7. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Ursula
A fter my first five dates of the morning, there was a break for lunch. Lucky for me, Roxy had already saved me a seat beside her at the breakfast bar. Leave it to the sigma to decide to take me under her wing. The pair of us settle in for a lunch of catered sandwiches and salad, isolated from the rest of the group—just how Roxy likes it.
“Ok, so—this is where we decide if we’re gonna name drop or not,” she lays out a tiny paper napkin over her knee, her face deadly serious in contrast to the silly gesture.
“I don’t care. I can tell you right now that I’m not going to play you for some dude.” I crinkle my nose and lance a wad of salad onto my fork to demonstrate my distaste for the idea of going after a guy I know Roxy is serious about.
“Atta girl! I knew my gut feeling was right about you,” Roxy laughs and gives me an affectionate punch on the shoulder.
“So, who’s got you interested so far?” She leans in, her electric pink and ash blonde ponytail bobbing as she lowers her voice. “I can tell you two names I am absolutely going on a second date with.” Roxy bites her lower lip, eyes darting to the tables and sofas filled with other girls—both of us doing our best to ignore the camera crew glowering at us from the far side of the kitchen island we’re eating at; all the while still aware that our lavalier mics are most certainly still catching every whispered word.
“Who?” I ask in my own excited whisper, to some onlooking producer’s delight.
“I know that I can’t see or smell them… but I feel like I’m already super into two guys I think are going to end up being trouble—my typical type, but I can’t help myself.”
I laugh and roll my eyes at her.
“Trouble? What do you mean, trouble?” I raise a brow and purse my lips.
“Ok, so there’s Anton,” Roxy begins and I can’t stop the laugh that escapes my lips as a quick buzzing raspberry.
“What!? Did you go on a date with him too? I haven’t even said anything yet!” Roxy snips in an incredulous whisper.
“Anton the ‘gym owner’? Who couldn’t stop talking about the gym he owns, or his ex, the model?” I have to hiccup down a laugh in the middle of my confirmation.
Instead of getting angry with my assessment, Roxy only snorts out a strangled laugh—trying to maintain our low profile.
“Fuck me, Ursula, when you say it like that—he sounds worse than I was going to paint him, and I was going to call him: a surprisingly charismatic meathead.” Roxy puts great effort into keeping her voice down, despite her shoulders gently shaking with captive laughter.
I cover my mouth with my napkin until I can manage to pull myself from my fit of silent giggles.
“Ok, ok–can I guess the second one then?” I ball my hands into excited fists and shake them gently at the table’s edge.
“Yes–but no laughing at me, if you’re right.” Roxy fake pouts. “Plus, Anton didn’t mention his ex at all beyond saying that he had one during our date.”
It seems so surreal that all of us are dating within the same limited pool—that it’s going to be totally normal for Roxy and I to have these kinds of conversations for the next few weeks.
“Ok, so if Anton, the gym owner, was up your street—you must have enjoyed your training session with Teddy.” I lean forward until I notice that our foreheads almost touch.
Roxy rounds her lips over her teeth, and for a second I’m worried I’ve messed with the sigma and I’m going to get the horns, or at least a headbutt. Instead, she jerks slightly with another stifled laugh, a rueful smirk turning her scrunched mouth upward.
“Oh come on Roxy—the two biggest himbos? I thought you said you wanted to break patterns, not complete the sequence,” I prod her, delighted by her reaction.
“Listen, I know it’s indefensible—I know that. But what can I say? The heart wants what it wants!” She leans backward—her hands flashing open, palm out as if letting go of something.
“Since I’m gathering that neither of them impressed you much, who have you got your designs on so far, Ms. Ursula?” Roxy raises one of her perfectly shaped brows at me.
“Well, if we’re being entirely honest, I actually kind of enjoyed the tail end of my date with Teddy. He seems like he might not be a total flake…even if he started off our date by working out on the other side of the goddamn divider,” I whisper confidentially.
Roxy coughs to hide her laugh.
“He was working out on your date!?” she hisses, eyes watering with the effort of containing her hysterics.
“I called him out on it, of course.” I sniff, proud of myself.
“As well you should! How did he handle it?”
“Shockingly well. I had all but checked out of the date because I thought he was too self involved, but he stopped me and asked for a second date before I could blow him off. He said he liked being challenged.” I’m surprised by the flutter of butterflies in my stomach as I recount the end of the date to Roxy, who lets out a soft, low whistle.
“Wow, ok—we only talked about what we do on leg day. Way to make me feel superficial as fuck, Ursula.” She grins, landing another affectionate punch on my shoulder. Is it my imagination, or was there a teensy bit more strength behind this one?
