefinite future. So if they want you to come down and do an article on the reopening, let's give the people—”

  “What they want,” I finish, reciting the unofficial motto of Proud and Windy. Which is, admittedly, a terrible name for a free gay newspaper, but the rag's been around since the eighties, and we might lose readers if we changed the name now.

  Still, Douglas is right: we're under no delusions that we're publishing The New York Times.

  Cockatiel Rudy chooses that moment to poop on Doug's shoulder and flap away, cackling to himself merrily, as if he is very aware of what he's just done—and he finds it hilarious. He lands on Doug's very, very messy desk, strewn with wrappers, papers and past newspapers, sending several flying into the air.

  “You know, it's a great sign of affection for a bird to poop on you,” says Doug with a wink and a smile, taking one of my tissues from my tissue box and wiping off his shirt with a sigh. “It means they trust and are comfortable with you.”

  “Just don't let him get that comfortable with me,” I tell Doug, eyeing the gray-and-yellow bird, who is currently grooming his feathers.

  “All right,” I say then, patting my purse to make certain everything I need is in it before slinging it onto my shoulder. I glance at the clock. “After this, I'm off, okay?” I tell Doug, my head to the side. He glances at me, brows up, and I gesture to the clock. “It's almost four, anyway. I'll head down to Howl, get the scoop on the opening. Then there's a big date for me tonight.”

  Doug stares at me, his mouth open, his eyes wide. He holds his silence for a comically long moment, and then he splutters: “Seriously?”

  “Again with the self-esteem!” I groan. “You're a jerk, Doug,” I tell him with a little smile.

  “No, no, I was just happy for you. That's all,” he says, then notices my face. “Well, crap. You were joking,” he sighs. “You're not going on a date tonight, Amber?” he asks me, a little too hopefully.

  I echo his sigh and shake my head, making my voice sound a little more cheerful than I feel as I toss my hair over my shoulder. “Hey, doing dishes is a date for me. Have you seen my sink? Those dirty dishes are going to become sentient soon,” I quip, but my good mood is starting to dissolve.

  God, if my boss thinks it's a crazy notion for me to be going out on a date...what does that say for me? That I'm doomed to be single for the rest of my life?

  I really, really hope not.

  “Work on your motivational speeches,” I tell Doug gently, then wink at him again—there's no hard feelings. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

  “Knock 'em dead, kid,” says Doug, like he does every afternoon, running his hand over his bald head again and giving me his genuine, encouraging smile.

  “Always,” I promise, and then I'm out the door of Chicago's tiniest office space. Not that we need a bigger place. Most days, it's just me, Doug, Rudy (who is on the payroll for Proud and Windy but gets paid, appropriately, in birdseed), and Latoya, the glue who holds us all together. Without her, the magazine would look terrible, but thanks to her graphic design and formatting abilities (and the millions of other little tasks she does), Proud and Windy is something to be...well, proud of.

  That's one of our other unofficial mottoes. And...you don't want to know the others—trust me!

  As I press the button, waiting for the elevator to creep its slow, ancient way up to our nineteenth floor, I lean against the wall and breathe out with a sigh, pressing my right palm against the cool marble to ground and steady myself. It doesn't work.

  I love Doug: he's my boss, yes, but he's a friend I really love and respect. I know he didn't mean anything by his comments; he was just teasing like he always does... But for some reason, it hurt a little today.

  I sigh again and stare up at the ceiling, biting my lip. It's a little juvenile, admittedly, but my very first reaction is defensiveness. I mean, I could go out tonight and get a girl. I know I could. I hold tightly to my purse strap and take a deep breath.

  I could get a girl, sure.

  But that girl wouldn't be her.

  It's been seven years since I last saw her.

  I'm angry as I press the elevator button again—and again, fully realizing that this doesn't make the elevator come any faster. I dash away the single tear that crept out of my eye and leaked down my cheek. Seven years. You'd think I could move on in seven years. That's...that's forever, really. And, God knows, as well-intentioned Doug likes to remind me, I'm not getting any younger. (Though why, at the age of twenty-five, I'm suddenly hitting an expiration date, I'll never know.) Doug tells me that I need to get out there, get into the dating scene, sow my wild oats.

  But I don't.

