I looked at Fen and shrugged, and then pulled Loki’s gifts out from under the tree. She came back as I turned around, a couple packages piled in her arms. “Here Fen, I didn’t expect you to be here,” she said, breathless.
“Yeah, I guess not,” he muttered as he accepted the packages. He looked at them with an unreadable mask, and then tore the paper.
Loki and I watched intently, and I wondered why Fen was acting so strange.
Inside the first box was a t-shirt with a werewolf on it that said “Shift Happens” underneath, and inside the second was a beautiful bust of a howling wolf, almost a foot tall.
Fen radiated dark emotions, and I couldn’t even make sense of them all because his face was as benign as ever. Sadness, anger, and loss swirled off him as he thanked Loki. We stood there for an awkward moment until he muttered something about needing to go home and walked toward the door.
“You don’t like them?” Loki asked as he passed her. He paused at the door, but didn’t look at her.
“No, they’re very nice, thank you. You know what I really want can’t be bought with a credit card…” He spat the word ‘bought’ out like it burned his tongue, and then stepped outside and pulled the door closed.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“Um, I think he’s just hypersensitive about money,” she muttered. “He usually hides it pretty well, but I know that he hates that we have money to spend on frivolous things, while he and his mother barely scrape by.”
My intuition nagged me, “Is that all?”
She winced, “It probably torqued him that I came to see you first, since he’s Alpha.”
“So why did you?” I asked, almost hopeful.
“I dunno, you were on the way I guess.” She flopped down in the chair and sighed as she buried her face in her hands. Rejection slithered through me but I hid it, and felt deflated. I looked down and realized I still held her gifts.
“Here, these are for you.” I smiled at her, and when she smiled back my heart pounded harder.
Way to go Jimmy, just go ahead and fall for two people at once. Only you could achieve something so insurmountably asinine…
“Thanks Jimmy, you’re so sweet. Oh, you haven’t even opened yours yet. Open it, open it!” she insisted and pulled her hair back behind her ear. I sat down in a chair across from her and absently tore at the paper of my box while I watched her open hers.
She pulled out her hoodie and squealed with delight. “Oh my God Jimmy, I love it! It’s so cute!” She scrunched it up in her hands and smashed her face into it.
I hid my envy of the hoodie’s affection and pulled the paper off my own package. I opened the box and looked at the unidentifiable black fabric within. I glanced up and noticed Loki’s expectant stare while she pulled her new hoodie on over her sweater. I reached inside and lifted out a black vest. It looked medieval, but with a gothic twist. And something was underneath it in the box.
I lifted out the colorful fabric and it unfolded onto the floor. I stood to open it and was startled to see a pair of wolves staring at me past the branch of a tree. One grey and one black.
“It reminded me of you and Fen,” Loki whispered, and leaned forward, “I figured you could probably use a tapestry in your Dungeon. D’ya like it?”
“It’s awesome!” I grinned at her.
“I’m glad,” she smiled back, “Now try on your vest.” she winked and sat back as though waiting for a movie to start.
“Okay, but you have to open your other one while I change.”
“Deal!” she shouted and grabbed the other box. I grabbed the vest and made for the Dungeon door. “Hey, where’re you going?” I turned and her face was in full pout.
“I’m not going to strip right here in the living room!”
“Aww!” she stuck her tongue out at me. I turned away and smiled as I walked downstairs. I pulled my sweater over my head and tossed it on my bed. I shrugged into the vest and pulled the snaps across to buckle it. I tried to swallow my insecurity as I went back upstairs.
You want her to like you too…
I ignored the voice and stepped into the living room. She stood when I came in, and then walked over to me and turned me around, eyeing me like a side of beef at the market. “Yeah, I’m awesome.” My heart stuttered when she came close enough to kiss, and lifted her hand. Her fingers felt cool as she ran them down over my cross, framed by the vest. “I knew these would go perfect together.” She smirked and looked up into my eyes.