“N-no, I just meant that–” I scramble to course correct—but Roxy waves me off.
“Chill out, babe. I’m just fucking with you.” She flashes me that bit of canine with her off-kilter grin and ushers me onward.
“Ok, so you actually liked himbo Teddy. Who else?”
“I really liked Mavren, the chef.” I blush, suddenly shy and more interested in picking at my salad than meeting Roxy’s eyes.
Part of me is worried she’s going to say she liked talking with him too, but more of me is worried that he’s enjoyed every single date after ours more than the last—that by tomorrow, I’ll have already been eliminated from the running as far as he’s concerned.
“Oh? Mavren, huh? I haven’t been on a date with anyone named Mavren yet.” She blinks, shaking her head slowly.
“Good, make sure you don’t end up liking him, or we may have to enter our romantic rivals arc.” I stick my tongue out at Roxy and give her a wink.
“Well, now I’m obviously duty-bound to seduce him. Move over babe, the boy is mine.” Roxy unexpectedly hooks her arm around my neck and pulls me in to ruffle my hair just like my older brother used to do when I was a kid.
We pull away from one another just in time to see Brittney and her passel of mean girls whispering and glaring at us, but Roxy just spins our chairs around away from the high topped counter so that we’re directly facing the camera crew, while giving Brittney and company our backs.
“I know that she wants some kind of confrontation—for me to come and kick her ass for doing this kind of mean-girl shit, but that’s not my bag. We’re just going to ignore her as long as she doesn’t start shit directly.”
Roxy growls low, her mauve eyes glinting with barely leashed anger.
I bobble a string of nods, having less than zero interest in any kind of confrontation.
“I know, I know. You’re too much of a sweetheart, a little bit of a doormat.” Roxy winks.
“Hey!” I jostle her with my shoulder. “Look, here! I just asserted myself.”
“Tch, I’m so proud.” Roxy gently body-checks me back, and I nearly fall off my seat, the pair of us still laughing as Kimmy emerges from the ether to let everyone know that there are five minutes until our next dates.
While I hadn’t considered how ambitious a speed dating rotation of so many dates in a single day was until now, I was certainly dragging.
For the most part, I had found myself critically underwhelmed or outright bored. With the exception of Mavren and Teddy, there hadn’t been anyone I’d really hit it off with. After lunch and a few early afternoon dates of great mediocrity, I find myself staring down the last few hours and nearly a dozen remaining dates with dread. My social battery has long run up, and I’m struggling to imagine a world where I actually make it through another date period–let alone eleven of them.
I’ve stretched out on the couch, my monogrammed fleece throw blanket wrapped tightly around me like a pink fuzzy cocoon—allowing myself to rest my eyes until my next date arrives on his side of the partition.
I must be on the precipice of dozing off, because I don’t remember hearing the click of the door or any of the other tells of my date’s arrival before I hear his voice:
“Hello? Anyone there?” Tentative and searching, his vowels soft and elongated. West Virginia maybe? I’d have to ask.
“Yes, hello—I promise I wasn’t catnapping when you came in.” I yawn, stretching upward into a seated position, smoothing my blanket over my knees as I rouse myself.
“Oh, is it nap time? I wouldn’t mind having a nap myself—I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” he speaks slowly and with a warm undertone, I’m instantly lulled into comfort by his casual ease.
“Pesky cameras would give us away,” I sigh dramatically.
“Thwarted yet again, one day we shall nap in peace,” he concurs gravely, before continuing. “Thankfully, you’ve already saved me from more dreadful small talk. I didn’t think I could stand another surface level date that felt more like an interview for a job that I don’t want to be applying for.”
Both of us laugh.
“So, is asking your name going to lose me points? Or do I get to know what to call you as we get straight to trauma dumping about our fucked up childhoods?” I chirp sweetly, doing my best to keep a joking tone.
“Oh please, I feel like such a heel for not introducing myself before I got to complaining—lovely to interrupt your certainly-not-a-nap, I’m Ronan.”
With his accent, the name sounds lovely and musical, Row-nun .
“A pleasure to meet you Ronan. I’m Ursula. What fucked up, deep topic would you like to dive into first? Aforementioned child trauma? The political and/or religious alignment conversation? Or perhaps you’d like to exchange the list of different antipsychotic medications we’re currently taking or not taking, as if we’re reciting the evening menu at an expensive restaurant?” I babble on—unsure if my joke is landing or if I’ve just been floundering to dead air because he’s already made a break for it—sprinting out of his ‘bubble’ without bothering to slam the door behind him.
