by Mia Wolf
“Are you telling us you’ve never had a rebellious stage?” Max asked. He leaned forward too. Now I had both of them leaning toward me, their eyes running up and down me. I felt very put on the spot and very aware of the cut of my dress.
I looked out the window. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Ooh,” Jordan howled quietly. “What did young Emily get up to? I smell a juicy secret.”
“Come on, Ems. You can tell us.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said sternly. It was hard enough going through it at the time. I didn’t want to relive it with these two.
“Alright,” Max said, leaning back in his chair and holding up his hands. “We won’t bug you about it.”
The server arrived, bringing forward several plates of sushi rolls, nigiri, sashimi, temaki, three benzo boxes filled with tempura vegetables and meats, rice, three steaks—so much food that they pulled over a small table to put the rest of the dishes onto. She put a plate down in front of each of us before departing.
The food looked amazing. I didn’t think that I could drool over the idea of a rainbow in front of me. But with the selection of dishes and sushi rolls, it was a complete cosmopolitan of tuna, squid, crab, prawns, salmon, pork, edamame, and plenty of things I couldn’t begin to name.
Jordan tried to teach me how to use chopsticks, but I soon gave up, deciding that Max had the right idea just stabbing at some things with his fork, and using his fingers for others. They both had their own methods for using soy sauce and wasabi. I found my own balance, and just enjoyed the pickled ginger on its own, without anything else.
By the time the sake was gone, we had moved on to scotches. They each tried to educate me on the proper way of drinking it and yet again, each with their own method. Max wanted a dash of club soda in his while Jordan wanted it on the rocks. I found that I liked it as it was, neat.
We each enjoyed two scoops of green tea ice cream, and Max insisted that we have something called an Alexander to accompany the afters.
“What is it?” I asked after he placed the order.
“It’s a cocktail,” he replied simply.
“I guessed that, but what’s in it?”
“If they do it right, it’s made up of brandy, cream, and crème de cocoa and seasoned with nutmeg. But we like to bastardize it and get rid of the heavy cream. They have an almond milk cream that they use, and it really enhances the flavor of the chocolate.” He kissed his fingers, Italian chef style. “It’s beautiful.”
I was already feeling quite warm from the scotch and the sake, but I had room for one more drink before I needed to call it quits for the night. I didn’t want to get too drunk. However, after such an enjoyable meal, I was feeling pretty energetic.
“What did you think of the meal?” Jordan asked, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head.
“You were right,” I said. I finished my scotch and went for my water. “It was perfect for my Bear tastes. I didn’t know fish could be prepared in so many different ways. I’m going to have to learn how to make this.”
“You’ll revolutionize Moonstone if you bring sushi to it,” Max laughed. He was so attractive when he laughed. His blue eyes matched the color of the morning sky. I noticed I had leaned forward and wondered if I’d been staring.
I shook my head a little to draw my attention back. I thought about the idea of “revolutionizing” the compound with raw fish. It seemed like it wouldn’t be a bad idea. It might even be a way to get the kids to care more about the water if they knew all the fun and colorful foods that could come from it.
“Do you think we could do a completely fresh-water sushi spread?” I asked, still in thought.
“I tried to make sushi once,” Jordan said. “It’s not an easy task.”
“I like a challenge,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him and smiling.
My tongue ran along the back of my teeth as I tried to determine who was more eye-candy—Jordan with his beard and longish hair just starting to go silver by his ears, or Max, who kept his square jaw closely shaved and the front of his sandy blond hair just long enough to cover his eyebrows. I surprised myself as I felt a hunger that food wasn’t going to quell.
I realized that I was a little drunk, and it was likely that I was starting to show it. I straightened myself up. I needed to feel more sober, do something to help the alcohol work through my system.
“We’re going clubbing after this, right?” I said. The server arrived and delivered our ice cream and drinks.
“I didn’t think you were going,” Max said.
“Yeah,” Jordan added in. “We kind of nixed the idea when you said you weren’t going to go. I mean, we’re down to go dancing, but we didn’t think it would be right if we left you behind in the hotel while we had all the fun.”
“No,” I said, taking the cocktail glass. “I’m game. Let’s go dancing.” I tasted the drink. They were right. It was delicious. The nutmeg was the perfect finish to it, too.
“Are you sure?” Max looked skeptical.
“Absolutely. Otherwise, I’m just going to go to my hotel room and tap my foot on the floor while I wait to sleep.”
“Alright, then. Clubbing it is.”
Jordan and Max high-fived, and they reached across the table for me to join them. I gave an awkward reciprocation, matching neither timing nor strength. Part of me wondered what I had just gotten myself into.
Chapter 5 – Jordan
I didn’t think I could ever get over how good the coastal air smells. Stepping out of the restaurant and back onto Pier 39 made me feel complete, made me realize there was part of me that felt like I was meant to be here. I didn’t think I could ever live away from the Moonstone pack permanently, but I was going to need to find a way to come to the coast more often.