“Did you like your gift?” my mouth was dry and my voice cut out on a couple syllables.
“I love it!” she pulled her hand away and I instantly missed her touch. “This was sort of overkill for a bumper sticker though, don’tcha think?” she held up the box and packing peanuts shifted inside.
“No,” I plunged my hand into the peanuts, my fingers searching. “It’s not.” I withdrew my hand, a couple peanuts stuck to me as I presented the small box captured between my fingers. Her eyes flashed with surprise, and then she took the box from my hand as her mischievous smirk fell back into place. She set down the other box and held the little one between us. It was obviously a jewelry box, and she couldn’t keep the curiosity from her face when she pushed the hinge open.
Her mouth fell open in surprise, “Oh Jimmy…” she whispered as she reached in, “Is this… moonstone?”
“Yeah.” The ring was slender, feminine, with circle of milky-white moonstone set in the center of a three-phase-moon symbol. Celtic knotwork wound the ring’s pewter band. “Do you like it?”
She nodded a tender smile on her lips. Then she looked into my eyes and her smile faltered, “But, this is awfully personal don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?” Worry blossomed amid shame.
“Something that you wear on your body is one of the most personal gifts you can give…” she muttered, holding the ring but not putting it on. A tendril of anger slithered out of the dragon’s pit.
“Both you and Fen gave me things to wear on my body. What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped. She sighed and closed her eyes. I felt my eyes harden as shame hollowed me out. “You’re not going to wear it, are you?”
She didn’t say anything, didn’t even shake her head; but the tear that escaped the corner of her eye told me enough.
Angry, I brushed past her and started picking up the shreds of paper lying around the chair. “Well, keep it anyway. Maybe you’ll find somebody to wear it for someday.” I muttered bitterly as I stabbed my hand out after scraps. She didn’t move, but I heard her breathing as she tried not to cry. When the scraps were gone, I picked up Geri’s gifts and held them out to her.
“You’re going to see Geri later right?” I asked, my voice cold. She wiped her eyes, blurring her mascara as she nodded.
As my anger subsided, ice settled in around my heart. “Could you give these to him for me please? I don’t think I’ll be going out later…”
She accepted them and walked to the door. She paused with the door open and looked at me, “Jimmy, I’m—“
“Merry Christmas.” I interrupted her.
She looked down, “…Merry Christmas…” she muttered, then stepped out the door and closed it.
I stood there for a moment and let my hand drift down over the silver cross and the buckles of the vest. I threw away the paper in my hand and gathered up the tapestry
I glanced out the front window and the truck was still idling there, Loki’s silhouette hunched over the wheel. I wanted to comfort her, to go out and hold her, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Finally I turned away and walked toward the Dungeon.
Mom stood at the door to the kitchen, drying off a dish with a worried expression on her face. She didn’t say anything, but I knew she’d heard everything. I couldn’t even summon up any mandatory teenage antagonism to dish out; I just ignored her and went downstairs.
Way to go genius. You can control your shifting energy now, but you’re cursed in an entirely
different way. Every aspect of your existence is wrong…
I curled up on my bed and guarded the bleeding place inside myself.
On New Year’s Day, Fen called me a little after eleven to see if I wanted to go for a drive. His mom had been called in to work, so she said he could take the car out if he wanted to. He seemed miraculously cured of whatever rubbed him raw on Christmas, so I agreed and he picked me up a few minutes later. I desperately needed to get away; thoughts of Loki’s rejection haunted me at every opportunity, I couldn’t even think of anything else.
The sun was bright even though it was the dead of winter, and the air a balmy sixty-two degrees. Funny how that was freezing in the summer, but t-shirt weather in the winter. I grabbed my denim jacket as I headed out the door, and asked where we were going as I belted in and he accelerated away from the curb.
“I just need to get out of the city and away from people for a while. Get my mind off some things”
We crossed over Main Street and turned onto the highway. We drove past the old prison and the road curved around a mountain as we left town. Fen exited and drove through a gate onto a narrow road that wound up the side of the mountain. I gripped the armrest as we drove further and further away from the valley floor; one wrong move and Fen could send us plummeting onto some very hungry-looking boulders.
