by Lisa Daniels
“I guess her family’s well connected,” Oskar said absently, eyes straying to the werewolf. There was a tightness about his features that Lena couldn’t place a finger on. Did he know of the werewolf? “People always flock to those of power, wanting a piece of it for themselves.”
“Yeah, it was like that. I was… am,” she admitted with a grimace, “I want to at least appear successful, even though… I’m not.” She fidgeted in her seat, a faint flush creeping over her face, leaving her convinced that she shouldn’t have said these thoughts out loud. People didn’t admit these kind of insecurities off the bat. Yet now she was compelled to keep going, to add more clarity to her whispered thoughts. “She was… I mean, it felt like she was rubbing it in, how amazing she was, and next thing I knew, there goes the lie.”
Oskar’s attention was now fully upon Lena, and the way he stared made her feel as though she was being stripped down to her very soul. Like he could see everything inside her, good and bad, and she both hated and liked it at the same time.
No one sees me. They saw her, librarian, smiling, waving, and a little bit of a loner. They didn’t see what kind of thoughts and feelings boiled under the surface.
“I think it’s a stupid reason to lie,” Oskar said flatly, and Lena’s flush grew, and her hand became clammy, uncomfortable grasped in his. “I don’t think people should feel like they have to lie at all. You’ll go insane if you keep comparing your life to other people.” His words, intentionally or not, helped leech some of the fear out of Lena. He… he wasn’t accusing her. This wasn’t an attack against her. It was just the concept of lying.
Right. Because he said he hated liars. But is still with me anyway, because… I was honest about lying. Yeah, that was a head trip.
She was a little too used to lying, getting caught, and being punished for it. Her parents hadn’t exactly been great with it. Trouble was, Lena had also learned that if she told the truth about something bad, she got punished anyway. So with lying, she had about a fifty-fifty chance of punishment.
So sometimes, she just… found herself lying automatically before her brain had caught up and stapled down her tongue.
Which had landed her in this current situation, fraught with tension, having her live in a house of cards that might fall down at any moment, as soon as someone figured out she’d bought a fake boyfriend for the week.
Oskar reached out his other hand to pat a rather unimpressed Katie on the shoulder, unaware of Lena’s inner turmoil. “You won’t believe it now, but this one used to have crippling anxiety when it came to her own success and career.”
“Oh, we’re telling the new woman that, now?” Katie said, though her tone was only marginally irritated. If anything, she might have been smiling, though Lena suspected Katie didn’t really do smiling. Maybe some awkward face twitches. Probably didn’t do much fun, either. She seemed like the type that’d sit in the office, babysitting everyone around her until she lost her temper and threw them out the window.
“Yes, we are,” he said, plastering on a dazzling smile which was partially tinted by the yellow-orange light of Pappy’s. “No outing is complete until we’ve exchanged at least one embarrassing story.”
“I have about twenty of you I can think of, so I’d be very careful about stepping in those waters,” Katie said with cool, collected calm, and Lena felt a small pang of jealousy. The love-hate relationship these two seemed to have was more than she knew with friends. They sniped at one another, but they did it with smiles.
“Oh, I’m shameless,” Oskar said, and Katie let out a huff. “Okay, so basically, Katie here’s the youngest out of eight werewolves. They tend to have big litters if born to a female werewolf, and there’s always a lot of sibling rivalry going on. And all her siblings go off and have super successful careers, and she’s the one getting into trouble, taking things she shouldn’t be taking, if you know what I mean. And when I bumped into her, she was wasted out of her little werewolf skull.”
Katie glared at Oskar, but didn’t interrupt his tale. Lena found Oskar’s talking alluring and animated, as he liked to express the story with hand gestures, leaning back in his chair with a confident smile. Drinks arrived for them, and they sipped as he continued the story, clearly relishing the chance to embarrass his PA. “She gets pretty handsy when she’s drunk, and there were a lot of people looking to score a werewolf, so I took pity on her and dumped her on my sofa back in my apartment. She threw up on my carpet. My very… expensive… carpet.”
“I offered to pay back the damages.”
