by Sky Winters
She lay in his arms, smiling up at him and finding his magical power so attractive, even still while he was covered in wolf blood and panting a bit. “I was watching videos today,” she told him. “Of your little rampage in the mall.”
“Oh, fuck, not that again,” he growled.
She wanted to laugh, but his anger made her worry that he might turn on her next. She didn’t want him to think she was laughing at him, or judging him or anything like that. “I’m sorry… I just wanted to see what you were like when you shifted. I guess I should have been careful what I wished for.”
“Why would you wish for this?” he asked. As she looked at him, she noticed that some of his black fur was disappearing and his face was taking on his human form again. He was finally settling back down.
“I want to be with you because you’re sweet and gentle, but also strong and protective when I need you to be.” She placed her hand on her stomach. “When we need you to be.”
His transformation back into that of a tall, burly quarterback was nearly complete. All that remained was his bear nose and some whisker-like hairs on his cheeks. “But I’m a monster.”
She smiled at him. “Maybe. But you’re my monster…” She finally decided that it would be okay to ask him. “That day in the mall… I should have asked you this. I’m sorry for not even thinking of your feelings. What were you so angry about?”
Jacob looked into her eyes. His gentle, brown eyes were back to normal. All of him was back to being the way she knew and loved. “My ex-girlfriend had just broken up with me.”
Sabrina’s heart melted a little, even as it also broke a bit for him. “And why were you bloody?”
He appeared to be extremely guilty. She worried that he was going to say he had killed his ex. Maybe she shouldn’t have ever asked. Maybe it was never an appropriate question and some things were better left not talked about…
“I bit my tongue,” he said.
She looked at him, surprised and relieved.
He suddenly smirked a little. “I do that a lot, when I lose control.”
Letting out a laugh, she kissed him. “You do more than that.”
THE END
Papa Bear
CHAPTER ONE
The Man Child
“How has the job hunting been going?” Maggie asked her fiancé Tony.
He answered her with a shrug, not even looking over at her when she came in the door. Typical.
Maggie Bullock worked full time – plus a lot of overtime – as a customer service representative at a toy company. It sounded like it would be so much fun when she first got the job, but now that she was struggling to pay the rent for her and her deadbeat boyfriend, it was nothing short of draining. She spent eight-plus hours every day responding to stupid people and their stupid questions, only to come home and deal with Tony the couch potato.
Tony Deburgi was an artist, though Maggie was starting to think that he was actually an “artist.” His easel always seemed to be empty, ignored off in a corner somewhere. She bought him a really fancy set of paints for Christmas recently and he’d barely touched it. He claimed to be in a dry spell. “I have lost my muse,” he had told her.
“Well, maybe you should make video games your muse, since you’re so attached to them,” she had replied.
“No,” Tony had argued. “My art is not fan art. It’s abstract!”
They’d had many fights like that lately. Maggie wanted to support his art and help inspire his creativity, but she also wanted him to be realistic and apply himself more.
“I know it’s not ideal,” she said, going into the kitchen and fixing herself a drink. “But I really think you ought to start looking into more options. Painting houses is still a form of art.”
Once she had poured herself the perfect mixture of Scotch and Coke, Maggie carried her glass out to the living room and sat beside Tony, who was sunken into the couch, as though he had molded himself into it. Game controller in hand, he stared at the screen, blasting away werewolves or some other type of shifter. Maggie couldn’t keep track. They all seemed the same.
All of the games he played involved shooting shifters. He never played the cute, colorful games where he could save princesses and collect coins. He always played some form of murderous hit-man against an army of vicious monsters. Tony hated shifters, and Maggie thought he was ridiculous. He’d never even met one before. Video game monsters were not the same thing as living, breathing beings.
At first, Maggie had seen his video game heroics as a sign of his manly, caring nature. Now, however, she saw them more for what they were – another way to slack off.
“Is this all you’ve been up to today?” Maggie asked him. “I was gone for eight hours, and you’re still wearing your pajamas.”
Annoyed, Tony paused the game. He finally turned to look at her, but it was a glare. Not at all the appreciative look Maggie expected or felt she deserved. “I’ve told you, it’s a dry spell,” he said.
Maggie did not want to fight with him about it anymore. She was tired of nagging him and trying to get him to contribute. She was tired of feeling frustrated at him all of the time. She was just tired.
“Whatever,” she said with a sigh, knocking back a large gulp of Scotch and Coke. “I just don’t want to keep coming home after a long day and finding you just sitting here, playing games. When’s the last time you showered?”
“Ugh!” Tony shouted, throwing the controller down on the table and standing up. “Fine, I’ll go take a shower. I wish you’d stop acting like you’re so much better than me. You can’t rush art. And you hate your job. Don’t take it out on me.”
With that, he stormed off to the bathroom. Maggie heard the water start running. She turned off the TV and looked over at the abandoned easel. It would make things easier if he just tried to even pretend like he still cared about working.
