10. Ben #4
Sometimes it took a lot of nerve to demand space, and I recognized that there was an extra layer of complication with the whole women-eating-on-a-date thing.
Shifters didn’t really follow that. If a wolf wasn’t eating, they were sick, but I lived close enough to humans to be aware of their weirdness about women having an appetite.
Since her illness made it hard for her to eat large amounts all at once, I could see how that might make her self-conscious. But just as she’d helped me through my panic attack, I was more than happy to help her through any nerves about how much food she got down.
And I was serious about having leftovers. Cooking was exhausting. Between making sure the fridge was stocked and taking care of the dishes after, it could be a lot. Natalie and delivery apps had saved my ass multiple times.
“Do you want your appetizer served with your meals or before?” the server said. She was going to get a fat tip. Between her patience, her sweetness to Giselle, and her professionalism, she was making our night even better.
Things really had turned around, and I was immensely grateful for that.
“Before, please.”
“Roger, roger. I’ll put that in for you, and have it out ASAP.”
“Take your time. We’re not in a rush.”
She gave a little salute, and once again, I was alone with Giselle, who was gripping her lemonade with both hands. Had she not ordered an alcoholic drink because she’d been conscious of my budget?
“Would you like a cocktail or some wine?” I asked casually, like it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t. But I did want her to order whatever she liked.
“Thank you, but I can’t,” she said with a wry sort of grin. “Doesn’t mix well with my situation.” She let out a sigh that shouldn’t have been as adorable as it was. “I do miss having a nice rosé from time to time, but it’s not worth it.”
“I understand that.”
Actually, I didn’t. Shifters were rarely ever ill, and we metabolized human alcohol before it could really affect us, but I liked to think I could at least sympathize.
“Does it bother you that I’m drinking? I don’t mind ordering a soda.”
“No, no, you don’t have to worry about that.
I think it would be different if I was in recovery for alcohol addiction or something, but no, I don’t expect other people to change their diet for my chronic illness.
” She chuckled lightly. “Every now and then I have some Karen tendencies, but that would be going way too far.”
“Really? You, a Karen? I can’t see it.”
“Little do you know, when the full moon rises in the night sky, a monstrous spirit comes over me and I turn it into the biggest Karen you’ve ever met, complete with the choppy haircut and asking for the manager while I point at my expired receipt.”
Since Giselle liked wearing wigs, my mind instantly supplied an image of her with the same hairstyle as that terribly abusive mother with all the children on that one TV show. It was slightly disturbing, but also definitely hilarious.
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re a were-Karen?”
She was smiling so impishly as she still held her cup with both hands, hunched slightly like a mischievous fair folk from those ancient myths.
Maybe one day I would see her as the full human she was, but she seemed so impossibly perfect that my mind was grasping at some sort of logical reason as to why.
Because surely no one person could be that good, right? “My secret! It’s been exposed!”
I laughed, perhaps a little louder than I should have in a crowded, upscale restaurant, but she had no idea how apropos her joking was.
I had the temptation to assure her that her secret was safe with me, then burst into my wolf form, but that would only fly in an absurdist comedy—not in real life, and definitely not around a couple dozen humans.
“I’ll have to blackmail you and your whole species now,” I said. But in my mind, my fantasy stretched out far into the future, into a reality where Giselle found out what I was and looked back on this conversation and recontextualized it. It was a nice thought, but that could never happen.
As good a human as Giselle was—and I had met many good humans in my life—their species was violent and quick to destroy anything different.
Even in ancient times, Homo sapiens had wiped out pretty much every other humanoid species except for a few neanderthals and whatever the shifter ancestors were.
I was no expert, but thanks to my son’s love of dinosaurs and the prehistoric, I often read different articles and studies on them—usually while bored on the toilet—and I recalled that there were eight other species beside Homo sapiens at one point.
The aforementioned neanderthals, Denisovians , Homo erectus , Homo …
I couldn’t quite mentally pull up the rest of their names, but there were more.
“You all right over there?” Giselle’s soft voice reached into the middle Pleistocene era and yanked me back to the present. “You seemed like you went off somewhere.”