Just as I thought my nerves were going to snap, he rounded one last corner and parked in a gravel lot just off the road. We parked on top of the mountain, the entire town sprawled below us. Fen opened his door and beckoned me to join him. We climbed onto a slanted mass of red sandstone and sat on the cold rock. The wind blew cold but the sun warmed us.
We stared out over the city and pointed out locations we recognized. Fen pointed out a long stretch of dirt at the foot of the mountain that he said was a shooting range that Geri and his dad used. A couple streets over, Fen pointed out Loki’s house. I swallowed down my bitterness, and found the little splotch of brown back beyond her field-like yard where our den was. I found the high school fields, still partly frosted with snow, and then tried to find my house but all the trees made it impossible to pinpoint. I eventually just settled on a glob of houses and bare trees that seemed close enough.
“I come up here sometimes in the summer just to clear my head,” Fen muttered, “It’s easy to get cabin fever in a town like this; but up here I can step aside and remember how beautiful it is. In the summer… it’s like an emerald. A green jewel in the middle of dead dry prairie… I’ve never brought anyone else up here before; don’t want to give anybody any false ideas.” He smiled and lay down.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this is pretty much our town’s version of make-out lane.” He laughed, and I thought I saw a slight blush creep into his cheeks. I laughed too, but didn’t say anything. I was busy trying to keep my imagination under control. Why would he tell me something like that?
I arranged my arms under my head in the most comfortable position I could manage on the hard rock. I watched Fen for a while, before my own eyes drifted closed and the wind’s lullaby drew me to sleep.
Something cold hit my face, and jolted me awake.
I realized that the sun was dark on the other side of my eyelids and the wind had grown cold and harsh. I opened my eyes and flinched as another raindrop hit my face. Dark clouds roared over us and I saw Fen stir.
“Shit, c’mon, let’s get back to the car!” I shouted as we sat up.
He and I hiked down as the clouds closed around us and the rain thickened. The frigid water hammered down, and saturated us both in seconds. We got to the car, and I heard Fen swear as he patted his pockets.
“What?”
“The keys, I don’t have the fucking keys!”
Desperate, we scrambled back over the rocks as visibility dropped and we scoured them hoping to find some glint of metal against the red sandstone.
It was sheer blind luck that I stepped on the keys and felt them slide under my foot. I grabbed them and yelled at Fen as the sky started pelting us with hail. Little chunks of ice pummeled my scalp until Fen got the doors unlocked and we jumped inside, soaked and shivering. The hail hammered the ground outside in marble-sized chunks, creating a rapid-fire cacophony on the roof.
“Can you see well enough to drive?” I asked as my teeth clicked together. My denim jacket had been fine against the wind; but had soaked through and felt like cold lead on my back. Fen shook his head stiffly as he started the engine and turned the heater up, but all it did was blow cold air. Well, wasn’t this freaking great?
Forget silver bullets; the two werewolves were going to die of hypothermia thanks to their own stupidity! ‘Hey, let’s take a nap on top of a mountain in the middle of the winter! Okay, sounds like fun! Hyurk, hyurk!’ I growled in annoyance at myself as I wrenched my jacket off and pulled my shirt over my head.
“What are you doing?” Fen asked in a puzzled tone.
“My clothes are soaked; they’re just pulling the heat out of me…” I wriggled out of my pants and tossed them on the soggy pile of clothing. “At least this way I can keep myself warm…” I closed my eyes and focused on the warm scent of fur and the tingling prickle as my etheric energy crawled across my skin…
A wet thud distracted me, and I looked over to see Fen stripping off his soggy clothes as well. I curled up in my seat as the warmth seeped back into my skin and the shivers subsided. I watched Fen out of the corner of my eye and then averted my gaze in shame. I shifted position and gazed out at the angry green clouds through the window. Fen leaned against me, his skin cool against mine; even just that slight touch spiked my pulse. He stopped shivering too, and we sat there for a while and waited for the storm to pass as the engine warmed up.