“And set the sofa on fire.”
“She what?” Lena grinned, unable to imagine the collected and snarky Katie with the image Oskar painted of her. She certainly wasn’t opposed to more of Oskar talking, either, because it felt oddly… couple-like. Or just good friends. They weren’t sitting here awkwardly at all.
“She honest-to-God set it on fire. I have no idea how. And in her drunken panic, she ended up hauling the flaming couch out the window.”
Katie winced at this. “You had a swimming pool outside. It made sense.”
“My brother, Garren, thought someone was trying to kill him, because he was down there with his girlfriend at that point. Doing boyfriend and girlfriend things by my pool.”
“This gets better and better…” Lena rubbed her hands together gleefully.
“I didn’t remember a thing,” Katie admitted. “Only when he told me the next day and I woke up on the floor of some strange house. And then he explained everything that happened… and that I apparently knocked out his brother.”
“That was when I knew we were destined to work together,” Oskar cackled, giving Katie a friendly punch on the shoulder. His amber eyes twinkled in mirth, and Lena gazed into them with a smile. “She wanted to pay off the damages but couldn’t afford it at all. So I just casually offered her a job as a PA. Turned out, she’s really good at it, so it just… happened.”
“My siblings thought it a betrayal that I was working for a dragon,” Katie said, smiling at the waiter who had brought them all their pasties at last. They interrupted conversation enough for Lena to explain that they could cut up the pasty, or hold it by the crimped edge in the traditional way the miners did it, because their hands got grubby working for hours in the rock and dirt, and the crimped edge helped them eat food without contaminating it.
“Why, though? Like, do shifters hate each other or something? Because you’re all on… that site. But you don’t mix?” Lena gave a hasty glance to Chloe, who was eating her own food in a rather stiff manner. What the hell was up Chloe’s ass? She was practically stabbing her plate in half. Also, the elderly Forsythe couple were muttering to each other and clearly glancing Lena’s way. The Forsythes always made some less than subtle digs at Lena’s increasing age and perpetual singularity, along with offhand comments that she might be a lesbian (spat out like a curse word). Not that it should matter if she was one, but it did feel pretty terrible to have people trying to put her in a box all the time, just so their tiny pea-brain minds could make sense of her.
“Mm, not exactly. It’s the wealthier shifters that tend to have more rivalry. The older clans, those who fought in the past for dominance, territory, power. Dragons are universally hated because we were top of the food and fight chain in every possible way. The only time another shifter could get the jump on us was if we didn’t shift into our dragon forms, since once we’re in our form… we’re not so easy to kill. Even with modern-day weapons.” Oskar smiled, then took a tentative bite out of the pasty. He braced his elbows against the table to do so, and Lena watched eagerly.
Pasties were an acquired taste. Newcomers tended to try them once and then decide that no, they really didn’t like the meaty filling inside, or they’d just bitten too soon and scalded their mouths.
“You like it?”
Oskar frowned as he chewed through his first bite. “I don’t know.” He took another bite. “I guess I’ll keep eating and see.” Katie did th
e same, though she’d sniffed it suspiciously before starting. Her reaction was more positive, and Lena smiled in triumph, digging into her own with a fork and knife (which also was another thing the other Geevor locals stuck her for).
“Excellent,” Lena said, chewing on a small chunk of potato, onion, and meat stuffing. “You are now proper small town Geevorans. You have been accepted and are now… one of us.”
She repeated one of us in a robotic voice several more times, and ducked a playful swat by Oskar, while giggling like an idiot. Her behavior, of course, generated more squinty stares, since she wasn’t acting like a proper, dignified adult, or adhering to the “persona” of Geevor.
To hell with them. She knew how to act professional. She also sometimes just wanted to have fun, to enjoy life. And it was hard to enjoy life when worrying about what other people thought. Which she did a lot. Too much, really.
“You’re an actual nerd,” Oskar said, continuing to munch through his pasty. “Which isn’t bad,” he added, obviously spotting Lena’s worried reaction. “I just haven’t really associated with those types of women.”