We had traveled down south to Santa Cruz a few times during our college days. That was a treat. Between the amusement park on the pier, the horrendous surfing lessons we endured (during which time we decided that Wolves were not meant to be surfers), and the quiet of the comfortable town, I could almost give up Moonstone for it.
That enjoyment and sense of belonging were all rushing back to me as the three of us began walking toward the Financial District after such an indulgent meal. San Francisco might not be as clean as Santa Cruz, but it certainly had a nostalgic atmosphere for me.
I really wanted Emily to enjoy it the way we had. It was a nagging feeling in me. She had to like it. She just had to. More than once through the dinner, I had questioned why it was so important to me that Emily had a good time. Every story that came to mind that I wanted to tell, every drink I thought to order, every dish I wanted to come to the table, was all filtered through the question, “Would Emily like this?”
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I hadn’t been able to stop fixating on her since she came down the stairs at the hotel. I’d never seen her look ladylike before. But it was more than that. It was more than simply her feminine side coming out. She was beautiful. All I could think was that I was excited about seeing a new facet to an old friend of mine. That must be the reason my mind was playing tricks on me.
I wasn’t the only one, though. I noticed Max acting strangely a few times as well. Together, we had picked up plenty of women. We had a game plan; we knew how to do it. I could tell the difference between when Max was into someone that he wanted to see romantically vs. when he wanted to just have fun with a girl. And I knew the way Max was around the women at the Moonstone pack. How he was acting now, how he had been acting all night, fell into none of these particular styles of behavior.
I put it down to San Francisco's excitement as well, for the moment.
I made sure that Emily was snug in my jacket before we set off down the waterfront toward the Financial District. While I enjoyed the smell of the air and the activity of the street as something nostalgic, I was concerned as to how the other two might be feeling. I wondered if we should keep walking or get a t
axi. I decided to put the question to Emily.
“How far is it?” she asked.
“If we go the more direct route, it’s maybe two and a half miles? Maybe more? I was going to just walk us along the water until we got to Folsom and then walk straight down there to the club between 7th and 8th. It’s not that bad of a walk, and it’s a nice night.”
I caught Emily by her upper arm as she stumbled a little bit. “If I have any chance of dancing, I think we need to get a cab. These shoes are killing me.”
“Are you sure it’s not the drinks hitting you?” Max joked.
“If the drinks were hitting me, my feet wouldn’t be hurting,” Emily growled. There was something cute about this done-up maiden producing the low Bear rumble in her throat while still trying to maintain some elegance. Especially since I knew how out of place she was, that she wasn’t normally this done up. Her displacement only added to the charm of her discontentment.
Max laughed as he raised his arm to hail a taxi.
“What kind of club is this?” Emily asked, somewhat skeptically once we were stowed away in the cab and I’d given the address.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s great. You’ll love it. It’s super 90’s retro. 90’s music, 90’s club-style—they do everything they can to keep it bubbly and in that pre-millennium vibe.”
“Including bubbles,” Max said. “There’s a bubble machine near the ceiling, so you’re constantly seeing these glistening floating things in the lights.”
“I totally am picking up what you kids are putting down,” Emily said, purposefully awkwardly. “It will be jive, right?”
We laughed.
“You know, you fake being out of touch with pop culture,” Max chuckled. “But I’m not so certain you actually know what a 90’s style of anything is.”
“You got me,” she giggled. “I’m a nature girl. All I know about music is whatever people play in Moonstone.”
“Well, this place will be a treat. It’s something completely different than what you’ve heard.”
A truly enjoyable aspect of Moonstone was that there were a lot of musicians there. Whenever there was a ceremony feast or celebration, the musicians would bring out their instruments and add to the merriment. It was never explicitly planned or suggested, but just a natural occurrence to follow up anything worth being happy about.
I loved that about the pack. It flowed so beautifully as a community. I never realized it until we went away and came back, how much there were unspoken nuances to the pack, things that happened without communication, that held it together and made it a pack rather than a collection of families. For all that there were certain communities within San Francisco and neighborhoods which identified with a certain type of person, there was no deeply connected community like Moonstone.
However, for all that home had its own rhythms and tunes, San Francisco revolutionized everything we knew about celebrations and parties. It was a scene Max and I embraced and integrated into our experience. And clubbing was an intrinsic and important aspect of our city-identity.
Being a Tuesday night, there wasn’t too much of a line at the club. While we stood in line, I had to threaten Emily not to take her shoes off while we were standing in an alley in the city.
“Who knows what’s on the ground,” I grumbled. I didn’t want to go into the long lecture and tangent I had built up about the drug problem that generally went hand-in-hand with places like this, the homeless population who had to make do with their physiological needs anywhere they could on the streets. I didn’t want to dampen her impression with the harsher reality of city life by highlighting those who were far less fortunate or caught in their own destructive spirals, who also shared the cosmopolitan space.
“But these shoes are killing me,” she whined. She shifted from foot to foot, her hair waving as she did so. It was almost like a little mini tantrum to accompany her complaint. There was something endearing about the combination.
“Typical girl,” Max teased. “Thinks of fashion before comfort.”
