Chapter Sixteen
Tuck
L et’s be clear: I’ve taken girls on some bad dates. I have made some real miscalculations. A Lego exhibit at the college library. A Quiz Bowl championship. A documentary film fest that turned out to be entirely in German. And while this one isn’t even approaching the universe of how bad those went, I still feel like I kind of led things astray.
Not that Maren’s said anything. She’s way too...nice for that. And I think she had a good time—although having a good time wasn’t exactly the point.
Still, I keep looking at her sideways as we walk down the steps of the Historical Society. I feel like I need to do something to salvage the moment. Shift the tone a little.
In the sunlight, her hair refracts all the different tones—strawberry blonde to darker red—and I can see where the sun’s dropped freckles on her nose.
God, she’s so pretty.
And she’s mine. Ours.
I swallow and clench a sweaty hand like a nervous teenager all over again. I know I’m long past my ugly duckling phase, but I still can’t help but wonder if people see the two of us and think, What is she doing with him?
But then she meets my eyes and smiles...and I forget all about it.
“You want to get something to eat?” I ask, nodding toward the town square and the cluster of restaurants on the other side. “We’re already out. Shame to waste a trip into town, right?”
Maren considers, then looks at our ride—the car she apparently hates. She scowls. “Anything to avoid getting back in that thing for a while.” To me, she just smiles. “Sure. What are you thinking?”
We settle on the Mexican place across the way with patio seating and paper lanterns hanging from the umbrellas. I pull out the chair for her, which makes her laugh a little, and we put in for a round of margaritas and chips.
Maren looks around, taking it all in, but my eyes are just on her.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I offer.
She chuckles. “I don’t know. Is this what life’s gonna be like eventually? Regular dates, like we’re any old people?
I chuckle. “Yeah... I’m gonna say probably not with us,” I say. I put my hands on the table, interlace my fingers on the bright paper mat. “But, well, I don’t know about the rest of them, but I’ll do my best to create some kind of normalcy.”
“Some kind of normalcy is good,” she says. “As long as it’s not too normal.”
Her drink arrives, and she flashes me a smile as she takes a sip.
I open my mouth, about to start some inane topic of conversation, when an excited, high-pitched voice cuts me off.
“Maren?”
Maren’s head is on a swivel, and she jerks around to see the source—but it’s not a threat. It’s three girls around her age. Vaguely familiar, I feel...but why?
They rush over from the hostess stand, not bothering to wait to be shown to a table.
“From the Crossbridge the other night, remember?” one of them says.
Ah—yes. It clicks. They were on the dance floor with us. Not bad dancers. Not that I’m one to judge.
“Right,” Maren says, and the smile on her face is actually genuine. “Totally. It’s good to see you.”
“Mackenzie,” says one, a hand on her chest, clearly for my benefit. “That’s Taylor. And this is Grace.” She turns to me. “And you’re...Tucker?”
She tries it like she’s not sure. I smile. “Just Tuck.”
She bats her eyelashes. “Well, hi, Just Tuck . Y’all just out for a late lunch or something?”
“Or something,” Maren says.
“Here, sit with us.”
It’s sort of a pointless invitation, because the girls are already grabbing chairs and joining us. The dark-haired one—Taylor—commands the waiter to bring a pitcher of margaritas, and the other two crowd in, hanging purses off the backs of chairs and putting their elbows on the table.
I blink for a second and try not to laugh. If my teenage self could see me sitting with a table full of gorgeous women... I’m not sure he’d believe this was my future.
Then again, he never believed I’d meet other people who could turn into literal animals. So. Life’s funny that way.
“We,” Mackenzie declares, “are celebrating-slash-mourning.”
Maren quirks an eyebrow and takes another sip of her drink. “Oh?”
“I got a scholarship,” Taylor announces. “Criminology. Three thousand bucks, baby.” She helps herself to a chip and lifts it in a toast.
“And I—” the third one, Grace, interrupts, “got dumped. But it’s for the best.”
“Hard agree,” Mackenzie rushes in.
“Dudes suck,” Taylor says.
Grace blinks like she wants to agree, but she’s a little bruised over it. “Yeah,” she says. “Some of them, anyway.”
She glances at me.