“Which ones do you associate with?” Lena asked before she could stop herself, and instantly realized she’d likely regret the question.
“Big tits, blonde hair, one night only,” Katie replied, one eyebrow arched as she bit into her food, observing Lena for her response.
“Oh,” Lena said, not sure if she felt jealous or not. Obviously Oskar had a life. A busy, high-style life. Got his rocks off somehow. But one-night stands? That seemed lonely to her. “Shame. One-night stands can’t be that fulfilling.”
“Oh, I assure you, princess, they are,” Oskar purred. “I don’t generally look for anything else. The company of a woman at night, a warm bed, it’s great. The complications when they dig their little claws in and steal your money? That’s the type my brothers have. They barely spend any time with their wives, other than having the token partner at gala events.”
“You’re clearly not looking in the right places, then,” Lena said, trying not to panic when Oskar’s knee bumped into hers beneath the table. Reacting like a touch-deprived teenager whenever someone bumped into her body wasn’t how she wanted this night to go—even if Oskar did have something about him that made her eyes wander over his clothes and face, and sometimes wonder what it might feel like to brush her hands against his knuckles, to place her lips against his, to seek what kind of taste might linger from that contact.
Pull yourself together, Tate. Yeah, that was the loneliness talking.
“You think so?” Oskar finished off the pasty, licking his fingers in an almost erotic way, and Lena held her breath for a few dumb seconds.
“I know so,” Lena assured him, sounding more confident than she felt. “If you seek out one-night stands and get all your attention from people who throw away money like peanut shells, then you can hardly be surprised that these are the type of people who exist in your life. You’d need to get out more. Look for different people in different locations. Assuming, I guess, you do plan to settle down at some point.”
The dragon shifter’s expression went oddly blank, though Katie wore a sarcastic grin.
“I don’t have any plans,” Oskar eventually said. He fingered the cuff of his shirt, eyes fixed upon the white tablecloth. “Though I know of a few people who want me to have plans.”
“I’m a planner,” Katie added helpfully. “So I’m always up for plans. But Little Miss Local Flatfoot here does have a point. The same point I’ve been iterating to you, if you recall.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Looking in the wrong places,” Oskar mumbled.
Local flatfoot? Excuse me? “You really think I’m some flatfoot?” Lena glared at Katie. Before Katie had a chance to respond, however, the sound of someone clearing their throat dragged their attention elsewhere.
Chloe Galer stood by their table, feigning interest in them. Lena knew it was feigned because she’d seen enough of it when she was cheerleader under Galer’s control. Galer always wore that stiff smile when she was planning to take someone down. Alarm bells rang.
“Hello,” Lena said cautiously, with a polite smile. “Nice to see you.”
“Hello,” Chloe replied, flicking Lena a brief glance, but her eyes were mostly on Oskar. “How nice to see you all here! You must be Lena’s boyfriend, right?”
“Right,” Oskar said, likely unsure of where this conversation was going. “And you are…?”
Shit, Lena thought, as Chloe fed him her name. She’s his type, isn’t she? Big tits, blonde hair. Chloe and Oskar’s gazes locked upon one another, sending a sudden surge of heat through her body, one that felt poisonous, somehow.
Jealousy.
“I couldn’t help but think you looked familiar,” Chloe continued with a tinkling laugh. “Then I realized that you seem awfully similar to Oskar Wainwright.”
“Well, I might seem similar to him because I am him,” Oskar replied, a tiny smirk building upon his lips.
“Oh, that’s amazing! Lena, you didn’t tell me you were dating Oskar Wainwright,” Chloe said in a conspiratorial whisper, which everyone at the table heard, of course. Chloe’s brilliant blue eyes were wide in astonishment, but there was something crystalline and cold behind them. “I mean, that kind of news would travel fast, wouldn’t it? And you never posted about it on your social media feeds, either. Neither did he.”
“I don’t paste my entire life on social media, thanks,” Lena said, flushing slightly. She hid her hands under the table so that Chloe didn’t spot them tightening into fists. “And Oskar prefers not to have more attention than he already has.” She briefly nudged Oskar with her foot, and he straightened up immediately, beaming so wide that he’d probably blind people with the light’s reflection.