“Hey,” Emily said, pointing a finger at Max, getting close to him. “I did not pack this stuff. This is all Andrea’s doing. She swapped my clothes.”
“For the better,” Max mumbled.
“What was that?” Emily asked. She played the strict responsible adult at the compound. But here, out of her element, her stern face and threatening voice were so out of place they held no weight, which I found hilarious. Max did too.
Emily tried to keep her mad, you’re-in-trouble face in place, but gave in to laughing with us at the absurdity of it.
We showed our ID’s, and the bouncer let us in without charging us a cover fee, which was an added bonus.
The door led us down a hall until it opened to a bar. The room was narrow and lined with tall tables and stools across from the bar itself. At the end of the bar, music bumped with a flashing rainbow of lights matching it in the space that opened up into darkness.
I led the other two to a table at the end of the bar where the dance room opened up. I held out my hand to help Emily onto a chair so she could rest her feet.
“I’m going to get us some drinks,” I shouted over the music.
“I’ll come with,” Max shouted back.
Emily was completely hypnotized by the lights on the dance floor. She watched the crowd with a mixture of awe, horror, and longing on her face. I worried briefly that maybe this was too much for the woodsy girl.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
She shook her head as if coming back to reality. “Yeah. There’s just a lot going on here.”
“It’s a club,” Max shouted. “What did you expect?” He winked at her and smiled before gesturing for me to go with him to the bar.
I gave one last look toward Emily to make sure she was alright, but she was back to watching the dancing bodies on the floor.
We pushed our way through the crowd and to the bar.
“Shots?” I suggested.
“For you and me?” Max asked. “Yes. For Emily? No. I think she’s probably had enough.”
I nodded. “I’ll go to the water station. I’m sure she’ll want some.”
“Have you noticed she’s kind of got a weird water thing?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I think she’s just a lot healthier than we’re used to. What is it her brother says? Never say no to H2O?”
“You get her some water; I’ll get you and me a shot and the three of us some real drinks.”
I raised my fist for a bump, which he met, before I pushed my way back through the crowd again. I returned with three waters and put them down on the counter as Max passed me an Aftershock.
“That’s what you went for?” I shouted.
“It was that or tequila. Your pick!”
I looked at the red liquid in the shot glass. So many of these had been consumed during our college days, but it had been so long since I’d had one that I didn’t know that I could handle it again. But, like he said, probably better than tequila.
We clinked the glasses and threw back the shot. I retrieved the water while Max followed me with three beers. I knew that we could handle the mixed alcohol, but I wondered how badly Emily’s head was going to feel the next day after sake and Hard A chased by beer.
By the time we had wrestled ourselves past the crowd surrounding the bar, the table where we had left Emily was empty.
“Where’s Ems?” Max shouted to me.
“I don’t know.” I swore. I didn’t think we’d really had too much to drink, but I didn’t like the idea of Emily wandering around here by herself. “Maybe she went to the bathroom.”
Max nodded. We unloaded the drinks onto the table. Now that I was thinking about it, I felt the call of nature myself and motioned that I was going to do the same. The bathrooms were on the other side of the club, which meant maneuvering through the dancing hoard of people.
The edges of the room were lined with more tables, all of which were loaded with drinkers. I tried to
edge my way around, then decided I’d just have to cut through the middle. Matching the beat of the music and the dancers, trying to go with the wave to help with a smoother journey, I squeezed by clusters of girls in little dresses, dressed up to the nine’s, and the men trying to find their way into the dancing groups.
Then I saw her.
There, dancing on her own, was Emily. I was struck for a moment, caught up in the rhythm of her body, the flow of her dress and hair against the updated remix of “Sandstorm.” Her arm raised in the air, her other hand holding up her dress away from her feet, she grooved like there was no one else in the room, for her own enjoyment, and she was the only person in the whole club who seemed real.
I rolled my shoulders back and straightened myself out, realizing I was staring. I put myself back in motion and dance-walked my way over to her. I matched her beat as I saddled up next to her.
“There you are,” I shouted. “We lost you!”
“Dancing looked like fun!” she shouted back through a smile. Her face reddened, as it always did when she smiled. I never realized how charming that feature was. She angled herself so she was dancing with me, with playful glances as she changed with the flow of the music.
As we matched tempo, I put my hand on her lower back, her hair tickling against my skin. I could smell her: the scent of her shampoo, her lotion, but mostly, her. I could smell the very essence of what made her Emily, and no one else. It was the scent she carried with her always, but for the first time, I truly noticed it, and I inhaled it greedily.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me at that moment, why it was that I was taking in so much of her. She had always been one of the guys with us, and I had always thought of her as a pal. But for the first time, at this moment, I realized how much of a woman she truly was, and it was an aspect that had me enchanted.
Chapter 6 – Max
After fifteen minutes of eyeing the women in the club and not feeling particularly interested in any of them, I’d finished my beer and most of Jordan’s. I was beginning to wonder where Emily and Jordan had got to when I decided it was time to find them.