I look at Maren, of course. She presses her lips together.
“Well, I’ll toast to that,” she says, just as the pitcher arrives and the other three girls pour their drinks.
“Congrats-slash-better-luck-next-time! Yay!” Mackenzie chirps, and the four of them—plus me, when Maren waves me in—clink our glasses together.
It’s funny. I realize I’ve never seen her with friends. Other girls, certainly, but even anyone outside of our house. She’s been such a loner—which I can relate to, having grown up as a consummate nerd with more Frank Herbert novels than friends.
But I found my guys eventually. Even in college, I had a few buddies that, had things not turned out the way they did, would probably still be my friends.
Maren didn’t really get that chance. Except with us, I suppose.
Until now.
“So,” Taylor says, setting down her already almost-empty margarita glass. “I know y’all have a secret.”
She points at Maren, then at me, and narrows her eyes.
“What?” I choke on my drink and lock eyes with Maren.
Did she—
No. She wouldn’t have told them. Not that we’re shifters. I mean, that’s a ludicrous thing to blurt out to a stranger, right? No one would believe it—or they’d give you a wide berth if you did. Certainly wouldn’t want to be pals when they randomly see you again, lest you slap a tin foil hat on their head and start prattling about aliens.
Maren meets my gaze and gives her head a tight, quick back and forth that reads: No, I didn’t.
Could they have found out some other way? It seems unlikely, but we haven’t exactly been super careful lately, and—
“And when I say y’all,” Taylor goes on, “I mean all y’all. If you know what I mean.”
Mackenzie and Grace devolve into giggles.
Maren blanks. “I don’t follow,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“Come on, don’t be cute,” says Mackenzie. “I mean, this guy here?” She gestures to me. “He’s a specimen. But—” she chews her lip, tips her head—“so is it, like...all y’all all together , or...?”
Oh.
Oh.
My face goes extremely hot. I look at my palms and wish I were anywhere else—anywhere where the beautiful girls I’ve somehow surrounded myself with at this table were not discussing my somewhat...singular style of sex life.
Relationship life? I don’t even know what to call it.
Maren, though—God bless her—does not seem nonplussed.
“Oh,” she says, giving a little laugh. “Yeah. Was it that obvious?”
Taylor snorts. “Like I said in the bathroom—the way they were looking at you, either they were gonna take you home or take you to an abandoned warehouse and whack you limb from limb.” She slurps the rest of her margarita. “I’m just glad it was the former.”
“Me too,” Maren agrees. “Yeah, it’s...well, you guessed it.” She gives a little smile. “Lucky me.”
“No kidding,” says Grace—the dumped one—in a bit of a watery voice.
I look up to shoot her a smile, which she returns... and then immediately crumples into a wail.
“Aw, girly.” Mackenzie pouts and pats the back of her hand. “Margarita’ll fix what ails you.”
She looks at me. “So it’s you and these other guys?”
“Yeah,” I stammer. “I mean—” I run my fingers through my hair. “It’s not, like, us together.” I am seriously underprepared to talk about this.
“So y’all don’t all hook up?” Taylor asks, narrowing her eyes, pointing two fingers at me, then Maren, then out at the hypothetical rest of the boys. “With each other.”
“No, no,” I confirm. “I mean, one time Will planted one on me on New Year’s Eve, but I think he was just plastered.”
Taylor chews the stir-straw in her glass, a wicked gleam in her eye. “That’s hot.”
Maren cackles. “I did not know that. But that tracks.”
I shrug. “Yeah. Not my thing. But not a bad kisser, you know.”
“Of course I do.” She smirks.
“Crazy shit,” Mackenzie says. “But hey—good for you.” She plants a hand on her chest. “I accept all lifestyles. That are legal, anyway.”
“Good distinction,” I say, nodding.
“So...nothing human/animal, then?” Maren says.
It’s a joke—but from the way she catches my eyes, I know she’s having fun, skirting close to the truth.
I press my lips together and widen my eyes. Don’t you dare.
She cocks her head. I won’t.
“Okay, for one, no, gross,” Mackenzie says. “And for two...I mean, everyone already thinks we’re a bunch of hillbillies down here. Last thing we need is actual pig-fuckers.”
“People think we suck,” Grace agrees.