Maggie was twenty-five. Tony was twenty-seven. They had met in college and they shared a mutual love of a lot of things, including video games. Initially, everything seemed blissful and perfect. He did all sorts of really captivating paintings in the beginning, while she worked hard in customer service. He had even entertained the idea of someday being an artist for video games, which she would then help sell at her company. It all seemed pretty great…
Until that slowly turned into him just sitting on the couch, playing the games like some kind of mindless zombie himself. There was market research and then there was just making excuses.
Maggie was tired of excuses most of all.
“I don’t know why you’re even still with his lazy ass,” her friend Trish told her over the phone.
After his shower, Tony had switched to a computer game that involved lots of intense silence when he wasn’t shouting commands at an unseen person who spoke to him over a headset. Maggie hated that game, but she capitalized on the fact that he was completely absorbed in his own world. That was the best time to complain about him to her friends.
“I don’t know either sometimes,” Maggie said, sounding a bit sadder than she felt. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s just that I love projects.”
Trish laughed. “Girl, if he’s your project, he is not your best work.”
“You should see the Tell-Tale Easel.” Maggie chuckled a little. “He’s not even trying to hide his lack of progress. He just leaves it out for all to see; blank canvas, paint barely even touched, brushes cleaner than they were when I bought them. Oh, and I bought them. Let’s not forget that.”
Trish tisked. “You should break that blank canvas over his head.”
“I would if I hadn’t paid for it.”
“What, his head?”
Maggie laughed. “Practically. I have supported that creative noggin’ of his for three years now.”
“You should try and get your deposit back.”
It was all well and good to make jokes about things like that. But even though Tony annoyed the shit out of her, a lot of the time… Maggie still loved him. He was
her college sweetheart. He was still the reason she got up in the morning and worked so hard.
She just wished she would get a ‘thank you’ now and then.
“Hey, honey?” Tony suddenly asked her, removing his silly, large headset. He resembled an air-traffic controller when he wore that thing.
Maggie swallowed her annoyance. “Yeah?” She even managed a smile at him. She was glad to have his attention at last.
“Do you want to play Zelda with me?”
She rolled her eyes a little, but she continued to smile. At least playing with him was better than him playing without her all of the time. She moved the phone back so Trish could hear her. “I gotta go for now. We’ll talk again soon – hopefully with good news.”
“Bye, Mags. Hopefully the good news is that you’re leaving that f—”
Cackling, Maggie hung up on her friend.
Friends did not let friends date douches. But friends also did not let friends give up.
Tony was not really a hopeless case. He just needed a lot of pushing.
They played the fantasy video game for a while, and then he left her to it while he went to his easel and began covering it with yellows and greens. Maggie glanced over at it and smirked at him. “I thought you said you didn’t paint video game characters.”
“This is just inspired by it,” he said, indicating that it was similar colors but not actually any shapes that were specific to the game. No fairies were to be found. “It’s also inspired by you.”
Maggie paused the game. She got up and went to him, wrapping her arms loosely around his shoulders. They kissed each other. “I don’t know why you’ve gotta be such a pain in the ass all the time,” she murmured against his neck. “I just want you to reach your full potential and be happy.”
“I know, Magellan,” he said, using that silly nickname he’d been calling her since their awful and boring eight a.m. history class four years ago. “I’m sorry for sucking. I promise I’ll go check out some jobs tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” she said with a smile, petting his thick, brown mop top. “I love you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t care so much.”
They kissed each other again. At last, she felt like she was getting through to him.
Maggie went to work the next morning, feeling confident that Tony was going to get the ball rolling with some job interviews. He left the house when she did, wearing a suit and everything. “Good luck,” she said, kissing him. “I love you.”
He smiled at her. “I love you, too. Thanks.”
They headed their separate ways, her in her car and him on foot. The home painting company was literally up the street from their apartment. It seemed quite perfect, but Maggie felt some sense of dread about it that she could not shake. She hoped Tony would not ruin his chances somehow. Hopefully he would not let his inherent laziness show through.
She drove to her office building in the middle of Baltimore. Once she was parked, she adjusted her makeup in the rearview mirror, not that it mattered what she looked like, really. The customers were not more or less rude to her because she dressed well.
Her wavy red bob looked good, but her cinnamon-colored eyes appeared exhausted. Maggie was always exhausted. Tony was correct when he said that she hated her job, but she kept it up because she was responsible and it paid well. After applying some extra eyeliner to make her appear less sleep-deprived, she got out of her car and went into the building.
Most of what she did involved placating irate customers who either bought something they did not know how to use or broke something and wanted a refund. In person and over the phone, on a headset not unlike Tony’s ridiculous gaming one. At least he got to have some form of fun on his. None of the yelling on Maggie’s headset was to achieve a mutual goal, really.
“I am sorry, Mr. Johnson,” she said into her headset while her line grew longer and the clock slowly moved toward her lunch break. “We cannot accept your return because our policy says that it needs to still be in the box. I know, but if we cannot resell it, then it is no use to us. I know, it is unfair, but I do not make the rules… You may talk to my manager, but I want you to know that he will say the same thing.”