“Yes, I prefer to keep things on the down-low when it comes to Lena. I also prefer to meet her in places where we won’t get too much of the public eye after us, because a guy’s gotta appreciate peace and quiet. The media loves taking things out of context.”
“Hmm.” Chloe still wore her hugely fake smile, and nodded her head as if accepting this explanation. “You two do seem like very different personalities, too. Lena’s always been quiet and shy, you know? And you…”
“Yes?” Oskar asked, while Katie scowled in the background. Lena’s nerves became guitar-string tight, and that horrible, uneasy sensation churned in her guts, as Chloe continued digging, continued sowing little seeds of inadequacy through her perfectly friendly demeanor.
“Well, you’re a confident media personality. It’d be inevitable you and Chloe would have to be seen together in public at some point.”
A dark, ugly flush crept over Lena’s cheeks. Public was said in a way that suggested being spotted with Lena was reputation-damaging. Like she went out wearing a potato sack, like she wasn’t good enough to be seen in public with someone like Oskar.
It’s true, she thought, but she never planned to voice that out loud.
“I think she looks great,” Oskar purred, his smile becoming fierce and irritated. “And she’s fantastic in bed as well.” He leaned forward and winked at Chloe. “It’s always the quiet ones that perform the best.”
Lena wanted a sinkhole to open up and swallow her. She also wanted to throw her cherry beer in his face and storm off, or maybe cry. Instead, she just sat there like an icicle, a poisonous unease filtering through her veins.
A hard kick to her shin made Lena wince. It came from Katie, who possessed bright, intense yellow eyes. “Hey, Oskar,” Katie said. “I thought you promised not to share that information out loud.”
Oskar stared at Katie blankly, then at Lena. His mouth opened wordlessly. “It was a compliment,” he spluttered. “Nothing wrong with that.”
Thunk. He winced from Katie’s foot lash, from which Lena felt the breeze. “Sorry, Lena.”
Chloe, observing the frosty, odd exchange, simply wore her snake-like smile, before backing away, telling them to enjoy their stay.
“Well, that went swimmingly,” Lena said, partially hiding behind her own dark hair. “Now everyone’s going to think I’m some sexual deviant.”
“Is that… bad?” Oskar seemed genuinely puzzled. Did he really have no idea what kind of social suicide he’d committed on Lena’s reputation?
“Yes, it is!” exploded from Lena’s mouth, before she lowered her voice to draw less attention from the over-inquisitive onlookers. “You don’t make ripples in a place like Geevor. I’m supposed to be the quiet librarian. Now I’m going to get guys coming into the library and asking if I want it freaky.”
“I apologize for my boss,” Katie said with an expression halfway between amusement and exasperation. “He thinks the best way to compliment women is to talk about how great they are in the sack. I’d say he has the emotional maturity of an idiot frat bro, but given his previous relationships have all been based on physicality… he’s just honestly clueless.”
Reluctantly, Lena nodded. Right. It made sense, if that was the kind of life he was used to, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. “So, in a way, he has even less experience than me. That’s interesting, huh.”
“You’re both making fun of me,” Oskar said, his eyes now slits. “She was being an annoying bitch. I just wanted to get her off your back.”
It didn’t seem Oskar was willing to understand what he did, so Lena opted for changing the subject instead. They talked more about surface-level things, but Lena couldn’t shake off the feeling that Oskar, for all his looks, charm, and efforts to present a good front for their fake relationship, just wouldn’t get along with her outside this bubble. They were too different. She didn’t get his lifestyle, and he certainly didn’t comprehend the dilemmas of a small town.
When they left the little saloon, Lena and Oskar held hands for show. When he asked her if she wanted to come back to the hotel with him, she refused, citing work the next day. She was a little tempted, but also suspected someone like Oskar wouldn’t have much trouble getting her into his bed. She knew enough about herself that some affection, a little drink, a light kiss to her temple would be enough. Starved for affection as she was, she ran the risk of giving into someone else’s push.