  So here's my terrible secret: I have been on approximately ten dates since I moved to Chicago. A couple of those dates were with the same women, but we didn't really hit it off in the end. Half a dozen times, I went down to T's Bar, one of the bigger lesbian bars in Chicago, and picked up a lady for the night, but those outings (ha!) were few and far between.

  When my sister Meg calls me up and pesters me about why I don't have a girlfriend, I tell her it's because my job is keeping me too busy. Which is an outright lie, but I don't want Meg to worry so much about me. Though she worries, anyway. She got the worry gene in the family.

  So I've been in Chicago for seven years. Ten dates and a couple of flings in seven years. The math is staggeringly bad, and though Doug may have been teasing...he's kind of right. It would be pretty out of the ordinary for me to be going on a date tonight.

  Not because I can't get a girl, I think, as defensiveness prickles my skin.

  But because I don't want a random woman...

  I want...her.

  Stevie.

  I pale as I allow myself to think of her perfect name. I close my eyes, my palm still pressed against the marble of the wall, now warming to my touch. I think about her for only a moment...

  Well, I only ever allow myself to think about her, really think about her, for a moment.

  Any longer, and the heartache is too strong, too lancing for me to handle.

  The elevator finally arrives, dinging open. I take a deep breath, shake my head and step into it, hitting the bottom floor button. I then proceed to age about fifty years waiting for the elevator to reach to the main floor. I look at my reflection, very carefully not thinking about anything but how I look today (a total distraction, but, hey—it's working).

  I have shoulder-length black hair that curls so tightly that sometimes, when it's humid out, I look like I'm wearing a black mop on my head. Today, blessedly, it's not too humid, and my hair doesn't look half bad. I wear big, geeky glasses, but I think they look kind of cute. My outfit of choice normally consists of—as it does today—a cardigan and a skirt and tights. But lately, I've been feeling kind of frumpy, wearing the same cardigans over and over again.

  Yeah. That's it. That's what's gotten me down. Not Doug's assertion that it would be crazy for me to be going out on a date.

  Not thoughts about Stevie.

  I'm kind of mopey as I walk the few blocks from the office to Howl, though I'm trying not to show it. It really is a beautiful day, the kind of June afternoon that you usually can only pine for in Chicago. June is typically as hot as the surface of the sun around here. But it's not swelteringly hot, and the breeze from Lake Michigan is something you feel dancing over your skin, even this far into the city.

  I can smell water in the air... Maybe there'll be a rainstorm tonight.

  I put on my game face as I approach Howl. The nightclub has always looked pretty nondescript to me, but as I round the block, I'm su
rprised to see that they're putting in a new electric sign over the front door, removing the one that was probably installed in the eighties, with about seventy-five percent of the light bulbs inside of it burned out for years.

  The new sign isn't just a replacement but a revision. It looks like they're changing the club's name to—I peer closer—Wolf Queen.

  There's a woman perched precariously on a tall ladder with a power drill, drilling a few more screws into the metal strip below the sign. She glances down at me in surprise when I walk directly beneath the ladder, heading toward the staircase leading down to the club's door. I notice in passing that the woman is wearing a business suit and really doesn't look like she belongs on ladders or wielding power tools—but then again, looks can be deceiving.

  “Walking right under a ladder?” she asks me, waving the drill. “Don't you believe in bad luck?”

  I glance up at her and shrug a little. “Luck? No, not really,” I say, with a small, rueful smile. “Hey, do you know where I can find the owner of the club? I'm Amber Clancy. I'm with Proud and Windy,” I say, my smile broadening. It always helps, I've found, to deliver the name of our newspaper with a smile; otherwise people ask for the name again, and you have to pronounce it a little more clearly, and then everyone ends up feeling awkward.

  I clear my throat and lift my chin. “I'm here to interview him about the reopening of the club?”

  The woman begins to climb down the ladder, and it's then that I realize she's wearing high heels, impressively tall ones. She manages the steps quite well. As she descends, she raises a single brow, and when she's standing on the sidewalk beside me, she's smiling, too, as she sets the power drill in an open tool bag on the ground, brushing her hands together.

  “Her,” she corrects me then, tilting her head to the side.

  I lift an eyebrow.

  “This club was just bought by—” the woman begins, but she gets cut off.

  “Jessica?” comes a voice from inside the club, drifting up the concrete stairs from the a door below ground level. The voice is warm and low, a woman's voice, so pleasant and undeniably sexy in its lower register that I actually feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up...