Taylor’s eyes are glued to Maren. “So do you have a favorite?”
“Um...”
I suddenly get very absorbed in my margarita.
“You have to,” Grace says, finally taking a sip of her own drink. “Right?”
I am not here. I am not witness to this conversation. I am dead, shuffled off this mortal coil.
Maren chews her lip. She glances at me—which I obviously don’t notice, not at all—and looks back at the girls with a shrug.
“God, I love guacamole.” Mackenzie, my new favorite person, is blissfully unaware of the conversation happening around her, too intent on scooping a bite out of the bowl. “I could eat guacamole every day for the rest of my life.”
“Ew, no you couldn’t,” Taylor says. “You’d get sick of it.”
“Or you’d get fat,” Grace puts in.
“Avocados are healthy fat,” Mackenzie says, around a mouthful of guac. She swallows. “I could too.”
Maren and I briefly lock eyes. But, of course, she beats me to the punch.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Maren says. “Like look, I love me some guac too. But sometimes I’m in more of a...French Onion dip mood, you know?” She lifts a shoulder. “Not the guac’s fault. The guac is still delicious. I still love the guac. I will go to town on that shit, generally speaking. But right then, I just want something different.”
“Oh,” Grace says, eyes wide and nodding at Maren like she’s imparting some kind of sage wisdom. “ Oh. ”
“Or maybe I don’t want anything salty at all,” Maren goes on. “Maybe I need some of those little cookies you can dip in frosting, or whatever.”
“Dunkaroos?” Mackenzie says, coaxing a small boulder of guacamole onto a chip. “Those were my shit in elementary school.”
“Yeah,” Maren says, barely able to contain her grin. “Those. Or, you know.” She shrugs again, ever so innocent. “Maybe I want some guac and frosting, mixed together. Just to experiment. Double teaming, you know?”
I choke on my margarita salt.
“That sounds gross.” Mackenzie wrinkles her nose, chomping down the rest of her chip.
“No It Does Not.” Taylor speaks in short, declarative syllables while fixing me me with a look that could only be called predatory.
I gulp.
“So you ladies are all in college around here?” I all but squeak, desperate for a change of topic.
“Yes,” they say in unison.
“Unfortunately,” Mackenzie adds. She throws down her chip and sighs. “Sorry, sorry. I was the one complaining that other people think this place is a shithole, and now I’m doing the same thing.”
“Okay, but it’s not even a shithole,” Grace says. “You know Ashley? Getting her nursing degree?” She slurps margarita. “She volunteers at the VA Hospital and said that the other day the vending machine just started giving people money. Or, not, like, money, but a bunch of cash cards. Like someone had put them in there as a nice gesture. Made this old guy literally cry.”
“See?” Mackenzie says. “How come stuff like that never goes viral? It’s always the freaky cult murders and armed robberies and—”
“It’s our shithole, at least,” Maren interrupts.
“I’ll drink to that,” I say. But as I lift my glass, my blood goes chilly.
Because across the patio are two guys in beige.
Deputies.
Grace is the first one to notice my stare, and follows my gaze. She, for whatever reason, also goes pale.
“Shit,” she whispers. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“What?” Taylor says, and follows Grace’s nod. “Ohhhh. Shit.”
“Maren,” I say, thinking quickly. “Weren’t you saying you were going to the bathroom?”
“Hmm?” Maren looks up from the menu. “I didn’t—”
“You did, ” I say, sternly—and sternly enough to make her jump.
“Oh.” She flicks a glance over her shoulder. Sees what I see. “Um. Right. Be right back.”
She darts away, to the inside of the restaurant, and I lock eyes with her just long enough to telegraph, hopefully, wait ’til the coast is clear.
“Shit,” Grace whispers again. I frown, trying to keep calm.
“What’s wrong?”
Grace eyes her two friends, and the three of them have a brisk, wordless conversation.
“She has a fake,” Mackenzie says. “She’s not twenty-one yet.”
“I’m two months away, ” Grace says.
“It’s an unjust law anyway,” Taylor says, pulling out a vape. “I think it’s a moral obligation to flout it. On principle.”
I decide I like Taylor. “Don’t worry about it,” I say to Grace. “We won’t let them bother you.”