It took everything within Maggie to not say the expletives that went through her head as she talked to customers.
When her half-hour lunch break came at last, she was determined to enjoy the shit out of her fast food burger. She always went to the same place: a fast food joint right next to the toy store. They served pretty shitty food, but at least it was the kind of shitty food that she could receive and eat quickly.
Someday, your business acumen is going to be worthwhile, she told herself as she sipped her Diet Coke through a straw. Someday, you will not work in customer service at a corporation that kills its employees in the name of children’s entertainment. Someday, you’re gonna be somebody.
Maggie repeated the same mini-mantra every day she was at work. She was sick and tired of waiting for someday. She was sick and tired of taking responsibility for a man child. She needed things to change.
She looked at the clock on the wall. Two minutes left. She wondered how Tony had done on his job interview. “If he does not get this job, I am pretty sure I’m going to have a nervous breakdown,” she muttered to herself, finishing up her atrocious burger.
Having goals and things to work for was a good thing, but Maggie could not carry the weight all on her own. And she should not have to.
Fortune smiled on Maggie when she returned to work. Her boss decided that she did not need to stay the whole day, since things had slowed down considerably in the customer service department in the afternoon. “Take the rest of the day off,” he said. “Or, better yet, move to Maui. These people are brutal.”
She chuckled. “Thanks, Derek. See you tomorrow.”
The drive home was the happiest, most awake drive she had experienced in a while. She felt like she had been released early from school for the summer or something. And she planned to celebrate the extra time with Tony.
However, when she got there, he was already celebrating… with another woman.
He hadn’t even locked the door. Maggie came into their apartment and found Tony sitting on the couch like usual, but naked and on top of someone else, which wasn’t usual. Instinctively, she blushed and looked away. But then, regaining her composure, she looked hard at him. “Hello, Tony.”
The movements immediately stopped. He looked up at her, horror-stricken. The woman he was with had to be younger than both of them. By the looks of the discarded clothes, she worked at one of the places he had been sent to apply. A gold nametag pinned to her blouse appeared to say Lacey.
I bet she is.
“Shit,” Tony said. He graciously got disentangled from Lacey and came over to Maggie.
She thought about how she had never seen him naked in a bad moment until now. Had his penis always seemed so shriveled, or was he just scared? Maggie did not feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt.
“Maggie, this is not what it looks like,” he said. “Well, it is what it looks like, but she means nothing to me.”
“Ugh!” Lacey interjected. She got off the couch and began to put her clothes back on. Maggie realized, with another sickening feeling, that this woman worked at the painting company. They had probably been together for hours.
Maggie shook her head at them. “Get out,” she said. “Both of you.”
Lacey did not need to be told twice. She was hightailing it toward the door, one high-heeled shoe not even on her foot yet. Tony, on the other hand, looked at Maggie, wide-eyed and completely panicked.
“Don’t kick me out, Maggie. Let’s talk about this,” he tried to reason with her. He was always trying to reason with her, give her excuses for why he should stay. For years, she had put up with that and let him goad her. Well, no more!
Maggie had not anticipated feeling this calm. “Get. Out.”
Tony turned back to the couch and scooped up his clothes, stepping into his
boxers. He was crying a little, putting on a real performance.
When he was in the doorway, he turned to her. “But I don’t even have a car. And where should I go?”
Maggie shrugged. “Take a bus.”
She slammed the door in his face and then leaned against it.
It felt strange to her, to feel this relieved and this happy. She brought a hand up to cover her mouth as her thoughts whirled around in her head. The fucking cheater. The fucking scumbag had had the nerve to cheat on her, after everything Maggie had worked for, after everything they had been through.
The worst – or was it the best? – part of it was that Maggie only felt relief, like a massive, video-game-playing monster had been lifted from her back. She did not have to carry him anymore. She did not have to think about him anymore.
As she looked around the scattered objects in their living room, she noticed that the video game he had been playing was still paused on the screen. Even Lacey did not get the courtesy of him turning his games off. Maggie smiled slightly. She went over to the gaming system and wrenched the game completely out of it, hoping that he had not saved his progress. She threw the game in the garbage, followed by the whole system itself.
She was not going to stay in this apartment. Maggie did not actually know why she had kicked Tony out when she was not going to stay. Maybe it was just the thrill of humiliating him. She went into the bedroom with a renewed sense of purpose. It was like her boss knew that this was afoot and had sent her home to discover it. It was as if Derek was giving her a tip.
Packing up her things did not take as long as she would have thought. Maggie realized that she did not actually own much of the stuff in the apartment. She had planned all of the necessities. Of course she had. All the rest was just things. Tony’s things.
Short of setting his things on fire, Maggie left her key on the counter. She knew that her leaving was going to crush him. He had no job. There was no way he would be able to keep the place. And that was why it was all his now. She was free.