Instead, I’m rewarded with the soft raspy sound of his laugh, like dry grass in a sweet autumn breeze.
“Well, why don’t we start off with the fucked up stuff that usually scares away the people you’re gonna date?” he offers, as casually as can be.
“Really? You wanna cut right to the dealbreaker stuff right off the bat? Right after the, ‘my name is’ ?” I laugh nervously, trying to play it cool—but inside I’m freaking the fuck out. I’m not ready to do much more than the basics today, especially not when I’m this worn out from the day’s depleting social interactions.
“Yeah, I do–actually,” his laughing subsides, but his voice is still warm, still gentle.
“If it makes it easier, I can go first and everything,” he volunteers.
“Well, I guess it’s settled then. Spill.” I sit up on the couch, hugging my blanket covered legs protectively against my chest—my chin hooked into the valley between my bent knees, my toes curling tight beneath the pink fuzzy blanket. It’s all I can do not to actually hold my breath as Ronan starts speaking.
“Ok, I’ll give you the abridged version for now, so you can opt into all the weepy details later, if there is a later,” he laughs weakly before pressing on. “My mom died when I was real young, and then my dad ran me out of the house when I was thirteen because he found out I liked girls and boys.” His breath hitches, but only slightly as he swallows another lungful of air to continue his tale. “I lived with my Meemaw for a few years after that, bless her.” I hear him swallow down a wobble in his voice. Even though he’s clearly practiced this bravado and confidence routine, the act—the mask is starting to show its cracks.
“She died the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. She didn’t own the trailer she lived in, she just rented. I was sixteen, so I had no idea that someone had to keep paying the rent or that I would get evicted. As you can imagine, I learned the hard way.” Ronan rolls right past the tiny gasp that escapes me. I’m fairly certain that my pity is the last thing that he wants, but I can’t help myself. I don’t know what I was expecting for him to lay out—but it wasn’t this.
“I couldn’t stay in her trailer, but we were in a pretty rural area. I stayed in the nearby backwoods in a tent for about a year trying to finish out high school, so I wasn’t technically homeless—but after I dropped out of high school and started hitching and train hopping, I was absolutely homeless.” Ronan’s narration builds in confidence and musicality the further he gets from his grandmother’s death, but I’m left reeling from each new detail about the mystery man on the other side of the wall.
“I did quite a lot of traveling and adventuring before I ended up settling down in LA after finding out that my Meemaw had a younger sister who had escaped coal country and made her way to the west coast. My great aunt never had never married, never had any kids of her own. She was living in a cute but rundown place she couldn’t take care of any more. I ended up staying with her, fixing her apartment and defunct laundromat.” My heart swells and I feel the smile spread across my face as I hear his words. Finally, some happiness in his story.
“She left both the coin-op and the apartment over it to me when she died,” he sighs, the momentum of his story sagging once more, much like it did when he’d mentioned the loss of his grandmother.
“I didn’t keep it a fluff-and-fold situation though, I turned it into a florist shop and plant paradise, because I was about to sell the whole thing and take off for literal greener pastures after too many years living in a city.” He draws to a natural stopping point, and I find myself rushing in to fill the silence.
“Why didn’t you just escape the city—’live one day as nature’ and all of that?” I wonder aloud.
“I haven’t had much in the way of family in my life. After Emmy, my great aunt, died—I had a hard time leaving the place that still felt like her,” he explains before adding with a quiet intensity, “made me realize how much I want to start my own family too.”
He’s come to full stop now. I allow his last words a chance to breathe—making sure Ronan’s got nothing left to add before I react to his abridged but still surprisingly in-depth summary of his formative traumas and entering baggage.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been through some incredible bullshit, my friend—but I’m not running for the hills or anything after that. If anything, I’m more interested in getting to know you.” I can feel my heart pounding as I hug my legs to my chest, my hands clasped together in front of my ankles.
“Nothing for you to be sorry for,” he chuckles sunnily.
“But it is your turn to spill your guts, Ursula,” Ronan goads me on, not allowing a moment for so much as a whiff of pity to catch him.
“Well, I’m afraid to say that I’m going to be boring by comparison.” I fidget nervously, my legs breaking free of my arms—my left leg bouncing anxiously as I begin to talk about myself in earnest.
“I come from a pretty traditional pack. Mom’s an omega, my dad and his two other pack mates are alphas. There’s three of us kids, me and two brothers. I’m the only kid in the generation who can have a baby—that old song and dance,” I sing-song, not needing to list the cliche pressures that befall an omega or sigma when it comes to finding one’s pack and getting into the matter of breeding.