The car filled with his scent; some unique mix of corn chips, earth, warm fur, and vanilla. I shifted my eyes so I could look at him, the damp spikes of his golden hair, the way the muscles and bones slid under his skin whenever he moved and made the shadows slip like liquid on his skin.
I couldn’t deny it anymore; I knew what I was inside. I didn’t want to be this different, I didn’t want to be bisexual, but God sure gave a shit about that now didn’t he…
“What?” Lost in my thoughts, he’d noticed me looking at him.
“Huh? Oh, nothing…” I muttered and looked back out at the sky as my face flushed with shame.
“No really, what is it?” he asked and twisted to look at me. I kept my eyes off him, talking was difficult enough already. I had two choices about how to answer; either a cop-out or a formal request for rejection. I delayed instead.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.
He was quiet a moment, “It’s a special place to me, and I wanted to share it with you.”
“Why?” My voice sounded rough as my throat tightened. The library, his father’s grave, this mountain; they were all special places he’d shared with me; so why here? Why now?
“Are you alright Jimmy?” He asked, and for once I said exactly what I intended to.
“Oh come on Fen, you know damn well that I like you.”
“So…?”
“So, doesn’t that bother you?” I asked, the edge in my voice from the anger and hatred I turned inward on myself.
“Not really; actually it’s quite flattering. Why does it bother you so much?”
“Why doesn’t it bother you?” I turned to meet his eyes.
“It just doesn’t. I know all too well that sometimes a person has no choice, no control… they can’t pick the way they are…” He shifted and looked out at the storm. “Or who their heart decides to give itself to…”
I studied his face to try and decipher just what that last comment meant. What was I willing to risk seeing if my fools hope was justified?
We sat in the car, his head resting on my lap as the winter stars spun overhead; “You know… we did make a pretty cute couple…”
Apart from my conscious will, my arm reached out and I ran my fingers lightly down the b
are skin of his shoulder; the colors of our skin in contrast.
“It’s just funny; Fen’s all blonde and stuff, and you’re all tan and dark. You two are like day and night.”
My heart hammered in my throat, waiting for his reaction. For him to either embrace me or damn me. He arched his back under my fingers, as though inviting me to continue.
Damnit Fen you’ve made me fall for you, did you fall for me too?
I felt his heart beat beneath my fingers, and the wild part of me wanted to catch it. With each passing second my defenses gave way more and more to that dangerous little flame of hope, that he might like me too…
He put his hand back and touched my fingers on his shoulder as goose bumps spread all the way down my arm. Shaking, I lifted my hands to his face and moved to press my lips to his.
His eyes shot open and I felt his muscles tense seconds before he wrenched himself out of my hands.
“Fen…?” I asked as a cold serpent uncoiled in the pit of my soul.
“Jimmy, I’m sorry I—I just can’t—” Fen crossed his arms over his chest as though holding himself as he pressed his back to the door.
Bare stupid realization washed over me, and I felt the bitter cold of the falling hail inside me. “You—” I had to swallow several times to make my voice work. “You don’t feel anything for me, do you?”
A sharp jerk of his head told me ‘no’. My skin crawled and I felt—numb— like when you’ve been seriously injured; you know you’re hurt, but your mind blocks most of the actual pain…
“Jimmy, I’m so sorry…” Fen reached out but I recoiled. I felt betrayed; betrayed by him, and betrayed by myself. I curled up in the corner of the seat, and stared out at the cold and lifeless clouds, while the voice inside my head tore me apart.
Of course he doesn’t love you; he never did. Neither does Loki, that’s all their little games are; just games. The teasing, the smiles… But what did you expect you pathetic sack of shit? What’s the matter; did you forget no one could ever love you…?
Walking Wolf Road (Wolf Road Chronicles Book 1) Page 19