It wasn’t like we were ever going to have a second date, so I decided to just be honest. “Sorry, I was thinking about the rise of proto-humans and their eventual collapse due to total domination by Homo sapiens .”
She nodded like that was a perfectly normal thing. “When you say proto-humans, are you talking about Proto - Hominins during the Late Miocene Epoch, like the Ardipithecus , or more the early Homo in the Cenozoic Era?”
Holy shit. Giselle had me outmatched in my knowledge of the prehistoric.
“What?” she murmured, tilting her head at me not unlike a wolf would when confused.
“Just surprised you instantly knew what I was talking about. And then some. Did you minor in paleontology?”
She chuckled at that, but it wasn’t condescending.
With Giselle, I always felt like I knew how she was feeling and what she was thinking.
There was no two-facedness, no reading between the lines with her.
“I did a student-teaching program at a gifted school where the majority of students were neurodivergent, and then my practicals in an inner-city school with, again, a bunch of undiagnosed neurodivergent kids. Believe me, you learn a lot about dinosaurs.” She paused. “And trains.”
The matter-of-fact way she said it had laughter bubbling up inside me. Man, it was just so easy to talk to her. No wonder she was an excellent teacher.
“So that’s why Junior likes you. Not because of your great personality or incredible professionalism. I should have known it was the dinosaurs.”
“It’s the dinosaurs,” she agreed before breaking into giggles.
My ego was starting to bubble up. She was having a good time. A good time she very much deserved.
Maybe…
Maybe I didn’t ruin everything I touched.
“Well, I guess I’m going to have to ask you to curb your own natural talents, because I fear Junior is at risk of liking you more than me,” I said, finishing off my beer.
“And I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t think I can handle that.
I’m supposed to have until he’s a teenager before he thinks I’m lame. ”
“Like me more?” She snorted in disbelief. “Please. Benny worships the ground you walk on. He’s a daddy’s boy through and through.”
“He does?” I blurted before my brain could fully catch up.
I knew my son loved me, but sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder how much he hated me for letting his mother die.
His grandparents. His friends. His cousins.
His babysitter. Everyone. Our pack may have only consisted of thirty-five people, but after that one night, we’d gone all the way down to three.
Three.
That was it.
By being tricked, I’d let my son’s entire world be ripped away.
How could he forgive me for something like that?
I’d thought after hunting Charles down and raining retribution down on his head and the heads of his accomplices, I would have peace.
That I would be able to return to my son and prove to him that I still was worth something as an alpha.
But as I stood there, surrounded by blood, vomit, and other viscera, I realized nothing had healed.
All I’d brought myself was more pain.
Yes, Charles had suffered and paid for his crimes, but there was little solace in that. It hadn’t brought anyone back. My son still had no mother. The little baby that had been hidden with him had no parents at all.
We were all so fucking broken.
“I spy, with my little eye, something blue and yellow.”
Giselle’s voice was suddenly much firmer than it had been before, and it snapped me out of the mental trap I’d fallen into.
Had I always been so pathetic, or was the situation triggering me?
I was normally better put-together, but maybe that was only because I allowed myself to exist for my children.
This date was very much not that, so it made sense that I was feeling uncomfortable and out of my depth.
Even if I was having so much fun.
Life was full of dualities and contradictions, but I wouldn’t mind if things could be a little simpler.
“Pardon?”
“I spy, with my little eye, something blue and yellow. Can you find it?”
I blinked at her a few times, and I realized my breath was actually coming quite hard and fast.
Oh. I’d been panicking again. Obviously not quite a panic attack, but definitely noticeable.
That was twice in one night that she’d saved my ass. If I kept going, it was going to become a habit.
“Hmm… is it the stained glass chandelier behind my head?” I asked without turning. And I had to admit, it was pretty gratifying when Giselle’s eyes went wide.
“How did you know that?”
“I saw it when we came in and thought it was an odd color choice for a fancy chandelier,” I said, trying to manage a wry grin. I didn’t think I succeeded, but I was rolling away from the abyss my anxiety and grief was always ready to yank me into.
“I thought the exact same thing. Maybe we just don’t have fancy sensibilities like whoever designed this place.”