“Apart from the old ‘woe is the fate of an omega’ thing… Well, it’s a little tricky to talk about some of the stuff while adhering to the rules of the experience ,” I say carefully, before powering onward, “but I was pretty mercilessly bullied as a kid. Like, to the point where I was begging my mom to let me stay home from school, and when I did have to go—I started spending so much time in the nurse’s office to avoid being in class that the school had to call home and get my parents involved…it was a mess.” I do my best to steady my voice, but my crybaby tears threaten to spill over at any moment.
“I know this sounds pretty stupid in comparison to your childhood,” I hiccup down hot tears on a fake laugh, attempting to make light and continue on.
“Not at all,” Ronan soothes before urging me on. “We all have different stories—it’s not the pain olympics.”
I give a genuine giggle at the term pain olympics before picking up the thread of my story.
“I think all I can say right now is that I ended up in some scary places. Largely in part because of how I had been bullied, and how I felt I could deal with it.” I do my best to gloss over this part, not only because of the rules of the show—but because it’s genuinely difficult for me to talk about.
While I’m at a pretty good place at this point in my life, younger me turned to a lot of destructive acts of self-harm in an attempt to gain mastery over a life I had begun to feel was spinning out of my control.
“I was pretty sick for a while, but I was able to pick up the pieces and start to pull my life together.” I steady myself, moving on.
“There was a lot of pressure from my mother for me to start courting immediately. She wanted me to debut in local society and start seeing different packs—to bite in young and to start having as many babies as possible, just like she did,” I sigh, already exhausted by the telling of this tale.
“Things got pretty bad for a while, and I ended up running away from home, more or less.” I’m shocked that I say this part aloud. Even Daphne, my best friend, doesn’t know this little detail. I pause, the silence closing in around me—threatening to crush me. Perhaps I will let it consume me, to keep me from blurting out the rest of this story—that I am only now remembering will be replayed for anyone who cares to tune in.
“How old were you when you left home?” Ronan asks gently, again, guiding me on—encouraging me to share myself.
“Just past eighteen. I’d gotten my designation, but I wasn’t ready to give up my life. So, I just packed up and ran . I followed some half-baked, misguided dream and hauled my ass to LA.” I would be content to leave it there, but Ronan won’t let me off the hook so easily.
“And what dream was that?” he snickers.
“That, dear Ronan, is a tale for another day,” I laugh bitterly. “Suffice to say, I had a serious reality check. I settled for a job that I’m decent at but that I don’t love. It pays the bills, just barely. My family and I talk now—things aren’t perfect, but we got back in touch after I got properly settled in LA. We even take turns visiting each other on opposite coasts for the holidays. I’m an aunt now, and that’s pretty fuckin’ cool honestly.”
I trail off, deciding that I’m done telling my own abridged tale for now.
“Well, Ursula, I’m happy to say that I feel like I actually know you a bit better now than when we started our conversation and I don’t know if I can do the same for any of the other gals I chatted with today.” His compliment sounds genuine, but I can’t help but challenge him.
“Have you talked to Roxy yet?”
“No, I have not yet had the pleasure of chatting with any such creature,” he admits solemnly.
“Well, my goose is probably cooked. I haven’t had nearly such a revealing conversation with her as I’ve just done with you–but from what I can tell, she’s probably one of the most badass women I’ve ever met—so keep an ear out. I’m sure you’ll learn something—unless, of course, you fuck it up,” I add on a laugh.
I haven’t realized how quickly time has been passing until Kimmy raps loudly on the door to my ‘bubble’, sticking her head in the narrow door opening, her chestnut brown ponytail bobbing up and down.
“Ok you two, wrap it up! I need to bring you to your next date, Ursula!” she chirps pleasantly as I cringe.
I don’t want to cut my conversation with Ronan short, and I certainly don’t want to remind him that I’m about to go off on another date…or to be reminded that he’s going to be on his own rendezvous. Possibly with Roxy.
“I’m getting hustled on my end, too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow though, right Ursula?” Ronan asks tentatively.
“Of course. I look forward to hearing more about you,” I answer, a little breathless, as Kimmy opens the door all the way, tapping her foot expectantly.
“Don’t get your hopes up, I think I told you all the interesting stuff today—it’s all boring book keeping and floral orders from here on out.”
I can hear another man clear his throat on the other side of the partition. It must be the production assistant for the men’s unit—giving Ronan the hook the same way Kimmy is staring me down right now.
“I look forward to it—I’ve always wanted to know when the buying season for dyed carnations really takes off,” I call to him, drifting toward Kimmy’s grasping hands.
Ronan’s laugh, sweet and raspy like dried grass in the breeze as I am escorted by Kimmy down the hall.