“Afternoon, ladies—and gent.” The deputies step up to our table, and I nod, trying to act as normal as possible given that I do not actually know these women, and the one woman I do know, very well, is hiding inside due to her technically being a very high-profile missing person. “Everything okay here?”
“Do you have a warrant?” Taylor demands.
“They don’t need one in public,” I whisper. “No reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Taylor narrows her eyes, considers, and realizes I’m right. “Withdrawn,” she says.
“We’re just...making sure everything’s okay,” says the shorter of the two. “Got a call about a public nuisance out here. Gotta investigate to the fullest extent of the law, you know?”
“Of course,” Mackenzie says, overly graciously, if you ask me. Grace just nods, her fingers locked on her illegal margarita.
“Everything all right here, then?” the second one says. He stares at each of them in turn—and me.
And I don’t like that stare.
He pivots to Grace, who’s now shaking a little. “Miss?”
“I’m...great,” she says. “Thank you.”
The first deputy leans in, a little too closely, and at a little too convenient of an angle given where he’s standing and the specific cut of Grace’s blouse. “You sure about that?”
“She said she’s fine,” I say.
He glares at me. “I was asking the lady.”
“Right,” I say, firm but not disagreeable. “You asked, she answered.”
He shifts his weight, eyes his buddy. “You know, where I come from, men let women speak for themselves.”
He puts a hand on her shoulder—her bare shoulder. Grace quivers.
“And where I come from, men know how to pick up signals,” I reply, willing myself not to snap the words at him. “Don’t touch her.”
“Now—”
“Don’t touch me,” Grace says, shaky but sharp.
I don’t wait for him to move. I stand up, grab his hand by the wrist, and calmly—which is not easy, mind you—remove it from her shoulder.
All at once, their tone changes. “Sir, are you aware that assaulting an officer is a crime?”
“He didn’t assault you.” Taylor pipes up from my elbow, where she’s holding her phone aloft. “I got it on camera. Just in case your bodycam footage happens to be erased later.”
I try not to smile too widely. Instead, just give the nicest, friendliest shrug I can. “Well, I guess that’s that, deputies. Unless there’s further business you have with our party here?”
The two of them give each other a sour look, which they levy onto me. But they back off.
“You take care, ladies, ” the second one says. “Lots of girls getting wrapped up in bad situations lately. Y’all be careful.”
We all wait a good two minutes in tense silence before any of us moves, let alone speaks. Maren sweeps back in from the inside of the restaurant, breathing hard.
“Oh my God,” Mackenzie says. “That was...they were...” She gapes at me. “You’re my hero. ” She looks at Maren and clutches her hand reverently. “Never let him go, girl.”
Maren smiles at me with a kind of pride that makes me feel ready to punch out a thousand deputies, and I blush, in spite of myself. “I just...didn’t want them bothering you,” I say, truthfully.
Taylor pockets her phone dutifully. “They’re just here for easy apprehensions,” she says sagely. “Whole force has gotten lazy.”
Grace just exhales hard. “I’m never breaking the law again,” she says sincerely, staring at her margarita.
“Okay, but maybe after the next round?” Mackenzie says, pleadingly.
“We should go,” I say to Maren.
She sucks her teeth, clearly disappointed, but nods. “Yeah. If I’d known those guys were prowling around, I never would’ve...”
The three other girls have fallen silent. Staring. Not...in a suspicious way, exactly. Just...curious.
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Mackenzie asks at last.
“I...” Maren looks at me, helpless.
“No,” I say, just as she says “Maybe.”
That does not help matters. The college girls’ expressions go from curiosity to mild alarm.
“Sorry,” Maren mutters. “It was great seeing you guys again. Maybe at the bar, sometime?”
“Oh, yeah, for sure!” The three of them nod, give waves, and settle into perusing the menu for two-for-one specials while half-watching us hustle out of there.
“I gave the waitress two hundred bucks,” Maren mutters as we jog across the square to the car. “For their tab.”
She glances back, just one last time, and it makes something pang in my chest.
She’s a good friend.
Or would be, if she had the opportunity to make friends.
I chew the inside of my cheek as we slide into the car, make a little promise.
Someday. Someday, I’ll get that for her.